How Medieval Arabic Literature Viewed Lesbians
As far back as the ninth century, doctors and poets wrote about women who loved women without calling them deviants.
The Unsung Heroine of Lichenology
Elke Mackenzie’s moments of self-citation illuminate the hopes of someone who, against ease and tradition, did not wish to separate her identity from her research.
Our Space Brothers Might Not Actually Look Like Little Green Men after All
If we find aliens, chances are they'll be nothing like we ever imagined.
A Recipe for Ancient Wildfires
The earliest wildfires raged long before humans, and they only needed three ingredients to get started.
How Hollywood Sold Glamour
The complicated notion of glamour in classic Hollywood, suggesting that stars were aloof and unknowable, was also a means to sell products.
The Red Scare and Women in Government
In 1952, a government administrator named Mary Dublin Keyserling was accused of being a communist. The attack on her was also an attack on feminism.
What Do Sugar Skulls Mean on El Día de los Muertos?
The iconography of Mexico's Día de los Muertos has become wildly popular outside Latino communities. But where did the skulls and skeletons come from?
How Aztecs Reacted to Colonial Epidemics
Colonial exploitation made the indigenous Aztec people disproportionately vulnerable to epidemics. Indigenous accounts show their perspective.
Plant of the Month: Dittany
Did women in the premodern world have much agency over reproduction? Their use of plants like dittany suggests that they did.
The Brooklyn College Farm Labor Project of the 1940s
The coronavirus pandemic left farmers falling back on students to pick crops. But it certainly wasn’t the first time.