Elizabeth Keckley

Elizabeth Keckley’s Memoir Behind the Scenes, or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four in the White House

Keckley’s decision to write about her employers from the viewpoint of a household laborer—she was seamstress to Mary Todd Lincoln—enraged audiences.
Louisa Jacobson in The Gilded Age

Philanthropy and the Gilded Age

As the HBO series The Gilded Age suggests, charity allowed wealthy women to play a visible role in public life. It was also a site of inter-class animosity.
Sammy Davis Jr, wearing a Beatles t-shirt, performs on stage at The Talk of The Town in London, England in 1967

Sammy Davis Jr.’s Conversion Mishegoss

Sammy Davis Jr.'s conversion to Judaism in 1960 was met with skepticism, derision, and, yes, jokes by the members of the groups he claimed and embraced.
The influential physicist, Dr. Chien-Shiung Wu in 1958

The Famous and Forgotten Women of STEM

The editors at JSTOR Daily have compiled their favorite pieces highlighting the many overlooked contributions of women in STEM.
A portrait of Lu Yu

Sovereignty, Classroom Racism, and Eating Tea

Well-researched stories from the 19th, Slate, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.
Pancho Barnes and the Powder Puff Derby at Long Beach, California circa 1930-1931

1929 Women’s Air Derby Changed Views On Women Pilots

Women pilots were seen as oddities, opportunists, and "too scatterbrained" to fly. The 1929 All-Woman Air Race set out to change that.
Lviv, 1907

Lviv: Open to the World

The history of the Ukrainian city of Lviv is long, complex and mirrors some of the larger conflicts of the Eastern European region.
A circus poster from 1912

Race and Gender Under the Big Top

The circus provided opportunities to some in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, but could not avoid the racism and misogynoir of the "outside world."
A film still from The Batman

Batman: A Hero or a New ‘Mr. Hyde’?

The parallels between Bruce Wayne/Batman and Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde are examined through the lenses of Gothic literature and psychological symbolism.
Pixelated books

Are Video Games Like Novels?

Video games as interactive storytelling? Maybe not at first glance, but as Eric Hayot explains, the interplay between game and narrative is real.