Are athletes who kneel during the national anthem making their point in the most effective way possible, or are they disrespecting the American flag and all it stands for? President Trump has famously weighed into this volatile public debate, further inflaming passions on both sides. Whenever this argument is discussed, it has been viewed from many perspectives, but the idea of unity rarely seems to enter the conversation. In fact,…

A few years ago, while studying South American History, I felt a sense of disorientation as I viewed Jesse Levine’s “turnabout map” of the Americas. It made me realize that, of course, our planet does not have a “north up, south down,” position: it just appears that way to those of us who have unquestionably absorbed the longstanding renditions of sixteenth-century European cartographers.  This view causes us to literally look…