Bram Hubbell

@bramhubbell.com

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he/him * Husband & father 🧑‍🧑‍🧒 World historian 🗺️ Teacher 👨‍🏫 Pilgrim 🧳 Yogi 🧘🏻‍♂️ Writer of Liberating Narratives https://www.bramhubbell.com https://www.liberatingnarratives.com

Bram, his wife, and daughter at No Kings protest
Text Shot: Calling for civility is about exerting power. It is a way of reminding the powerless that they exist at the will of those in power and should act accordingly. It is a demand for control. Civility is wielded as a cudgel to further clarify the differences between “us” and “them.” It is the demand of people with thin skin who don’t want their delicate egos and impoverished ideas challenged. And it is a tool of fearful leaders, clinging to power with desperate, sweaty hands, thrilled at the ways they are forcing people, corporations and even other nations to bend to their will but terrified at what will happen when it all slips away.
It is reported that before carrying out the plan, they made a sacrifice on a virgin soil and covered with wood, called le Caïman; that the victim was a black pig whom they surrounded with fetishes, and loaded with offerings of various kinds; that a young priestess, dressed in a white robe, plunged the sacred knife into her bowels according to the customary ceremonies; that they drank with acidity of his blood, and that they took from his hair, a sort of talisman which was to make them invulnerable in combat.
They celebrated a kind of feast or sacrifice in the middle of an uncultivated wooded plot on the Choiseul plantation, called le Caïman, where a very large number of slaves gathered. A black pig, surrounded by spirit objects, each loaded with offerings more bizarre than the next, was the offering made to the all powerful spirit of the black race. The religious ceremonies that the slaves practiced in slaughtering it, their greed to drink its blood, their eagerness to have some of its bristles as a kind of talisman that, according to them, would make them invulnerable, are all characteristics of the African.
Ernst Prophete’s painting of the ceremony at Bois-Caïman the night before the Haitian Revolution began
Bram getting excited for a mini tiffin
Screenshot. Text says: al-Maqrizi provided a vivid description of the 1361 freezing of the Euphrates: The severe cold in Syria caused the Euphrates to freeze. Passengers and their loads crossed, it was a wonderful scene that had never been witnessed beforehand.
A text shot containing the following information: Title: Empireworld: How British Imperialism Shaped the Globe Author: Sathnam Sanghera Highlight: It’s no more possible to talk about the British empire without mentioning racism than it’s possible to listen to Taylor Swift without being made to think about relationships
Menorah in the shape of a minaret, c.1900
Hand holding nutmeg and mace
My choice of exploring imperialism and education wasn’t accidental. By reflecting on the nature of and justifications for colonial schools, I hope both teachers and students can see how many of our approaches to teaching still reflect an imperial mindset. We often know more than our students and want to educate them, but we should avoid accidentally recreating imperialism’s inherently problematic power structures. When we lecture for an entire class or rely wholly on a single source (especially when that source is a textbook), we introduce some unequal power dynamics of imperialism in the classroom. We want to cultivate students who push back and ask questions.
A text shot containing the following information: Title: On “Discovery” Author: Shahnaz Habib Source: Airplane Mode: An Irreverent History of Travel Highlight: People of color often use air quotes when we talk of explorers who “discovered” the Americas or India or various Pacific islands. Alas, it is hard to translate air quotes to text. Even when retranslated back as quote marks (see “discovered”), something is missing. My fingers often itch to include the eye-rolling and smirking that we use to accompany air quotes. I propose instead a new word: pseudiscovery. The silent p, I hope, will convey the silence of our air quotes, the people and places who were rendered invisible when Europeans pseudiscovered them.
In India
At Ibn Battuta’s alleged resting place in Tangiers. Morocco
On a ferry in the Baltic Sea
Cover for ABCs for Baby Patriots
Idli and vada
Poster for a conference talk
Image for a talk on the Age of Revolutions
Map showing how the US, China, India, and Europe all fit in Africa
Dad, daughter, dosa