iliana

Visual culture and the politics of (being against) maps in 18th-century Britain: Batchelor on Sills, financialization, rhetorical mode, romantic 'nationalist realism,' and ecological consciousness

(Originally posted elsewhere on 23 May 2023.) From H-Net, Batchelor brings us a really fascinating review of Sills's recent Against the Map. I've a lot of thoughts here. In originally publishing this I included lengthy tags, but I want to give them more attention and

The sagebrush lizard that 'threatens national security': Texas extractivism and unique High Plains sand dune biodiversity

(Originally posted elsewhere on 19 June 2020. With an update from July 2026.) Thinking about her (shinnery oak). also thinking about her (High Plains sand dunes region). And her (dunes sagebrush lizard). And her, too (lesser prairie chicken). I’d think that shinnery oak dunes might be one of the

Contextualizing a cartoon: 'Civilization,' the brutality of US/British campaigns in the Philippines/Boer wars, and anti-imperial critique in metropolitan cartoons, 1896-1906

The cartoon pictured above was circulating among my acquaintances online. Originally from Eugen von Baumgarten in Jugend #25 (1896). Some (contemporary) people expressed a measure of surprise that metropolitan cartoons--that is, white illustrators/publishers in domestic press of US, Britain, France, and Germany--were so conscious of such critique.

Serendipity of a 'revolutionary' German termite infestation: Hamburg's place in racism in tropical medicine, the clearing of poor districts, Namibian genocide, and insects as 'thousands of tiny Bakunins'

Incredible sequence of events to me. Would love to see these discussed together. Basically: Termite redemption. Poetic justice enacted by insects. A little story about insect reverse-imperialism in Hamburg. Thought they ought to be considered side-by-side. SET-UP Excerpt 1: On May 28, 1914, the Institut für

Brecht and Benjamin at a Berlin cabaret? One could dream (about a moment in 1925)

killed (stole!) so much time at work reading through snippets of PDFs, articles, chapters, etc., trying to pin-down a definitive date for ol' Walty B's residency at Institut fur Sexualwissenschaft (a couple months? in 1924-1925?) just so i could make a single half-assed but

Contextualizing a joke about Belgian racism: Leopold's adventurers call 'Towards Infinity!' (and the historiographic intervention of Debora Silverman regarding 'fashionable bathing station' Ostend as inter-imperial nexus)

(Originally posted elsewhere in November 2025.) Joke post (and art) from a beloved Tumblr user. Yes, we might be picturing Tintin and other twentieth-century illustrated adventurers. We might also be imagining Swiss "human zoos." While describing this impulse towards adventure and the association of metropolitan Belgian wealth

Timeline of increasing criminalization of homelessness in the US/Canada, 2022-2024: Frigid cold, blazing heat, 'mass encampments,' and the Grants Pass case

(Originally posted elsewhere 9 May 2024. Updated late June 2024.) The Supreme Court's "biggest decision on homelessness in decades" is the fruit of several years'-worth of efforts like this. Some updates from the past twelve-ish months: -- Late 2022: Portland and its mayor (Wheeler)

Tasmania as 'sanitaroium of India' and the thylacine as 'tiger': Knowledge, global networks of administrators, and associating imperial peripheries with each other in British imaginaries

(Originally posted elsewhere in May 2026.) The image pictured above was circulating among my online circle this week. Illustrating a flightless endemic bird and a wallaby, it's the cover to: LA Meredith, Tasmanian friends and foes (1881). This led me to consider the framing of thylacine as pest

'You've got to remember what the clouds cannot forget' and 'find a secret name and fight with it': Historicity and two elegies from postcolonial Caribbean ecocriticism

(Originally posted elsewhere on 5 August 2020.) Two elegies, considered together. -- Excerpt 1: Hay que aprender a recordar / Lo que las nubes no pueden olvidar You’ve got to learn to remember / what the clouds cannot forget Nicolas Guillen’s insight, from his 1947 poem “Elegia,” captures one of the

Joking about garlic: Indigenous legacy and the etymology of 'Chicago'

(Originally posted elsewhere in December 2023.) Response to joke/shitpost circulating in social circle. You're in luck: Chicago: onion and garlic place.

Introduced beavers, racial hygiene in 1940s Tierra del Fuego, racial/class borders in 1990s Buenos Aires, and obscuring the past to build the nation in the work of Mara Dicenta

(Originally posted elsewhere in April 2023.) Fascinated by the themes at play in Mara Dicenta's work. Two recent pieces by her: One from Arcadia and one from Edge Effects. Thought they worked well when considered together. -- Excerpt 1: In 1946, Argentina introduced twenty beavers (Castor canadensis) to Tierra

Contextualizing a joke about the first-ever European illustration of a sloth: Abigail Weinberg on race, gender, and exoticism in Early Modern idealization of New World natural history knowledge

(Originally posted elsewhere on 18 September 2023.) A couple of years ago, as you might recall, we had a fun time discussing European taxonomies and imaginaries of the tropics when I shared an image (Andre Thevet, "D'vne beste assez estrange, appelee Haut," 1558) of what might