What We Are Reading Today: ‘Original Sins’ by Eve L. Ewing

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Updated 14 March 2025
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What We Are Reading Today: ‘Original Sins’ by Eve L. Ewing

Eve L. Ewing’s “Original Sins” shows how US schools were designed to propagate the idea of white intellectual superiority,  to “civilize” Native students and to prepare Black students for menial labor.

By demonstrating that its in the DNA of American schools to serve as an effective and underacknowledged mechanism maintaining inequality, Ewing makes the case for a profound reevaluation of what schools are supposed to do, and for whom. 


What We Are Reading Today: Invisible Hands by Margaret S. Graves

Updated 14 February 2026
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What We Are Reading Today: Invisible Hands by Margaret S. Graves

In the heyday of Islamic art collecting around the turn of the 20th century, thousands of premodern ceramic objects circulated on the international antiquities market. 

“Invisible Hands” tells the story of how traditional craft skills of the Islamic world, often thought to have died out with the advent of industrialization, were redirected toward a thriving new market in the colonial era: the fabrication and fictionalizing of antiquities, especially ceramics.

In this stunning work of art history, Margaret Graves shakes the foundations of the discipline, challenging us to reconsider what is and is not art.