Two nuns caring for newborn babies, 1967

Inside a Home for Unwed Mothers

Young, unmarried pregnant women sometimes gave birth in secret at maternity homes. A historian uncovered some of their stories.
From left to right: Arthur Davison, Marjorie Allen Sieffert, and Witter Bynner

Spectra: The Poetry Movement That Was All a Hoax

In the experimental world of modernist poetry, literary journals were vulnerable to fake submissions.
A dog sitting in the woods

Animal Navigation, Mystery Bacteria, and Lies

Well-researched stories from The New Yorker, Scientific American, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.
Clockwise: Kevin Young, Gwendolyn Brooks, Elizabeth Alexander, Mary Jo Bang, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Jack Gilbert

10 Contemporary Elegies

In these poems of lament, the speaker expresses grief and sorrow.
A mural in Paseo Boricua on Division Street in Chicago

Puerto Rican Domestic Workers and Citizenship in the 1940s

Recruited to work on the US mainland for long hours at less than the prevailing rate, women migrants fought for dignity and recognition.
Pontiac, an Ottawa Indian, confronts Colonel Henry Bouquet who authorised his officers to spread smallpox amongst native Americans by deliberately infecting blankets after peace talks in 1764

How Commonly Was Smallpox Used as a Biological Weapon?

Once introduced into the Americas, smallpox spread everywhere. Is it possible to know how often that was done intentionally to kill people?
A woman picking vegetables

How the Black Labor Movement Envisioned Liberty

To Reconstruction-era Black republicans, the key to preserving the country’s character was stopping the rise of a wage economy.
An image representing negentropy

Could Negentropy Help Your Life Run Smoother?

In physics, entropy is the process of a system losing energy and dissolving into chaos. This applies to social systems in everyday life, too.
From left to right: Langston Hughes, Robert Hayden, Emily Dickinson, and Beah Richards

Celebrating National Poetry Month

Our best stories about poetry and poems offer free links to poems from contemporary and classic American poets.
Act 3 Scene 2 of "As You Like It"

Are We Getting Shakespeare’s Rhythms All Wrong?

Trippingly on the tongue? Yeah, right.