A photograph of bananas from the book Birds and Nature, 1900

Fruit Geopeelitics: America’s Banana Republics

The one-way movement of wealth in the banana trade contributed to the political and economic conditions that challenged its hegemony after World War II.
Church above Vathy bay, Kalymnos island, Dodecanese archipelago, Greece

An Explosive Easter Celebration

The Orthodox Easter tradition of throwing dynamite on the island of Kalymnos echoes the Greek resistance to the Italian occupation of the 1940s.
Computer rendering of the Thirty Meter Telescope

Putting Science in its Place

A new stewardship group for a telescope in Hawai‘i hints at what cooperation between the European scientific tradition and Indigenous knowledge might look like.
Annie Grayson; Or, Life in Washington

Nancy Lasselle’s Washington Novels

Lasselle’s 1850s novels were the first to examine the entanglements of society and politics—including lobbying—in Washington, DC.
Women cooking in a public kitchen, 19th century

Kitchenless Dreams

Escaping the drudgery of housekeeping via collective action became a feminist focus of utopian practitioners and theorists in the later nineteenth century.
Clemencia López

Clemencia López and the Philippine Struggle for Freedom

López’s gender and appearance helped her contribute to anti-imperial and suffrage movements in a way her male peers couldn’t.
Christ's Descent into Hell by Hieronymus Bosch

Fire and Brimstone

If our conception of hell was absent from Christianity at the time the religion was born, whence exactly does it hail?
Students in a music classroom

Tech in the Classroom in the 1910s

American music teacher Frances E. Clark helped the Victor Corporation bring recorded music into classrooms, overcoming educators’ distrust of the technology.
Eggs of Common guillemot (Uria aalge), delicatessen, Reykjavik, Iceland

Eggs, Chatbots, and Oklahoma!

Well-researched stories from Smithsonian Magazine, The Conversation, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.
Hutong in Beijing, China

China’s Historic Preservation Challenges

Beijing’s hutongs are disappearing quickly. Is there a way create safe housing, preserve historic buildings, and meet the city's financial needs?