Plate Tectonics Diagram

How Plate Tectonics Shook Life into Existence

The cycles of life all rely on the dynamism of the Earth’s crust.
Two women in front of Imig's Ice Cream Shop on Ellinwood Street, Des Plaines, Illinois, 1915

Vanillagate? Ice Cream Parlors and White Slavery

At the beginning of the twentieth century, there was no more dangerous place for a young white woman than the ice cream parlor.
Allenby St c. 1930

Electrifying the Arab-Israeli Conflict

Jewish immigrants and British authorities tried to sell electrification as a matter of business while Palestinian Arabs viewed it as a Zionist nation-building project.
William Henry Fox Talbot, by John Moffat, 1864

The Daguerreotype’s Famous. Why Not the Calotype?

William Henry Fox Talbot’s obsession with protecting his pioneering photographic process doomed his reputation and reduced his legacy to historical footnote.
Five views of the eagle diamond

Shine On You Eagle Diamond

The year 1893 was a big one for Eagle, Wisconsin. Workers found a huge diamond on the Devereaux farm: sixteen carats, uncut, and now, all these years later, missing.
A 3d rendering of nanotechnology particles

Nanotech, Inoculation History, and Beautiful Sadness

Well-researched stories from The Conversation, Atlas Obscura, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.
Weston Havens House

Searching for Queer Spaces

The dominant heteroview of architectural history means we may lose our queer spaces and their histories before we even know they exist.
Director Julie Dash poses for the movie "Daughters of the Dust," circa 1991

Feminist Film Theory: An Introductory Reading List

Evolving from the analysis of representations of women in film, feminist film theory asks questions about identity, sexuality, and the politics of spectatorship.
An illustration of a woman distilling, 1691

The Home Science Labs of English Noblewomen

In the eighteenth century, elite women with a scientific bent often turned to distilling medicines, a craft that helped them participate in experimentation.
Albert Camus in the garden of his Paris studio, 1952.

The Existentialism of Style vs. Substance

Camus, Sartre, and Beauvoir were misread, misunderstood, and misperceived by English-speaking readers due to interventions of publishers and editors.