How Plate Tectonics Shook Life into Existence
The cycles of life all rely on the dynamism of the Earth’s crust.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.