Skip to content
Kahlil Gibran
Arts & Culture

Kahlil Gibran: Godfather of the “New Age”

Published in 1923, The Prophet became a perpetual best-seller, birthed a genre, and marked the poet as retrograde, sentimental, and florid.

Cabinet of Curiosities

Athanasius Kircher

Athanasius Kircher’s “Musical Ark”

The first algorithmically generated music came to us in the seventeenth century, courtesy of Kircher and his Arca musarithmica.

Shared Collections

Chicano Brothers Car Club: Photograph of David Aguilar with a 1950 Chevrolet

The San Diego Lowrider Archival Project

The lessons of "low and slow."

In the Limelight

Loie Fuller

The Serpentine Career of Loïe Fuller

Rising from the ranks of touring comedies and Wild West shows, the American dancer dreamed of a future of light, movement, and metamorphosis.

Suggested Readings

A green iguana

Wild Florida, Neanderthals, and Rubens’s Models

Well-researched stories from The Art Newspaper, Nursing Clio, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.

Most Recent

A cartoon of Guru Maharaj Ji on the cover of the November 1973 issue of The Rag
Arts & Culture

The Concert That Promised a Thousand Years of Peace

Guru Maharaj Ji, the teenage leader of the Divine Light Mission, was poised to usher in a new era. His huge Houston gathering proved to do anything but.
Guarana Fruit
Plant of the Month

Guaraná: Stimulation from the Amazon to the World

Long cherished by Indigenous peoples for its medicinal and stimulating properties, guaraná remains a key element of Brazilian identity.
Laura Kieler
Politics & History

Laura Kieler: A Life Exploited

Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen mined Kieler's life for the plot of his most famous play, The Doll's House.
A group of women sit in the waiting room of the American Birth Control League Clinic, New York, 1921
Politics & History

Pro-Sex Feminists of the 1920s

In the early decades of the twentieth century, political and social activists saw separating sex from marriage and reproduction as an issue of freedom.

More Stories

Cabinet of Curiosities

Athanasius Kircher

Athanasius Kircher’s “Musical Ark”

The first algorithmically generated music came to us in the seventeenth century, courtesy of Kircher and his Arca musarithmica.

Shared Collections

Chicano Brothers Car Club: Photograph of David Aguilar with a 1950 Chevrolet

The San Diego Lowrider Archival Project

The lessons of "low and slow."

In the Limelight

Loie Fuller

The Serpentine Career of Loïe Fuller

Rising from the ranks of touring comedies and Wild West shows, the American dancer dreamed of a future of light, movement, and metamorphosis.

Suggested Readings

A green iguana

Wild Florida, Neanderthals, and Rubens’s Models

Well-researched stories from The Art Newspaper, Nursing Clio, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.

Trending

A circle of white claymation guys around a black claymation guy
Reading Lists

Racist Humor: Exploratory Readings

An introduction to the history and theory of racist humor and the social role it plays in Western societies.
Kahlil Gibran
Arts & Culture

Kahlil Gibran: Godfather of the “New Age”

Published in 1923, The Prophet became a perpetual best-seller, birthed a genre, and marked the poet as retrograde, sentimental, and florid.
Deep Jet Streams in Jupiter's Atmosphere
Natural Science

Could You Stand on the Surface of Jupiter? Exploring the Enigmatic Outer Planets

The outer planets’ clouds hide the weirdness within.

Long Reads

Fernando Pessoa, 1914
Arts & Culture

“The Poet Is a Man Who Feigns”

Portuguese modernist Fernando Pessoa channeled a grand, glorious chorus of writers—heteronyms, he called them—robust inventions of his unique imagination.
William Henry Fox Talbot, by John Moffat, 1864
Science & Technology

The Daguerreotype’s Famous. Why Not the Calotype?

William Henry Fox Talbot’s obsession with protecting his pioneering photographic process doomed his reputation and reduced his legacy to historical footnote.
Three covers from Venus Magazine
Arts & Culture

From the Black Queer South to the World

Across its twelve-year lifespan, Atlanta-based Venus magazine brought southern voices to the larger Black queer print media network.
Ismat Chughtai
Politics & History

Ismat Chughtai’s Quilt and Queer Desire

Long before India decriminalized homosexuality—in September 2018—the short story "Lihaaf" sparked outrage and a lawsuit for its depiction of same-sex, intergenerational intimacy.

Editors' Picks

Arts & Culture

Introducing Our Visual Literacy Column, “Learning to Look”

Developing visual literacy skills unlocks a means of understanding and engaging with the world that cannot be replaced by any text.
Education & Society

Artificial Intelligence and Education: A Reading List

A bibliography to help educators prepare students and themselves for a future shaped by AI—with all its opportunities and drawbacks.
Education & Society

How to Teach with JSTOR Text Analyzer

JSTOR Text Analyzer provides students with an additional resource for finding scholarly material.
Education & Society

Teaching U.S. History with JSTOR Daily

A survey course may be the only college-level history course a student takes. Here's an easy way to incorporate fascinating scholarship.
Education & Society

Academic Barbie: Scholarly Readings to Inspire Classroom Discussion

Barbie is having a(nother) moment. Researchers have been studying the famous doll for years.

Science & Technology

Guarana Fruit

Guaraná: Stimulation from the Amazon to the World

Long cherished by Indigenous peoples for its medicinal and stimulating properties, guaraná remains a key element of Brazilian identity.
Aerial view of Barringer crater in Arizona

The Eight Best Hidden Impact Craters on Earth

Many impact craters on Earth have been erased thanks to wind, water, and plate tectonics. But scientists have clever ways to find them.
Enigma machine

Teaching AI, AKA Artificial Intelligence

AI is everywhere. So naturally, we pulled together a syllabus of stories on the subject. Use these to inspire classroom discussion or educate your grandpa.

Shared Collections on JSTOR

The Surprising Contents of an American POW’s Journal

There were 35 million prisoners of war held during World War II. One soldier's diary full of collages and drawings brings a human dimension to that number.

Making Egypt’s Museums

The world’s largest archaeological museum is poised to open on the Giza Plateau, building on two centuries of museum planning and development.

Eastern Kentucky University American Slavery Collection

Sixteen documents, including slave bills of sale, tell the cruel story of the enslaved lives that were listed in ledgers.

Syllabus

Enigma machine

Teaching AI, AKA Artificial Intelligence

AI is everywhere. So naturally, we pulled together a syllabus of stories on the subject. Use these to inspire classroom discussion or educate your grandpa.
A series of newspaper covers

Studying Women’s Prison Newspapers

Reveal Digital's American Prison Newspapers Collection offers first-person perspectives about what matters to women in prison, from pregnancy to recovery.
L'Envoûteuse (The Sorceress) by Georges Merle, 1883

Radical Theology: A Syllabus

Radical theology aims to construct revolutionary understandings of myth, ritual, and scripture that speak to the dearth of meaning in our contemporary moment.

Reading Lists

Global connectivity, illustration.

Digital Ethnography: An Introduction to Theory and Practice

The rise of the internet age and digital spaces has created a whole new world for ethnographic investigation.
Director Julie Dash poses for the movie "Daughters of the Dust," circa 1991

Feminist Film Theory: An Introductory Reading List

Evolving from the analysis of representations of women in film, feminist film theory asks questions about identity, sexuality, and the politics of spectatorship.
Young black student studying at night at home, with a help of a laptop computer.

Artificial Intelligence and Education: A Reading List

A bibliography to help educators prepare students and themselves for a future shaped by AI—with all its opportunities and drawbacks.

Scientists have three theories about why people and animals eat dirt.

The Question of Geophagy: Why Eat Dirt?

American Prison Newspapers 1880-2020

Dr. Karl Menninger

Should Punishment Fit the Crime?

Dr. Karl Menninger on the crime of punishment.
From Paahao Press, November 1943

How Prisoners Contributed During World War II

Prisoners not only supported the war effort in surprising ways during World War II, they fought and died in it.
From the cover of Paahao Press, Summer 1960

A Century of History in Five Hawaiian Prison Newspapers

Hawaiian language and culture are emphasized throughout, ranging from before statehood and during martial law to modern day women's prisons.

Annotations

People at a civil rights demonstration holding posters reading 'No More Birminghams', in reference to the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church (in Birmingham, Alabama), Washington DC, US, 22nd September 1963.

“A Time To Speak”: Annotated

On September 15, 1963, a bomb killed four Black children in Birmingham, Alabama. Who threw that bomb? Each of us, argued Birmingham lawyer Charles Morgan, Jr.
Evo Morales speaking at a press conference at the World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, Cochabamba, Bolivia, 2010

Cochabamba People’s Agreement: Annotated

In April 2010, representatives from 140 countries gathered in Bolivia to outline an explicitly anti-capitalist, decolonial agenda for the sake of the planet.
Crystal Eastman

“Now We Can Begin”: Annotated

To mark the 1920 ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, activist Crystal Eastman described the path to full freedom for American women.

Interviews

C. Buddy Creech

C. Buddy Creech: Your Vaccine Questions Answered

Vaccinologist C. Buddy Creech on getting vaccinated, racial disparities, and the lessons we’ve learned after a year of COVID-19.
3D render of coronavirus

We Spoke to a Public Health Expert about COVID-19

He made us feel better.
Jill Lepore

Jill Lepore: How to Respond to the Crisis of Our Institutions

Lepore talks about presidential deceit, why women are often forgotten by history, and the “epistemological crisis” of our era.

Sustainability & The Environment

Produce is offered for sale at a grocery store on October 13, 2022 in Chicago, Illinois.

The Price of Plenty: Should Food Be Cheap?

The supermarket revolution made food more affordable and accessible than ever. But do the hidden costs of food feed into our illusions of justice and progress?
Handsome young adult man standing next to his electric vehicle and using his smart phone while his car is plugged into the charging station

EV Cars: Can We Electrify Our Way Out of the Climate Crisis?

The transition to personal electric vehicles in the United States is a cornerstone of the plan to decarbonize transportation. But will it work?
Evo Morales speaking at a press conference at the World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, Cochabamba, Bolivia, 2010

Cochabamba People’s Agreement: Annotated

In April 2010, representatives from 140 countries gathered in Bolivia to outline an explicitly anti-capitalist, decolonial agenda for the sake of the planet.

Support JSTOR Daily

Help us keep publishing stories that provide scholarly context to the news.