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Blue-stained serpentine Neotyphodium coenophialum mycelia inhabiting the intercellular spaces of tall fescue leaf sheath tissue. Magnified 400x.

Better Farming Through Endophytes

Scientists look to “probiotics” for crops as a new green revolution in agriculture.

Cabinet of Curiosities

Christopher, the Dog-Headed Saint

Although the tradition has largely faded in the Western church, Saint Christopher sported a canine head through much of Christian history.

Reading Lists

Speculative Fiction: A Reading List

Speculative fiction, from Afrofuturism to Star Wars, offers students tools and methods for analyzing social movements, power structures, and utopian thinking.

The Where We Were

The Reichstag Building Rises

Built at the end of the 1800s and rebuilt a century later, Berlin’s Reichstag building has proven a malleable symbol of political and social values.

Annotations

The Bill of Rights: Annotated

Proposed as a compromise to ensure the ratification of the new US Constitution, the Bill of Rights has become a critical protector of civil liberties.

Most Recent

This family from Alabama was presented as "white trash" celebrities who had escaped the debilitating effects of hookworm, 1913

Politics & History

Defining “White Trash”

The term “white trash” once was used to disparage poor white people. In the Civil Rights era, its meaning shifted to support business-friendly racial politics.

Western Photos, Dirty Gold, and Life on Mars

Well-researched stories from Sapiens, Smithsonian Magazine, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.

Cabinet of Curiosities

Christopher, the Dog-Headed Saint

Although the tradition has largely faded in the Western church, Saint Christopher sported a canine head through much of Christian history.

Reading Lists

Speculative Fiction: A Reading List

Speculative fiction, from Afrofuturism to Star Wars, offers students tools and methods for analyzing social movements, power structures, and utopian thinking.

The Where We Were

The Reichstag Building Rises

Built at the end of the 1800s and rebuilt a century later, Berlin’s Reichstag building has proven a malleable symbol of political and social values.

Annotations

The Bill of Rights: Annotated

Proposed as a compromise to ensure the ratification of the new US Constitution, the Bill of Rights has become a critical protector of civil liberties.

Speculative Fiction: Beyond a Novel’s Entertainment Value

The classroom is a place to equip students to better understand the world as it was and is. Speculative fiction can help.

Cabinet of Curiosities

Christopher, the Dog-Headed Saint

Although the tradition has largely faded in the Western church, Saint Christopher sported a canine head through much of Christian history.

People standing around a shopping cart with Trump's head inside

Politics & History

From Neoliberalism to Trumpism

The neoliberal politics that developed in the 1970s created financial instability and fragmented cultural markets, helping to pave the way for Trumpism.

Long Reads

Books of imagination. Surreal art. fantasy painting. Books flying in the clouds.

Arts & Culture

Speculative Fiction: Beyond a Novel’s Entertainment Value

The classroom is a place to equip students to better understand the world as it was and is. Speculative fiction can help.

In this aerial view the 'Sycamore Gap' tree on Hadrian's Wall lies on the ground leaving behind only a stump in the spot it once proudly stood, on September 28, 2023 northeast of Haltwhistle, England. The tree, which was apparently felled overnight, was one of the UK's most photographed and appeared in the 1991 Kevin Costner film "Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves."

Plants & Animals

An Untimely Death at Sycamore Gap

The outcry over the violent felling of a beloved tree in 2023 affirms the power trees hold in our cultural memory.

Plants & Animals

Taking “Stock” of Salmon and Word Choice

The long debate over spawning habits and genetics belies the problems caused by categorizing fish with a term associated with finance and breeding.

Photo taken by FBI agents in Jonestown following the Jonestown massacre of November 18, 1978.

Politics & History

One Woman’s Path to Jonestown

While the events that led to the Jonestown massacre included profound tragedy, the life—and death—of one of its residents offers lessons on community and resilience.

Editors' Picks

Education & Society

Simon Miles on Superpowers and Serendipity

An interview with historian of US foreign policy and diplomacy Simon Miles, who finds that surprises in the archives can lead to the most compelling projects.

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.

Politics & History

The Trailblazing Merze Tate

A celebrated historian of race and imperialism, Tate was an intrepid traveler who avidly shared her passion and meticulously documented her journeys.

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

An acrobatic water skier performs during a show at Cypress Gardens theme park in 1953 near Winterhaven, Florida.

The Wonderful World of the Water Ski

Invented in 1922, water-skiing quickly became shorthand for American ideas on beauty, athleticism, and affluence.

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

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.

Collections on JSTOR

Send in the Clowns

Lulu Adams came from a long, illustrious line of circus performers and was credited—even if wrongly—with being the world’s first female clown.

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.

Shadowbox with a wedding photograph of a bride and groom, surrounded by the bride's veil

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.

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.

Partner Posts

Using Pollen To Make Paper, Sponges, and More

Reengineered, the powdery stuff could become a range of eco-friendly objects.

Lite Intermediate Black Holes

Meet the supermassive black hole’s smaller, much more mysterious cousin.

At center, the cytoskeleton’s actin fibers in mouse connective tissue cells are seen in yellow; cellular DNA is stained blue

Super-Resolution Microscopes Showcase the Inner Lives of Cells

Advanced light microscopy techniques have come into their own—and are giving scientists a new understanding of human biology and what goes wrong in disease.