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Plate Number 191. Dancing (fancy) by Eadweard Muybridge, 1887

The Intersection of Dance and Science

Lynn Matluck Brooks dives into the ever-evolving relationship between movement and technology.

In the Limelight

Before Deep Blue: the Automaton Chess Player

You may have heard of IBM’s chess-playing computer, but Johann Nepomuk Maelzel’s Automaton Chess Player beat Deep Blue to the (mechanical) punch. Check mate.

JSTOR Collections

First Comes Love

A top divorce lawyer collected strangers’ marriage certificates and other wedding-related ephemera—a testament to her perhaps surprising faith in matrimony.

Unearthing Justice

Who Owns the Ground Beneath Your Feet?

Carbon removal, a proposed solution to climate change, will require the injection of CO₂ underground—but under whose property?

Teaching Resources

Marbury v. Madison: Annotated

Justice John Marshall’s ruling on Marbury v. Madison gave the courts the right to declare acts and laws of the legislative and executive branches unconstitutional.

Most Recent

Still Life with Rabbit by Johann Amandus Wink

Education & Society

Vegetarian Heretics and the Christian Church

Since the religion’s early days, Christian thinkers have treated vegetarianism sometimes as heretical, sometimes as evidence of saintly asceticism.

Wild timber rattlesnake (Crotalus horridus) on train tacks at sunrise, Florida

Plants & Animals

Actual American Rattlesnakes

Historians are recovering the overlooked history of North America’s Crotalus horridus, the timber rattlesnake.

In the Limelight

Before Deep Blue: the Automaton Chess Player

You may have heard of IBM’s chess-playing computer, but Johann Nepomuk Maelzel’s Automaton Chess Player beat Deep Blue to the (mechanical) punch. Check mate.

JSTOR Collections

First Comes Love

A top divorce lawyer collected strangers’ marriage certificates and other wedding-related ephemera—a testament to her perhaps surprising faith in matrimony.

Unearthing Justice

Who Owns the Ground Beneath Your Feet?

Carbon removal, a proposed solution to climate change, will require the injection of CO₂ underground—but under whose property?

Teaching Resources

Marbury v. Madison: Annotated

Justice John Marshall’s ruling on Marbury v. Madison gave the courts the right to declare acts and laws of the legislative and executive branches unconstitutional.

Racist Humor: Exploratory Readings

An introduction to the history and theory of racist humor and the social role it plays in Western societies.

Arts & Culture

The Intersection of Dance and Science

Lynn Matluck Brooks dives into the ever-evolving relationship between movement and technology.

a passenger on the London Underground, reading D H Lawrence's 'Lady Chatterley's Lover'

Arts & Culture

Would You Let Your Servant Read This Book?

How the ban on D. H. Lawrence's book Lady Chatterley's Lover was reversed.

Long Reads

Mammal bones protrude from pit 91 at the La Brea Tar Pits on August 17, 2023 in Los Angeles, California.

Natural Science

La Brea and Beyond

Pits and seeps full of tar and asphalt offer new insights into old ecosystems and cultures.

A caricature of the Berners Street Hoax by William Heath, 1810

Politics & History

Is “Swatting” Rooted in a Prank Craze from the 1800s?

Why did Georgian-era England go mad for dangerous hoaxes, and what can that mania tell us about today’s volatile, content-hungry world?

Arrival of the Brides by Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale

Politics & History

Filles du roi: the Founding Mothers of New France

Sent by Louis XIV, the filles du roi were sent to North America to birth new generations of colonists and help conquer the land.

Politics & History

Pan-Asianism Redux, or Why We Think Japan Is Special

Observers have long hailed Japan’s aptitude for cultural synthesis. Is this characterization warranted, or does it reflect a collective fantasy about exceptionalism?

Editors' Picks

Politics & History

The Trouble with Reentry

Reentry of space junk in the 1970s forced First Nations communities into a reckoning with Cold War geopolitics and a burgeoning envirotechnical disaster.

Politics & History

Iran’s Protest Culture

A succession of authoritarian regimes birthed a strong tradition of collective action.

Arts & Culture

Tyler S. Sprague on the Intersection of Structure and Design

An interview with Tyler S. Sprague, a historian of the built environment whose work depends on multidisciplinarity and a deep knowledge of structure and materials.

Arts & Culture

12 Poems by Frank O’Hara

Plus his manifesto on Personism and writings about O’Hara by Ted Berrigan, Joseph LeSueur, and Joe Brainard.

Politics & History

How to be a Modern Autocrat

In the twenty-first century, dictators are less likely than their predecessors to use violence to suppress dissent, cultivating instead “informational autocracies.”

Quirky History

Is “Swatting” Rooted in a Prank Craze from the 1800s?

Why did Georgian-era England go mad for dangerous hoaxes, and what can that mania tell us about today’s volatile, content-hungry world?

Coco De Mer: The Magical Derrière of the Sea

Once viewed as a precious item of mysterious origin, the seed of the coco do mer palm, though better understood today, remains a rare and valuable commodity.

The Ever-Lengthening History of Tobacco

People have been smoking in the Pacific Northwest for more than 4,500 years.

Collections on JSTOR

A painting of The Belgic, the ship on which Ella Sheldon wrote many of her diaries.

Lonely Diarist of the High Seas

As ship stewardess, Ella Sheldon tended to upper-crust women onboard and battled a range of workplace demons. Her journals tell her story.

From Oriental Riviera to Global Asia: Hong Kong in Travel Posters

A collection of travel posters shared via JSTOR by Hong Kong Baptist University highlights Hong Kong’s unique place in the global imagination over the decades.

Mashup at the Intersection of Deco and Hip-Hop

Archived at Cornell University, a collection of flyers promoting dance-inspiring DJ sets in the Bronx established the visual identity of a new cultural era.

Reading Lists

A parent and child near windmills at sunset

Black Midwestern Studies: A Reading List

This primer on Black Midwestern Studies examines the factors shaping communities of color in America’s “flyover country,” long mistaken as a place of normative whiteness.

Crowd taking photographs on mobile phones

Citizen Journalism: A Reading List

The ubiquity of smartphones has ushered in a new era for journalism—facilitating citizen journalism and changing the very nature of reporting.

Left to right: Lady Ottoline Morrell, Mrs. Aldous Huxley, Lytton Strachey, Duncan Grant, and Vanessa Bell, July 1915

The Bloomsbury Group: A Reading List

In 1905, a group of writers and painters gathered in a London home and began a conversation on politics, love, sex, and art that lasted decades.

Syllabus

Celebrating Indigenous Peoples and Cultures

More and more states are choosing to celebrate Indigenous Peoples' Day instead of Columbus Day.

Voting in American Politics: A Syllabus

From battles to expand the franchise to the mysteries of turnout, voting is one of the most important things to understand about US politics.

An illustration of a hand holding a set of hand cuffs

A True Crime Syllabus

How did we become so obsessed with “true crime”? This multidisciplinary syllabus shows how we view crime as a whole and how those views have changed over time.