Nature Morte Aux Citrons, 1918 by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

When French Citrus Colonized Algeria

The citrus industry in Algeria honed French imperial apparatuses and provided a means for France to define and shape the behavior of its colonial subjects.
A collage of jazz albums

How Jazz Albums Visualized a Changing America

In the 1950s, the covers of most jazz records featured abstract designs. By the late 1960s, album aesthetics better reflected the times and the musicians.
An AI doctor on a computer screen

Dr. AI Will See You Now

The integration of artificial intelligence into public health could have revolutionary implications for the global south—if only it can get online.
A Kurdish People's Protection Units, or YPG women fighters pose as they stand near a check point in the outskirts of the destroyed Syrian town of Kobane, also known as Ain al-Arab, Syria. June 20, 2015.

Women Warriors Make Great Propaganda

The presence of female fighters gives legitimacy to armed rebellions and increases the chances of support from international NGOS and other external actors.
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.