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Far Out: Why Don’t We Believe in UFOs?

Is it scientific impossibility or simply human ego that stops us from entertaining the idea of extraterrestrial visitation?

Archive Adventures

Graffiti Limbo

A University of Virginia professor enlisted students to document the messages—profane, hopeful, despairing—left on library carrels by previous generations.

Ask a Professor

Caitlin D. Wylie on the Hidden Labor of STEM Research

An interview with Caitlin D. Wylie, a social scientist who analyzes “behind-the-science work” to understand how knowledge is produced and who produces it.

Unearthing Justice

Survival Strategies: The Next Chapter of Environmental Justice

The environmental justice movement may look to the past to determine how to move forward during times of austerity.

Angels, Gardens, and El Salvador’s Prisons

Well-researched stories from Aeon, The Conversation, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.

Most Recent

In the Limelight

The Popularity and Politics of Pedestrianism

The sport of competitive walking touched on social concerns such as debt and poverty, fitness and fame, but it also found support in the temperance movement.

American politician Joseph McCarthy (1908 ? 1957), Republican senator from Wisconsin, testifies against the US Army during the Army-McCarthy hearings, Washington, DC, June 9, 1954. McCarthy stands before a map which charts Communist activity in the United States.

Annotations

Joseph McCarthy in Wheeling, West Virginia: Annotated

Senator Joseph McCarthy built his reputation on fear-mongering, smear campaigns, and falsehoods about government employees and their associates.

Archive Adventures

Graffiti Limbo

A University of Virginia professor enlisted students to document the messages—profane, hopeful, despairing—left on library carrels by previous generations.

Ask a Professor

Caitlin D. Wylie on the Hidden Labor of STEM Research

An interview with Caitlin D. Wylie, a social scientist who analyzes “behind-the-science work” to understand how knowledge is produced and who produces it.

Unearthing Justice

Survival Strategies: The Next Chapter of Environmental Justice

The environmental justice movement may look to the past to determine how to move forward during times of austerity.

Angels, Gardens, and El Salvador’s Prisons

Well-researched stories from Aeon, The Conversation, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.

Racist Humor: Exploratory Readings

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

From the picture album "Hakone 7 yu zue" by Hiroshige, 1852

Lifestyle

Reinventing Vacation in Japan

In the late nineteenth century, Japan adopted Western-style vacation, but not everyone was on board with the new leisure practices.

Arts & Culture

The Polynesian Origin Myths Behind Disney’s Moana

Like Disney’s Moana? Learn about the Polynesian origin myths Disney consulted to create the demigod character Maui, played by Dwane “The Rock” Johnson.

Long Reads

Plants & Animals

He Spoke for the Trees (and Also the Soil)

A champion of agroforestry, J. Russell Smith argued for the restoration of forests as key to sustainable agriculture in his seminal work Tree Crops.

Precious Newberry, a United States Postal Service mail handler, works to unload her mail truck at the Processing and Distribution Center after collecting mail on the busiest mailing day of the year for the U.S. Postal Service on December 14, 2015 in Miami, Florida.

Politics & History

How Mail Delivery Has Shaped America

The United States Postal Service is under federal scrutiny. It’s not the first time.

An illustration from Aleksandr Volkov’s Wizard of the Emerald City

Arts & Culture

Twin Curtains: Oz and the USSR

Aleksandr Volkov’s The Wizard of the Emerald City reimagined L. Frank Baum’s classic, imbuing the story with a love of labor for readers in the Eastern bloc.

Close-up of wild cereal grass (Poa annua) blooming over dark background

Plants & Animals

A Most Opportunistic Colonizer

Poa annua is a unique grass species now thriving on every continent—including Antarctica. Wherefore its wanderlust?

Editors' Picks

Politics & History

Birth of A National Immigration Policy

Until the Civil War, regulating immigration to the US was left to individual states. That changed with Emancipation and the legal end of slavery.

Politics & History

Lviv: Open to the World

The history of the Ukrainian city of Lviv is long, complex and mirrors some of the larger conflicts of the Eastern European region.

Politics & History

The Making and Meaning of Greenland: A Reading List

A selection of research reports and peer-reviewed articles offers insight into the history and potential future of the autonomous territory of Greenland.

Business & Economics

The Art of the Deal or the Dirt?

Will so-called Trump Tariffs ensure that the United States has the minerals it needs to transition to sustainable energy?

Education & Society

The Wild West of Papal Conclaves

In the sixteenth and seventeenth century, the death of a pope led to all sorts of chaos, from the destruction of art to armed violence in the streets.

Quirky History

The Popularity and Politics of Pedestrianism

The sport of competitive walking touched on social concerns such as debt and poverty, fitness and fame, but it also found support in the temperance movement.

Tantalus, Pac-Man, and Unsated Hungers

What does a violent, ancient Greek myth reveal about our modern addiction to technology and the enduring power of stories?

Goodyear blimps, Puritan and Reliance, in Florida.

Blimps in the Heavens Over Akron

A Goodyear executive dreamt of populating the sky with dirigibles. He settled for securing his company—and his blimps—a place in the public imagination.

Collections on JSTOR

A series of posters created by the American Forces Information Service (AFIS)

Life Advice From the Armed Forces

These American Forces Information Service posters shared via JSTOR by The University of Alabama in Huntsville offer us the wisdom we didn’t know we needed.

Photograph of Mr. Harrison Williams Holding a Camera

Seeking Clues in Cabinet Cards

The poignant images, at once banal and intimate, in the Lynch Family Photographs Collection contain mysteries perhaps only the public can solve.

Blimps in the Heavens Over Akron

A Goodyear executive dreamt of populating the sky with dirigibles. He settled for securing his company—and his blimps—a place in the public imagination.

Reading Lists

Vienna, Austria. The Naturhistorisches (Natural History) Museum, Vienna

Natural History: A Reading List

This annotated bibliography samples scholarship on the rich—and difficult—history of natural history.

People wait for trains on the platform at Kyiv train station on February 28, 2022 in Kyiv, Ukraine.

Ukraine, Russia, and the West: A Background Reading List

Research reports and scholarly articles on the history of the Ukraine–Russia conflicts of the past and possible paths for peace.

The Making and Meaning of Greenland: A Reading List

A selection of research reports and peer-reviewed articles offers insight into the history and potential future of the autonomous territory of Greenland.

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.