Ashley Rubin

The Invention of Incarceration

Prisons have been controversial since their beginnings in the late 1700s — why do they keep failing to live up to expectations?
A group of children holding up a small globe

Making Climate Communication Nature-Driven

How climate change is represented in popular media allows us to avoid the complex, interconnected roles humans have played to create it.
Close up of illustration of prisoners from La Roca

St. Patrick’s Day in Prison

Offhand references to St. Patrick’s Day showcase broader humor, humanity, and history in the American Prison Newspapers collection.
Convicts working at Reed Camp, South Carolina, 1934

Mass Incarceration: A Syllabus

This selection of stories focuses on prison and mass incarceration in the US, which has the highest rate of imprisonment in the world.
"Freya" correctly detects a sample of malaria from a row of sample pots at the "Medical Detection Dogs" charity headquarters on March 27, 2020 in Milton Keynes, England.

Why Aren’t There More Dogs at the Doctor’s Office?

Dogs can use their superb sense of smell to identify disease in human patients. What’s keeping them from using this ability in the healthcare industry?
Site of Thoreau's Hut, Concord, Mass

Using Thoreau’s Notebooks to Understand Climate Change

Thoreau's time at Walden Pond has provided substantial data for scientists monitoring the effects of a warming climate on the area's plant life.
Morgan Godvin and Ashley Rubin

Behind Bars: The Invention of Mass Incarceration

Join us Wednesday, March 23, for a free online event. Editor Morgan Godvin in conversation with penal historian Ashley Rubin.
Cloud seeding

Cloud Seeding, Fake Fact-Checks, and Angela Davis at 78

Well-researched stories from Pro Publica, Smithsonian, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.
A gold coin commemorating the assassination of Julius Caesar

Beware the Ides of March. (But Why?)

Everybody remembers that the Ides of March was the day Julius Caesar was assassinated. But what does it mean, and why that day?
the picket line outside Eaton’s during the 1984-85 strike

The Working Class Roots of Canadian Feminism

The increased participation of women in labor helped create the Canadian feminist movement.