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abusablepast.bsky.social
Abusablepast
@abusablepast.bsky.social
1.3K followers 98 following 68 posts
The Abusable Past is the digital companion to the Radical History Review, presenting unique and original content related to the praxis of radical history.
https://abusablepast.org/ and more at linktr.ee/theabusablepast
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abusablepast.bsky.social
From a digital or analog collage, photo, drawing, blackout poem, video, or anything else, select artworks will be incorporated into openly licensed teaching materials. See more info about Executive Dis/Order at abusablepast.org/call-for-sub.... More questions can be directed to thepedlab@gmail.com.
A slide with a white box and dark text reading “example” below an excerpt of the White House’s Executive Order “Improving Education Outcomes by Empowering Parents, States, and Communities” accompanied by a poem titled “[record of transfer]”: instructions: remain solvent. comply with terms, as outlined in the policy, as amended without notice, as interpreted by the holder. where self-direction exceeds design, debt may be used to re-establish form: • debt to structure. • debt to discipline. • debt to contain. used to be, you could name what you owed and to whom. our instructions: remain solvent, stay still. please, submit your forms again to ensure proper processing. A slide with a white box and dark text reading “example” above an excerpt of a White House Executive Order title amended to “Expanding Migrant *Carceral Quarantine at Imperial Station Guantanamo Bay to Full Racist Xenophobic Capacity” *a place where people are kept between life and death for an indefinite period (Paik 113). Below is an amended memorandum alongside learning goals for a lesson plan adapted from this artwork.
July 19, 2025 at 8:14 PM
abusablepast.bsky.social
The Pedagogy Lab & Center for Feminist Futures at UC Santa Barbara is seeking submissions for The Executive Dis/Order Project: Refusing Compliance.

This project is looking for original art on executive power and its effects on democracy to build a visual archive of resistance to US suppression. /1
A slide with a dark red mauve gradient background and white text reading “Call for Submissions for The Executive Dis/Order Project: Refusing Compliance” from “The Pedagogy Lab & Center for Feminist Studies, UC Santa Barbara in collaboration with The Abusable Past.”
July 19, 2025 at 8:11 PM
abusablepast.bsky.social
It would be an understatement to say 2025 so far has been difficult in the midst of political uncertainty and mounting assaults against our most vulnerable. Throughout this time, the Digital Collective has remained steadfast in our commitment to publish critical work and offers these pieces… /1
A slide with a red background and white text that reads “Luigi Mangione, Giuseppe Zangara, and the Forgotten History of Italian American Radicalism by Sonia C. Gomez” with a short description that reads “Tracing the long 20th century history of Italian American radicalism through Giuseppe Zangarw and Luigi Mangione, Gomez illuminates their connections through their twinned disillusionment with capitalism and political resistance borne from chronic pain.” Accompanied by a black-and-white collage from left to right Giuseppe Zangara in prisoner uniform, Luigi Mangione in prisoner uniform surrounded by police escorts, and a Giuseppe Zangara portrait with three other men and a looping white arrow behind to point at the body text. A slide with a red background and a photograph from the Black Freedom Studies speaker series at Schomburg Center with four people seated on stage in the center with audience members in the foreground. The white text reads “State Violence and the Black Freedom Struggle by Lucien Baskin” and description “As part of Conversations in Black Freedom Studies (CBFS) hosted by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Lucien Baskin interviews Mary Frances Phillips, Françoise Hamlin, and Orisabmi Burton for an event on State Violence: Prisons, Police, Politics.” A slide with a red background and a poster in red, gray, white, and black depicting a woman with her arms in chains breaking free surrounded by other revolutionary women and text reading “Hail To the Working and Struggling Women of the World.” The white text on the slide below reads “Radical Iranian Theory and Praxis Microsyllabus by Tagereh Aghdasifar, Arash Davari, Alexander Jabbari, Amira Jarmakani, and Goonar Nikpour” and a description reading “Spanning Iranian revolutions and revolutionary thought, carcerality, sociality, movement building, and the development of critical SWANA studies/Ethnic Studies, this micro syllabus facilitates engagement with radical Iranian thought instead of provincializing such work as area studies or even “counter-terrorism” studies.” A slide with a red background and a color photograph depicting a line of NYPD amassing to crack down on the International Women’s Day Global Strike for Gaza standing along the shoulder of a city street as passerby walk in front of them. Below, white text reads “Policing Solidarity: Lessons from the Drug War by Nadja Eisenberg-Guyot” and a short summary ”By linking drug policing to the repression of the Palestine solidarity movement in Turtle Island, Eisenberg-Guyot enumerates how the specific mechanisms and tactics of the drug war inform and reify U.S. settler-colonial, imperialist, and racial capitalist interests domestically and abroad.”
July 19, 2025 at 6:30 PM
abusablepast.bsky.social
It is difficult to capture how the world was utterly transformed since October 7, 2023…This past summer, the Digital Collective joined those who encouraged a serious reflection on the violent administrative response to a wide range of student activism ... /1
October 30, 2024 at 9:12 PM
abusablepast.bsky.social
"Seventy years ago today, Vito Marcantonio, the most left-wing congressman in US history, suffered a fatal heart attack. He had by then left office disappointed by McCarthyism and the failure of pro-worker and anti-racist legislative efforts." /1
Rep. Marcantonio at his office, a trailer, with neighborhood children, ranging in age, from very young to teenagers. They are standing, some posing, some talking, with Marcantonio. The door to the trailer is open with some children standing inside the door frame, laughing. Marcantonio looks down at the child to his right, smiling warmly, with their arms around each other. The trailer reads "Congressional Office of your...Congressman," "Vito Ma....nio, "Meet him here," "PEACE," "Serves you..." Ellipsis in text signals what is blocked by the open door. Buildings line the top frame of the photo, behind Marcantonio's office.
August 9, 2024 at 2:39 PM
abusablepast.bsky.social
Looking for some reading material this weekend? Check out "Pushing Forward: 25 Years of Black AIDS Awareness," a microsyllabus by Aishah Scott. This piece focuses on how systemic marginalization intensified the AIDS crisis in Black communities. /1
August 2, 2024 at 4:17 PM
abusablepast.bsky.social
The Abusable Past seeks contributions that speak to faculty and student experiences with teaching and learning during the Palestine solidarity protests of 2024.
More information here: abusablepast.org/a-call-for-s...
July 17, 2024 at 8:49 PM
abusablepast.bsky.social
Abusable Past is accepting submissions for a new forum exploring the essence and boundaries of radical history. We aim to understand the definition of radical history, who practices it, and the challenges they face.
July 16, 2024 at 7:05 PM
abusablepast.bsky.social
The Abusable Past seeks contributions that speak to faculty and student experiences with teaching and learning during the Palestine solidarity protests of 2024.

More information here: mtsacecachronicle.com/7839/world/u...
July 11, 2024 at 11:23 PM
abusablepast.bsky.social
Check out "Detention Nation: US Empire and Immigrant Prisons – Tina Shull and Elliott Young in Conversation." Dr. Elliott Young is a Professor in the History Department at Lewis and Clark College. Dr. Tina Shull (she/her) is an Associate Professor and Director of Public History at UNC Charlotte.
July 8, 2024 at 10:02 PM
abusablepast.bsky.social
In "Immigration and Mental Health Collide, Again," Jeremy Peschard analyzes how U.S. policies tend to conflate asylum-seekers with having mental illnesses, harkening back to eugenics logic of the late 19th c.
A black and white image of a two-story brick structure surrounded by deciduous trees. A road leads up to the building. Caption: St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington D.C., one of only two mental asylums ever operated by the U.S. federal government (Courtesy of the Library of Congress)
June 29, 2024 at 4:24 PM