Friday Varia and Quick Hits

I’m pretty sure that today is Friday in North Dakotaland and while I wish I could say that the world was slowly returning to a kind of post-COVID normalcy, it, in fact, seems to imploding. The only thing we can hope is that some good comes from these dark days. 

It does seem kind of pointless to be posting on my blog or fussing around with my scholarship or doing much of anything these days. Writing or reading this blog seems like a low priority. 

But, if you’re here (and I do appreciate you as readers!), do check out the voices that Eric Burin brought together in hisProtesting on Bended Knee: Race, Dissent and Patriotism in 21st Century America (2018) or check out Gayatri Devi’s short essay on this week’s NDQ blog on mainstreaming racial slurs.

Or check out this little gaggle of quick hits and varia:

• Some statements:

The Archaeological Institute of America’s statement on archaeology and social justice.

The Society of Classical Studies statement on police brutality, systemic racism, and the death of George Floyd.

American Historical Association statement on the history of racial violence.

The Society of Biblical Literature.

The Society of American Archaeologists.

American Academy of Religion.

• Talking about Race.

• Institutional Racism: A Syllabus.

• How to bring down an obelisk. 

• Richmond’s Monument Avenue.

• Nostalgic Distortions as a Weapon of Segregation in Secondary Classics.

• Capital-labor relations, housing and the making of the Bakken boom.

• What I’m reading: Kevin Gannon, Radical Hope: A Teaching Manifesto (2020).

• What I’m listening to: Yazz Ahmed, When We Were Live.