Endosymbiosis and the evolutionary importance of relationships among organisms. Compare the evidence for organelle origins with wider claims about symbiosis.

W. E. B. Du Bois

Sociology, history and literary arguments about race, citizenship and double consciousness. Read the framing of a passage alongside the evidence it uses.

Hannah Arendt

Political action, plurality and public life. Her distinctions between labour, work and action are useful starting points for examining institutions.

Ibn Khaldūn

An account of historical explanation, social organisation and political power. Compare a narrative claim with the social conditions offered to explain it.

Ban Zhao

Historical writing and a contested text on women’s education and conduct in Han China. Read educational possibilities alongside the hierarchy the text assumes.

Angela Davis

Historical and political arguments connecting race, class and gender. Look for the institutions and coalitions that make a general claim concrete.

Murasaki Shikibu

Narrative, poetry and relationships in the world of The Tale of Genji. Keep court titles, changing perspectives and translation choices visible.

Toni Morrison

Narrative memory, language and the afterlives of slavery. Distinguish a character’s recollection, a narrator’s arrangement and a historical claim.

Ada Lovelace

Notes on the Analytical Engine, symbolic operations and a worked procedure. Read her contribution alongside the translated text and Babbage’s machine design.

Chien-Shiung Wu

Experimental physics, including a test of parity conservation in beta decay. Reconstruct the prediction, arrangement and observation before discussing the historical recognition.

Connect this subject

Who gets to tell a history?

Study narrative voice alongside archives and collective memory. Compare the evidence available to a reader and the people left outside the account.