Abstract tendril particles representing the brain's dendrites and axons

Brain Mapping, Blindness, and a Mystery in a Cave

Well-researched stories from Smithsonian Magazine, Wired, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.
The Children's Reading Room at the 135th street Branch of the New York Public Library

Nella Larsen’s Lessons in Library School

Larsen’s novels were influenced by her training in the New York Public Library system, where she faced rigid ideas about the racial classification of knowledge.
A painting of Hong Tianguifu being captured

Taiping: China’s Nineteenth-Century Civil War

Partially coinciding with the American Civil War, the Taiping “Rebellion” in China was one of the most destructive conflicts in history.
Dorothy Richardson

Dorothy Richardson and the Stream of Consciousness

Though often associated with Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, “stream of consciousness” novels spilled first from the pen of British modernist Dorothy Richardson.
Andrea Prader, c. 1977

Defining and Redefining Intersex

The transatlantic circulation of ideas between Baltimore and Zurich consolidated and standardized treatments of intersex infants in the 1950s.
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.