The term “white trash” once was used to disparage poor white people. In the Civil Rights era, its meaning shifted to support business-friendly racial politics.

Well-researched stories from Sapiens, Smithsonian Magazine, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.

Labeling the undead figures in non-European mythology, popular culture, and academia as “vampires” doesn’t make sense.

Raised in a family of storytellers, Augusta Baker continued that tradition, imparting a love of books to readers of all ages.

The Hausa people of northern Nigeria have adapted—and continue to transform—sacred Islamic calligraphy that originated in the Arab world.

As photography became more popular in occupied Taiwan, the camera subtly captured the shifting boundaries between Japanese colonizers and their Taiwanese subjects.

Freely available images and other primary source materials from the JSTOR Collections.

As cave exploration became more popular and speleology developed as an academic discipline, cave explorers were drawn into a problematic European nationalism.

Markers of both environmental change and periods of stability, trees have a lot to tell us about nature—but also about humanity.

Jane Austen uses Elizabeth Inchbald’s Lovers’ Vows to explore the social boundaries, both public and private, of Regency England.