Japanese "picture brides" being processed after arriving at Angel Island, California, c. 1910

Japanese American Wives and the Sex Industry

Japanese American immigrant wives in the American West attempted to improve their living conditions through sex work.

The Surprising Contents of an American POW’s Journal

There were 35 million prisoners of war held during World War II. One soldier's diary full of collages and drawings brings a human dimension to that number.
Westin Bonaventure towers

Los Angeles, Lions, and Looking for Happiness

Well-researched stories from Aeon, The New Yorker, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.
Engraved portrait of Empress Matilda of Flanders, wearing a crown and holding a scepter, circa 1100.

Empress Matilda, George R. R. Martin’s Muse

Like the fictional character she inspired, Matilda was at the center of a civil war, fighting her own relatives for control of the royal throne.
A view of the Raffles Hotel, Singapore, between 1920 and 1939

“Microcosms of Empire” in the Colonial Grand Hotel

While Singapore's iconic Raffles Hotel may be marketed as a tranquil throwback to a bygone age, it also reveals the complicated truths of imperialism.
Sikh women worshippers c. 1950

Women, Partition, and Violence

The 1947 partition of India and creation of Pakistan came with a hefty price—especially for the subcontinent’s women.
Five diagrams of the surface of the moon, during its phases. Aquatint after Galileo Galilei

1610: Dawn of the Extraterrestrial

Galileo's telescopic view of the Moon sparked a giant transformation in the way human beings thought about the natural world.
Grand Canyon below rim, 1964

When the Government Tried to Flood the Grand Canyon

In the 1960s, the government proposed the construction of two dams in the Grand Canyon, potentially flooding much of Grand Canyon National Park.
A 19th century Kalighat painting from Calcutta, India

How Bengal’s Nineteenth-Century Art Defined Women

Women’s roles as icons ranged from being seductive and erotic to mythical and religious as they imparted social, political, and ethical values.

Making Egypt’s Museums

The world’s largest archaeological museum is poised to open on the Giza Plateau, building on two centuries of museum planning and development.