Martha Jones of the University of Michigan has a new essay up on Ave DuVernay's 13th. It begins:
Before you sit down to watch 13th, director Ava DuVernay’s new film about mass incarceration, take off your historian’s hat. This is no scholarly lesson about the past. Instead, DuVernay takes us on an exploration that she hopes will, first and foremost, shock. Once it has your attention, 13th mobilizes the power of the visual and the sonic, along with human stories, to teach about hope and our capacities to work toward change in a way that no historical text could.
Read the rest here.