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Politics & Government

The Power of the Purse

The first time a president withheld funds for something approved by Congress, it led to the Impoundment Control Act. We’ll soon find out if that law has teeth.

The Where We Were

Primary school designed by Diébédo Francis Kéré in Gando, Burkina Faso

Pondering the Pritzker Prize

It’s the Pritzker’s ultimate challenge: highlighting the important contributions of architects working today without knowing how their legacies will play out.

Plant of the Month

Breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis): fruiting branch. Coloured etching by J. Pass, c. 1796, after J. Ihle.

Quintessential Resilience: The Breadfruit in the Caribbean

The breadfruit tree has coexisted with humans for more than three thousand years. Its future may depend on how strong of an ally humans can become to it.

Read Before You Go

Greenland village of Kulusuk in winter

Greenland: Polar Politics

Though it may seem like a new topic of concern, the glaciated landscape of Greenland has floated in and out of American politics for decades.

Teaching Resources

A map of North America

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.

Most Recent

Vintage American History print of President George Washington and President Abraham Lincoln shaking hands
Politics & History

Praising Washington in Lincoln’s Day

At the time of the Civil War, many Americans revered the nation’s Founding Fathers, and both supporters and opponents of slavery recruited them to their sides.
A toy T Rex
Suggested Readings

Dinosaurs, Divas, and St. Augustine

Well-researched stories from Atlas Obscura, Vox, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.

More Stories

The Where We Were

Primary school designed by Diébédo Francis Kéré in Gando, Burkina Faso

Pondering the Pritzker Prize

It’s the Pritzker’s ultimate challenge: highlighting the important contributions of architects working today without knowing how their legacies will play out.

Plant of the Month

Breadfruit (Artocarpus altilis): fruiting branch. Coloured etching by J. Pass, c. 1796, after J. Ihle.

Quintessential Resilience: The Breadfruit in the Caribbean

The breadfruit tree has coexisted with humans for more than three thousand years. Its future may depend on how strong of an ally humans can become to it.

Read Before You Go

Greenland village of Kulusuk in winter

Greenland: Polar Politics

Though it may seem like a new topic of concern, the glaciated landscape of Greenland has floated in and out of American politics for decades.

Teaching Resources

A map of North America

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.

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.
Smoke billowing over Tulsa, Oklahoma during 1921 race riots
Politics & History

The Devastation of Black Wall Street

Tulsa, Oklahoma. 1921. A wave of racial violence destroys an affluent African-American community, seen as a threat to white-dominated American capitalism.
Two arms with tattoos
Education & Society

Why Does the Bible Forbid Tattoos?

And have we been misinterpreting Leviticus?

Long Reads

Tantalus
Politics & History

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?
"Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid." Illustration for Charles Kingsley's The Water Babies by Jessie Wilcox Smith, ca. 1916
Arts & Culture

Man of Science, Man of God

In The Water-Babies, Charles Kingsley parodied the dogmatic belief held by many in Victorian England that faith and reason are incompatible.
Passengers freshening up in the ladies' restroom at the Greyhound bus terminal, Chicago, 1943
Politics & History

In the Ladies’ Loo

Gender-segregated bathrooms tell a story about who is and who is not welcome in public life.
Mugshot of composer Henry Cowell after being arrested on a "morals" charge. Circa 1936.
Arts & Culture

Henry Cowell’s One True Desire

To “live in the whole world of music” was all the influential, experimental composer wanted—and did, even while imprisoned at San Quentin.

Editors' Picks

Science & Technology

Can We Build a Better Facebook?

Is it time to turn our back on Facebook? And if so, what social network could possibly replace it?
Education & Society

Ivory Towers: Good or Bad?

The ivory tower has always been metaphoric, but as Steven Shapin shows, its symbolic value has shifted over the centuries.
Politics & History

In the Shipyards of San Francisco

Photographer E. F. Joseph captured the dignity of the hundreds of Black women and men who worked on SS George Washington Carver during World War II.
Politics & History

The Devilish History of Devil’s Island

French Guiana's Devil’s Island has witnessed some of humanity’s hardest moments, from the brutalities of slavery to the punishments of penal servitude.
Arts & Culture

Self-Publishing and the Black American Narrative

Bryan Sinche’s Published by the Author explores the resourcefulness of Black writers of the nineteenth century.

Quirky History

Tantalus

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.

What “Pain” Means

The English word “pain” once meant punishment, but over time, it’s been used to refer to different kinds of unpleasant experiences.

Collections on JSTOR

A bowl of fruit soup

We Made Fruit Soup

And so should you.
The Suffragette Down with the Tom Cats

A Purrrrfect Political Storm

Crazy cat ladies have come to dominate this election season. It’s hardly the first time.

A Selection of Student Confessions

Did you break a campus rule? Let the students of Millersville Normal School show you how to confess to the administration.

Reading Lists

Poet Johnathan McClain reads his poetry at the Bowery Poetry Club December 6, 2002 in New York City.

The Legacy and Power of Performance Poetry: A Reading List

MTV might take credit for getting spoken word on the pop cultural radar, but it’s a tradition that spans millennia and continents.
freelance working at train station before travel. work and travel concept

All Travelers are Infiltrators: An Introduction to the Study of Travel Writing

Travel writing as a genre has arguably been around for centuries, but it didn’t emerge as a distinct field of academic study until the 1980s.
Surrealist artists at the first Surrealist Exhibition to be held in London. Back row, from left, are Rupert Lee, Ruthven Todd, Salvador Dali, Paul Eluard, Roland Penrose, Herbert Read, E LT Mesens, George Reavey and Hugh Sykes-Davies. Front row, from left, Diana Lee, Nusch Eluard, Eileen Agar, Sheila Legge and unknown.

Surrealism at 100: A Reading List

On the centennial of the founding of Surrealism, this reading list examines its radical beginnings, its mass popularity, and its continued evolution.

Syllabus

Dakota pipeline protestors

Celebrating Indigenous Peoples and Cultures

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

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.

Amidst his prolific creativity, Cowell was arrested; the warrant contained a single charge.

Henry Cowell’s One True Desire

Annotations

Citizens United Money Globe

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission: Annotated

The 2010 decision, enabling the rise of super PACS, made possible new and more covert mechanisms for funding election campaigns in the United States.
Alastair Sim as Scrooge in the film of the same name, adapted from Charles Dickens' novel A Christmas Carol

Annotations: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Scrooge became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world.
American Commissioners of the Preliminary Peace Agreement with Great Britain (unfinished oil sketch) by Benjamin West, between 1783 and 1784

The Treaty of Paris 1783: Annotated

The Treaty of Paris marked the end of the Revolutionary War and the hostilities between Great Britain and the newly independent United States—at least temporarily.

Roundup

JSTOR Daily celebrates Black History Month

Celebrating Black History Month

JSTOR Daily editors pick their favorite stories for Black History Month.
A game table by David Roentgen

Editors’ Picks of 2024

Magical furniture, toxic gardens, and Scottish hideaways: we’ve gathered our favorite JSTOR Daily stories published this year.
Grand Central terminal clock

Keeping Time: A New Year’s Collection

A selection of stories that chronicle our complicated notions of time.

American Prison Newspapers 1880-2020

An incarcerated student attending an Indigenous Studies course at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, where they also have JSTOR access.

The Impact JSTOR in Prison Has Made on Me

Tim Johnson, serving a life sentence in North Carolina, shares how access to JSTOR creates opportunities that cultivate change in prison and beyond.
Viewing the projection of a solar eclipse using a colander

Watching an Eclipse from Prison

For incarcerated people, being able to experience something collectively with those beyond the walls is a type of reprieve that buoys the soul and psyche.
From the cover of Volume 7, Issue 6 of The Angolite, 1982

The Cost of Inflation in Prison

In prisons across the country, the long history of legal forced labor intersects with present-day inflation.

Mathematics

Doing Math with Intellectual Humility

Math class is an opportunity to teach students both how to use conjecture to arrive at knowledge and how to learn from the logic of peers.
Photo taken in the Bourbaki Congress of 1938 in Dieulefit

The Mathematical Pranksters behind Nicolas Bourbaki

Bourbaki was gnomic and mythical, impossible to pin down; his mathematics just the opposite: unified, unambiguous, free of human idiosyncrasy.
Karate chop

The Physics of Karate

A human hand has the power to split wooden planks and demolish concrete blocks. A trio of physicists investigated why this feat doesn't shatter our bones.

Sustainability & The Environment

Young man climbing red bars against white background

The Logic and Legality of Growth

Economic growth is closely linked to profit maximization, which is central to the functioning of global market-based economies.
Mjøstårnet skyscraper, Norway

Sustainable Building Effort Reaches New Heights with Wooden Skyscrapers

Wood engineered for strength and safety offers architects an alternative to carbon-intensive steel and concrete.
Close up hand of voter placing ballot in ballot box

Voting as a Tool for Environmental Justice

Casting a vote at your local polling place helps elect candidates who can enact environmental policies while in office. But is voting enough to bring change?

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