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Group portrait of members of the Blackwell and Spofford families outside on a lawn. Photograph probably shows (back row, left to right): Dr. Emily Blackwell, Mr. Ainsworth Spofford, Alice Stone Blackwell, and Lucy Stone; (front row, left to right): Henry Browne Blackwell, Florence Spofford and Mrs. Sarah (Partridge) Spofford. (Source: similar image at Harvard University, Schlesinger Library, Blackwell Family Papers)
Shared Collections

Archival Adventures in the Abernethy Collection

An archival collection shared by Middlebury College invites the curious to make connections across the history of American literature.

Time Travels

Beryl Markham

Beryl Markham, Warrior of the Skies

The first person to fly solo, non-stop from Europe to North America, Markham lived life by her own rules.

Plant of the Month

Medicago sativa

Alfalfa: A Crop that Feeds Our Food

In 2023, American farmers grew more than 9 million acres of alfalfa. What makes this legume hay so special?

In the Limelight

Actors on stage during a performance of A Midsummer Night 's Dream

Shakespeare and Fanfiction

Despite an enduring slice of audience that treats his work as precious and mythic, most Shakespeare fans have rarely met an adaptive concept they didn’t like.

Suggested Readings

Dancer and nightclub owner Ada Bricktop Smith, 1959

Nightclubs, Fungus, and Curbing Gun Violence

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

Most Recent

An illustration depicting how to write certain characters in cursive from Art of Writing by John Jenkins, 1818
Politics & History

Before Palmer Penmanship

The creation and propagation of standard penmanship in the American education system is almost as old as the United States itself.
The 19 year old Indian elephant, Fritz-Frederic, favourite of the children of Paris, was put to death after he had gone mad for several days, c. 1910
Politics & History

Elephant Executions

At the height of circus animal acts in the late nineteenth century, animals who killed their captors might be publicly executed for their “crimes.”

More Stories

Time Travels

Beryl Markham

Beryl Markham, Warrior of the Skies

The first person to fly solo, non-stop from Europe to North America, Markham lived life by her own rules.

Plant of the Month

Medicago sativa

Alfalfa: A Crop that Feeds Our Food

In 2023, American farmers grew more than 9 million acres of alfalfa. What makes this legume hay so special?

In the Limelight

Actors on stage during a performance of A Midsummer Night 's Dream

Shakespeare and Fanfiction

Despite an enduring slice of audience that treats his work as precious and mythic, most Shakespeare fans have rarely met an adaptive concept they didn’t like.

Suggested Readings

Dancer and nightclub owner Ada Bricktop Smith, 1959

Nightclubs, Fungus, and Curbing Gun Violence

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

Trending

Two arms with tattoos
Education & Society

Why Does the Bible Forbid Tattoos?

And have we been misinterpreting Leviticus?
Karate chop
Mathematics

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.
An illustration of John Harvey Kellogg and an early corn flakes advertisement
Politics & History

The Strange Story Behind Your Breakfast Cereal

Kellogg's Corn Flakes were originally created by a doctor who believed bland food would reduce people's urge to masturbate.

Long Reads

María Telón and María Mercedes Coroy in Ixcanul
Arts & Culture

The Development of Central American Film

A new collection of essays examines the reasons behind the recent boom in feature and documentary film-making from Belize to Panama.
Garrett Hongo
Arts & Culture

I Hear America Singing

Japanese American poet Garrett Hongo is a guiding spirit to a glorious cacophony, an exuberant collective thrum made of different tongues and peoples.
The Goddess Nekhbet, Temple of Hatshepsut
Arts & Culture

Vulture Cultures

By turns worshipped and reviled, the bird frequently associated with death has appeared in art works for thousands of years. Here’s a short history.
A photograph from the Mars Perseverance rover, 2021
Natural Science

NASA’s Search for Life on Mars

It’s a rocky road for its rovers, a long slog for scientists—and back on Earth, a battle of the budget.

Editors' Picks

Arts & Culture

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.
Arts & Culture

Willie Mae Thornton Deserves Your Full Attention

In a meditative new biography, DJ and scholar Lynnée Denise examines the mysteries and trials in the life of the legendary performer.
Politics & History

The Fourteenth Amendment: Annotated

Adopted in 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution addresses citizenship rights, due process, and equal protection under the law.
Education & Society

Class Production

A collection of high school yearbooks from Cleveland captures the rise, fall, and uncertain future of the American middle class.
Education & Society

Intellectual Humility: Foundations and Key Concepts

Research about intellectual humility has exploded in the past decade. Psychologist Elizabeth Krumrei-Mancuso offers an annotated bibliography of key texts.

Quirky History

The Westinghouse Time Capsule at the 1939 New York World's Fair

Time in a Box

Humans like to seal collections of ephemera in containers that they then hide in soon-to-be-forgotten places. Whither the time capsule?
A Spectro-Chrome, c. 1925

Colorful Lights to Cure What Ails You

Between 1920 and the 1960s, tens of thousands of people received treatment with a Spectro-Chrome to address various ailments.
A railroad worker enjoys a sandwich and bottle of milk during his lunch break, circa 1950

Mother’s—and Others’—Milk

Said to bestow strength and beauty, to purify body and soul, and to yield success and happiness, milk’s image is as adulterated as the liquid itself.

Shared Collections on JSTOR

A collage of cover images from Johns Hopkins’ Collection of Middle East-inspired Sheet Music

Sheet Music: the Original Problematic Pop?

A Johns Hopkins University curator of sheet music and pop culture discusses a “Middle East-inspired” sheet-music collection that’s anything but.
James G. Birney

The Power of Pamphlets in the Anti-Slavery Movement

Black-authored print was central to James G. Birney’s conversion from enslaver to abolitionist and presidential candidate.
A front exterior view, Everyman's House

The Tiny House Trend Began 100 Years Ago

In 1924, sociologist and social reformer Caroline Bartlett Crane designed an award-winning tiny home in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Syllabus

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.
GAZA CITY, GAZA - JULY 24: A general view of the Beit Hanoun neighborhood on July 24, 2017 in Gaza City, Gaza. For the past ten years Gaza residents have lived with constant power shortages, in recent years these cuts have worsened, with supply of regular power limited to four hours a day. On June 11, 2017 Israel announced a new round of cuts at the request of the Palestinian authorities and the decision was seen as an attempt by President Mahmoud Abbas to pressure Gaza's Hamas leadership. Prior to the new cuts Gaza received 150 megawatts per day, far below it's requirements of 450 megawatts. In April, Gaza's sole power station which supplied 60 megawatts shut down, after running out of fuel, the three lines from Egypt, which provided 27 megawatts are rarely operational, leaving Gaza reliant on the 125 megawatts supplied by Israel's power plant. The new cuts now restrict electricity to three hours a day severely effecting hospital patients with chronic conditions and babies on life support. During blackout hours residents use private generators, solar panels and battery operated light sources to live. June 2017 also marked ten years since Israel began a land, sea and air blockade over Gaza. Under the blockade, movement of people and goods is restricted and exports and imports of raw materials have been banned. The restrictions have virtually cut off access for Gaza's two million residents to the outside world and unemployment rates have skyrocketed forcing many people into poverty and leaving approximately 80% of the population dependent on humanitarian aid. (Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images)

Israel and Gaza: A Syllabus of Background Readings

How can we help students begin to make sense of the current and recurring violence in Israel and Gaza?
Dakota pipeline protestors

Celebrating Indigenous Peoples and Cultures

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

Reading Lists

Impression, Sunrise by Claude Monet

The Art of Impressionism: A Reading List

The first exhibition of paintings that would come to be described as Impressionism opened in Paris on April 15, 1874.
From the cover of the newspaper El Grito del Norte, July 1973

Chicanx Studies: A Foundational Reading List

The field of Chicanx studies continues to expand, embracing analyses of racialization, gender, sexuality, Indigineity, and trans-ethnic identity.
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.

Roosevelt was a proponent of imperialism and racial domination, the architect of the interventionist corollary allowing the United States to become a hemispheric occupying force.

Island in the Potomac

American Prison Newspapers 1880-2020

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.
A page from The Angolite that features a photograph of a prison guard holding a shotgun while watching prisoners work in a field.

Slavery and the Modern-Day Prison Plantation

"Except as punishment for a crime," reads the constitutional exception to abolition. In prison plantations across the United States, slavery thrives.

Annotations

"Noah Webster, The Schoolmaster of the Republic," print by Root & Tinker, 1886

Webster’s Dictionary 1828: Annotated

Noah Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language declared Americans free from the tyranny of British institutions and their vocabularies.
Map of the Missouri Compromise, 1820

Missouri Compromise of 1820: Annotated

The “compromise” attempted to answer the question of whether the Missouri territory would be admitted to the Union as a “slave” or “free” state.
A full-page newspaper advertisement published in the New York Times on March 29, 1960. It was paid for by the Committee to Defend Martin Luther King and the Struggle for Freedom in the South.

“Heed Their Rising Voices”: Annotated

In 1960, an ad placed in the New York Times to defend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights activists touched off a landmark libel suit.

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

A Navajo Nation volunteer collects coal to distribute to Native Americans in need at a free wood collection site on December 17, 2021 in Tuba City, Arizona.

Renewable Energy and Settler Colonialism

What can we learn from colonial legacies in pursuit of sustainable futures?
Extinction Rebellion (XR) protesters glue themselves to barrels outside the Treasury on April 07, 2022 in London, England.

Who Can Just Stop Oil?

Groups such as Just Stop Oil are calling for change, but their aims need to be considered with respect to more than a reductionist slogan.
Coal burning power plant with pollution in a twilight situation.

Not All Forms of Carbon Removal Are Created Equal

The carbon market and offsetting system have created “carbon cowboys” and perpetuated forms of neo-colonialism and other inequities.

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