Depiction of the Battle of Ravine-à-Couleuvres, during the Haitian Revolution, February 1802

The Haitian Revolution and American Slavery

For both US politicians and enslaved Black Americans, the Haitian Revolution represented the possibility of a successful violent rebellion by the oppressed.
illustration of a woman's body on abstract blob background

Do You Own Your Body?

The idea that our bodies are our own may be intuitive, but when it comes to market transactions like surrogacy, our beliefs and feelings get more complicated.
Anaxagoras

Anaxagoras and the Eclipse: The First to Get It Right

Scholars sometimes credit Thales or Empedocles of Acragas with the first correct theory of solar eclipses, but it was Anaxagoras who had the science right.
The spartan mother by Louis-Jean-François Lagrenée, 1770

Why Some Spartan Women Had Two Husbands

In ancient Sparta, it was accepted practice for more women to marry and have children by more than one man.
Nuremberg, c. 1890

Nuremberg: City of Dreams and Nightmares

From a mercantile powerhouse in the Middle Ages to a stage for genocidal horror in the twentieth century, Nuremberg has played a pivotal role in German history.
Eoneophron infernalis

A Fresh Hell (Chicken)

A newly identified “Hell chicken” species suggests dinosaurs weren’t sliding toward extinction before the fateful asteroid hit.
Immigrants View The Statue Of Liberty, 1887

Birth of A National Immigration Policy

Until the Civil War, regulating immigration to the US was left to individual states. That changed with Emancipation and the legal end of slavery.
JT Roane alongside the cover of his book, Dark Agoras: Insurgent Black Social Life and the Politics of Place

Historian J.T. Roane Explores Black Ecologies

Considerations of climate change and environmentalism have for too long paid no mind to where Black people live and in what conditions.
Picture of Kerria lacca from the book, Indian Insect Life: a Manual of the Insects of the Plains by Harold Maxwell-Lefroy

As You Lakh It

How did an oleoresin produced by insects in Asia become a standard part of European furniture manufacture and conservation?
An illustration of a wormhole

Wormholes, Baitfish, and Neo-Medievalism

Well-researched stories from Slate, Literary Hub, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.