The journal Cultural Anthropology has been at the forefront of melding scholarship with the internet. It began going open-access recently, and has been running Hot Spots features for a few years now. Hot Spots are a collection of short essays written, curated, and edited by scholars addressing a specific topic.

I’ve been reading my way through the recent Hot Spots features on-and-off over the last couple of months. My thesis reader, Sara Shneiderman, co-edited a batch of essays on the ‘post-conflict’ in South Asia that is provides interesting insight on an idea (being ‘post-conflict’) across the wide region. Prior to that, there was a feature on protests in Brazil that are worth a look, especially now that the World Cup has brought the spotlight back to Brazil’s ongoing unrest.

But the reason I’m writing this post is to draw your attention to the most recent Hot Spots feature, edited by Louisa Lombard. It is a collection of eleven essays on the current violence in Central African Republic, and it includes some really, really great work that at once problematizes simplistic narratives and helps makes sense of complex issues. If you’re interested in anthropology, history, violence, of CAR, there’s something there for you.