The Sympathizer

The Ethics of On-Screen Violence in The Sympathizer

Film scholar Sylvia Shin Huey Chong offers a feminist reflection on the theme of rape in Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer-winning novel The Sympathizer.
Aerial view towards waterfront of Road Town, Tortola

Becoming the British Virgin Islands

Grappling with a history shaped by colonialism, the British Virgin Islands have built a national identity that embraces change while distancing the neighbors.
Close up of a norwegian krone

Demystifying Sovereign Wealth Funds

Opaque, state-controlled investment vehicles, sovereign wealth funds wield enough power to redirect or disrupt global economies.
Louise de Kéroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth by Pierre Mignard I

Painting Race

The construction and expression of race by skin color literally became visible in Western art in the eighteenth century.
The Governess, 1855

The Governess, in Her Own Written Words

Although few women were employed as governesses in Victorian Britain, their potential for social and class transgression left Britons awash with worry.
USS Nautilus arriving at New York City in 1958

Eisenhower and the Real-Life Nautilus

The voyage of the USS Nautilus under the North Pole in August 1958 was a strategic use of technological spectacle as propaganda under Eisenhower.
Madonna and Child with Saint Jerome and Saint John the Baptist

How Renaissance Art Found Its Way to American Museums

We take for granted the Titians and Botticellis that hang in galleries across the United States, little aware of the appetites and inclinations of those who acquired them.
Ceiling of the Room of the giants in Palazzo Del Te, Mantua

Lessons in Mannerism at the Palazzo del Te

The offbeat and unexpected Palazzo del Te, designed by Giulio Romano for Federigo II Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, has become an icon of Mannerist architecture.
Break-dancers in Brooklyn, 1984

Breakdancing, Animal Pandemic, and Cutting-Edge Steel

Well-researched stories from The Conversation, Aeon Magazine, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.
Cricket in the United States, 1920

Endangered: North American Cricket

Cricket was played and cheered in the United States and Canada in the nineteenth century. Why did it fall out of favor with sports fans?