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

A Most Opportunistic Colonizer

Poa annua is a unique grass species now thriving on every continent—including Antarctica. Wherefore its wanderlust?
Bowie Theater advertisement for double-feature: Teenagers from Outer Space and Gigantis, the Fire Monster, June 26, 1959, Brownwood, TX

The Decades of Double Features

For years, the double feature was a dependable part of the movie-goer’s life. Where did it come from, and where did it go?
Wanderer above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich, 1817

The Case of Caspar David Friedrich

Born 250 years ago, Friedrich reimagined landscape painting by portraying the vastness of nature as a setting for profound spiritual and emotional encounters.
White laboratory mice: mother with pups, which are 9 days old; isolated on white

Mouse Voices, Plant Economics, and International Order

Well-researched stories from NPR, Yale Environment 360, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.
Mary Kay Baum shares photos and drawings with children at the Tres Cabelas cooperative school, 1986

Fighting for El Salvador, from Wisconsin

In the 1980s, people from across the US used civil programs and other direct connections with Salvadorans to build opposition to El Salvador’s oligarchy.
A general view of a 1970s disco showing people dancing, circa 1978.

What’s the Legacy of Disco Music?

If you listen to Blondie, The Police, or the Pretenders, it’s in the beat.
Artwork from an XBox 360 Minecraft game cover, 2014

Neocolonial Minecraft

One of the world’s best-selling video games, Minecraft conceals problematic assumptions about coloniality and power, argues educator Bennett Brazelton.
Source: https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.31886897

“Lynch Law in America”: Annotated

Ida B. Wells-Barnett, whose January 1900 essay exposed the racist reasons given by mobs for their crimes, argued that lynch law was an American shame.
Modern machinery is used in salvaging the Abu Simbel Temple as part of the Aswan Dam Project.

An Epic Face-Lift: Moving Abu Simbel Out of the Nile

Some 25,000 workers cut Abu Simbel’s statues and temples into pieces, hoisted them into the air, and reassembled them on an artificial hill 200 meters away.