• Essay

    How Do Pandemics End?

    Argentina’s 19th-Century Cholera Outbreaks Show the Myth of a Single, Definitive Conclusion

    by Carlos S. Dimas

    The study of epidemics has routinely centered around what medical historian Charles Rosenberg calls a ...

Essay

How to Treat the ‘Wounds to the Soul’

A Therapist Assembles an Emotional Toolbox to Help Us Grapple With Collective Trauma

by Jack Saul

The subterranean strata of U.S. wrongdoing run deep—the genocide of Native Americans, the long history of slavery and racism, the effects of xenophobia, the illegal wars of aggression around the world. Today we are faced with the question: As a society, how will we remember and respond to these many past wrongs?
  Approaches that take into consideration participants’ histories—along with their experiences of physical and mental trauma, and moral injury—seem to pay off.
  For the past 25 years, I have worked as a researcher and practitioner in the field of large-scale psychosocial trauma. My current project, the Moral Injuries of War, seeks to probe the moral anguish experienced by military veterans and war correspondents deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is an immersive audio installation, in which we overlay edited audio interviews and ...

Essay

How Literature Became a Weapon in Russia's Culture Wars

It’s a Battle of Tolstoys as Protestors Face off Against Putin’s Propaganda Machine

by Jacob Lassin

On April 10, 2022, Moscow police arrested resident Konstantin Goldman for brandishing a book in public. Goldman had posted an image on social media in which he posed holding a copy of Tolstoy’s War and Peace next to a section of a World War II monument that commemorates Kyiv’s status as a Soviet “hero-city”—a distinction given to cities that endured some of the harshest moments of the Nazi invasion. He was charged with violating Russia’s prohibition against discrediting the military, a new law that can carry a punishment of up to 15 years in jail.
  But Goldman’s photo went viral, tapping into latent sentiments against the lack of freedom of expression and repressive fear-based tactics. A meme began to circulate that modified the image so that the word “war” in the novel’s title was replaced with “special operation,” the term that ...

  • The Takeaway

    ‘It’s Difficult to Win Hearts and Minds When You’re Holding a Gun’

    When War Becomes the Means of Governing, Civilians, Soldiers, and Veterans Lose

    by Talib Jabbar

    With wars playing a crucial role throughout history in shaping American influence and character—and with present-day conflicts devastating countries such as Ukraine and Yemen—Zócalo convened a panel to probe the question, “What is Our Responsibility for Our Government’s Wars?” ...

Inquiries