Stefan Aguirre Quiroga
@stefanaq.bsky.social
PhD candidate in History at the University of Göteborg, Sweden. Researching the historical memory of the War of the Pacific in Chile. Author of "White Mythic Space: Racism, the First World War, and Battlefield 1".
More publication news: "Abusing Antiquity? Classics and the Contemporary Far Right," edited by @drhelenroche.bsky.social and @denisemccoskey.bsky.social, is now available for pre-order from @bloomsburyacad.bsky.social. www.bloomsbury.com/us/abusing-a...
#WhiteMythicSpace And @stefanaq.bsky.social’s book about white male gamers’ reaction to Battlefield 🎮 explains a lot of this! Real history, including multihued people, is a threat to their image of themselves!
Alan Elrod@aselrod.bsky.social · last mo.History isn’t just a set of facts. It’s a story we tell about who we are. My contribution to Odyssey discourse is about how the American right wants a history where only white men feature because they want a future where only white men rule. www.liberalcurrents.com/the-new-vand...
In very good company with @drsepinwall.bsky.social!
Dr Kate Cook@katexe.bsky.social · 3mo agoDelighted to see that the Routledge Companion to Video Games and History now has a webpage and a cover! There will be an ebook (which given the length of this I imagine will be many people's preferred reading approach), it just doesn't show on the page yet. www.routledge.com/The-Routledg...
My recent article, "Picturing John Panzio Tockson: Afro-Swedish identity, racialization, and black self-fashioning in late nineteenth-century Sweden", has been published in the Scandinavian Journal of History. Completely open access for anyone to read! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Picturing John Panzio Tockson: Afro-Swedish identity, racialization, and black self-fashioning in late nineteenth-century Sweden
John Panzio Tockson was a man of African descent who arrived in Gothenburg in the mid-1850s and became known throughout Sweden as a footman to King Carl XV. This article explores how Tockson was co...
tandfonline.com
My recent article, "Picturing John Panzio Tockson: Afro-Swedish identity, racialization, and black self-fashioning in late nineteenth-century Sweden", has been published in the Scandinavian Journal of History. Completely open access for anyone to read! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Picturing John Panzio Tockson: Afro-Swedish identity, racialization, and black self-fashioning in late nineteenth-century Sweden
John Panzio Tockson was a man of African descent who arrived in Gothenburg in the mid-1850s and became known throughout Sweden as a footman to King Carl XV. This article explores how Tockson was co...
tandfonline.com
🚨NEW PUBLICATION🚨My new article, ”Defeat into Victory: Remediating the 1879 Battle of Canchas Blancas in Bolivia, 2015–2018”, is now published in the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies. #WarMemory #HistoricalMemory www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
If you just happen to be in Göteborg tomorrow, I'll be holding a sort of Afro-Swedish microhistory lecture about the Tockson family. It's a real interesting piece of history and a preview of an article currently in peer-review. goteborgsstadsmuseum.se/aktivitet/hi...
Historieonsdag: Familjen Tockson
Afro-svensk historia i Göteborg med Stefan Aguirre Quiroga.
goteborgsstadsmuseum.se
Historians (rightly) get annoyed when other academics weigh in on their subject & claim to have “solved” or “completed” history, ignoring existing research & nuance. Yet historians keep weighing in on games as if no one has ever paid attention to them before (& it’s not great)
Alyssa S.@drsepinwall.bsky.social · 12mo agoAnother 👀 passage in @enwright.bsky.social's review, pointing out how the book is at odds with... scholarship it doesn't cite... all the while praising RDR's treatment of the history of the US West.
![Existing academic work treats Red Dead as, to borrow Soraya Murray’s label, a “difficult object” (Red Dead Redemption: History, Myth, and Violence in the Video Game West [2023], 207). Red Dead’s History is largely positive about the way the games engage with and represent the diversity of Western history. The author praises the “pains that Rockstar [. . .] took to capture the world of the late 1800s,” and claims that “the video games frequently excel in showcasing the contours not only of outlaw life but also of American life” (2). This perspective is not without merit—the game is indeed impressive and richly detailed. Historians will naturally disagree when it comes to interpreting their sources, as the author notes. But claims that Red Dead Redemption 2 is a game that meaningfully engages with any other historical perspective than that of white men are at odds with existing critical writing on this game (popular and academic), particularly where the game deals with the presence and stories of women, Native Americans, and Black Americans. This is one area where, at the very least, acknowledging the existence of other work in this field was warranted.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:7mpwyqkv2tdiho653oyczicd/bafkreickl2htheohnfajlomp4kpowipjc5apigmx6minm74rf7fy4ebxze)
🚨NEW PUBLICATION🚨 My new article, ”The Great War from the Periphery: Representing and Remembering the First World War in Swedish and Chilean War Museums”, is now published in the First World War Studies journal! #MuseumStudies #WarMemory www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Ramsay Bader was a tank driver in the 147th (Essex Yeomanry) Field Regiment, Royal Horse Artillery of the British Army. As part of the 147th, Bader landed on Gold Beach on D-Day, June 6th 1944. #BlackHistoryMonth #WWII #BlackBritishHistory #MilitaryHistory #DDay
I am very grateful to Nick Robinson for his excellent review of "White Mythic Space: Racism, the First World War and Battlefield 1" in First World War Studies journal. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
How can we trace same-sex relationships in rural archives, when love letters were heavily euphemistic or burned after reading? For LGBTQ+ History Month, Tim Jerrome shares his research into queer rural relationships: from his first find, to the challenges faced. merl.reading.ac.uk/blog/2025/02...
Thomas and Austen: a gay relationship in the MERL archives? - The Museum of English Rural Life
For LGBTQ+ History Month 2025, researcher Tim Jerrome shares how he's using rural archives to research same-sex relationships in the countryside.
merl.reading.ac.uk
Ramsay Bader was a tank driver in the 147th (Essex Yeomanry) Field Regiment, Royal Horse Artillery of the British Army. As part of the 147th, Bader landed on Gold Beach on D-Day, June 6th 1944. #BlackHistoryMonth #WWII #BlackBritishHistory #MilitaryHistory #DDay
I’m looking for recommendations for books on 17th century British North America — overviews, case studies, you name it. What are some must-reads in the field?
Let me pitch an article to you all. ”To Write About a Foreign War” - a study of three ways Swedes wrote about Chile and the War of the Pacific. 1. Personal narratives. 2. Swedish newspaper accounts. 3. a Swedish military officer who writes a three volume work about the war in Spanish. Interesting?
Basically anything involving Pedro II is fascinating. A genuinely fascinating ruler, eventually overthrown in a military coup that almost everyone instantly regretted.
Stefan Aguirre Quiroga@stefanaq.bsky.social · 2y agoI’ve been working on this side-project since 2018 and it is finally seeing the light of day. In 1876, the Emperor of Brazil Dom Pedro II came to Cambridge, MA, and had dinner with poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Why? Find out below! 👇 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
I’ve been working on this side-project since 2018 and it is finally seeing the light of day. In 1876, the Emperor of Brazil Dom Pedro II came to Cambridge, MA, and had dinner with poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Why? Find out below! 👇 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
From Brazil to Brattle street: the transnational history of emperor Dom Pedro II’s dinner with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Through a transnational and microhistorical approach, this article seeks to interpret the Brazilian Emperor Dom Pedro II’s 1876 visit to Boston, Massachusetts, with a focus on the June 10 dinner be...
tandfonline.com
In "White Mythic Space", I not only talk about "Battlefield 1". In the last chapter of the book, I take a brief look at "1917" (2019), directed by Sam Mendes, which also received racist backlash because of its inclusion of soldiers of color.
Fascinating 🧵 from @stefanaq.bsky.social, about the ephemerality of digital archives & the wiping of the forums he used to write his 🔥 #GameStudies book White Mythic Space. 🗃️
Stefan Aguirre Quiroga@stefanaq.bsky.social · 2y agoI began writing "White Mythic Space" in October 2020. I was lucky. Only a couple of months later, on April 7, 2021, the official Battlefield Forums closed down for good and all posts were erased from existence.
I am pleased to announce the publication of my chapter, titled 'Trusting Your Enemy: American Encounters with the Kit Carson Scouts During the Vietnam War, 1966–1973', in 'Enemy Encounters in Modern Warfare'. #MilitaryHistory #VietnamWar link.springer.com/chapter/10.1...
Trusting Your Enemy: American Encounters with the Kit Carson Scouts During the Vietnam War, 1966–1973
In the fall of 1966, the Kit Carson Scout Program was born. The program authorized the use of South and North Vietnamese defectors from the People’s Army Liberation Force and the People’s ...
link.springer.com
And this, from the always incisive @emilymfg.bsky.social - written in the wake of one (now 'retired') colourizer's alterations to prisoner photographs from Cambodia's S-21 camp. Photos don't show history: they made it – by mediating it. 🗃️📜📷📸
The Khmer Rouge controversy: Why colourising old photos is always a falsification of history
Matt Loughrey has falsely doctored photos from 1970s Cambodia – but all colourisation does that
irishtimes.com
Ahead of the holidays, we want to take stock and reflect on the true meaning of the season: Buying ourselves and our loved ones shiny new history books. If you have a new book out, then why not consider doing an AMA with us? Our forum reaches millions of history nerds each month!
I began writing "White Mythic Space" in October 2020. I was lucky. Only a couple of months later, on April 7, 2021, the official Battlefield Forums closed down for good and all posts were erased from existence.
In 2022, ”White Mythic Space: Racism, the First World War and Battlefield 1” was released. In it, I explore the 2016 controversy over the inclusion of PoC soldiers in a game set during the First World War. Curious to know more? Let’s explore the book!
Hi to all new followers! I’d love to put up some threads for you all about my research. What would you like to hear about first - my book ”White Mythic Space”, my research on the Kit Carson Scouts during the Vietnam War or my current research on the War of the Pacific in Chile?
A Black British soldier spotted in a group photo of D Company, 1/4th Battalion, The Gloucestershire Regiment. The photo taken was during the battle of the Somme. A fantastic find! Source: bbc.com/news/uk-englan…
A curious argument in recent Chilean pop history of the War of the Pacific (1879-1884) is the claim that the Chilean landing at Pisagua (1879) was the first modern amphibious assault in military history. Yet this is in no way brought up in early historiography.
I suppose it's never too late and as @askhistorians.bsky.social has encouraged me to make this account, here we go! My name is Stefan Aguirre Quiroga, some of you might know me as Bernardito, the sort-of-silent-moderator at @askhistorians.bsky.social.