Imperialism

A collaborative project between film-makers Rosine Mbakam, An van Dienderen and Eléonore Yaméogo, Prism interrogates the supposed neutrality of the photographic lens, principally in regards to representations of race. Moving through the corridors of a film school before alighting on a sparse set where a lighting test is taking place, Dienderen’s section unfolds as a continuation of her short film Lili, which grapples with a cinema practice called “china girl”. Used for calibration purposes, these test images usually…

Tania James’s fiction has straddled continents since the publication of her 2009 debut, Atlas of Unknowns. In Loot, her third full-length novel, she brings this transnational perspective to the story of a real-life artefact and the fictional characters drawn into its gravitational pull.The object in question, known as Tipu’s Tiger, is a wooden automaton commissioned in the 1790s by Tipu Sultan, ruler of the Indian kingdom of Mysore. It currently resides in the V&A and depicts a near-life-size tiger mauling the prone…

Credit: Oxford University Press The culture and tactics of U.S. and U.K. policing are often referred to as militarized, but how such excessive use of force developed isn't fully understood. But research from sociology Prof. Julian Go offers a global, historical viewpoint of policing to explore the racialized, aggressive approach. His new book, "Policing Empires: Militarization, Race, and the Imperial Boomerang in Britain and…