Abolitionist “Wide Awakes” Were Woke Before “Woke”
“Now the old men are folding their arms and going to sleep,” said William H. Seward while campaigning for Lincoln, “and the young men are Wide Awake.”
Fake Stone and the Georgian Ladies Who Made It
Coade stone was all the rage in late eighteenth-century architecture, and a mother-and-daughter team was behind it all.
The Great Grape Graft That Saved the Wine Industry
Grape varieties from North America seemed harmless to French winemakers. But destructive bugs were imported with the plants.
The South African Experience with Changing the Police from Within
In states transitioning from authoritarianism to democracy, resistance to police abuses can make or break the larger democratic project, explains one social scientist.
Blaming People for Getting Sick Has a Long History
Four major theories of disease transmission dominated scientific discourse in the nineteenth century. As one scholar writes, all were political.
From Gay Liberation to Marriage Equality
One scholar explains how the LGBT movement became focused on advancing the rights of a narrow set of people at the expense of its once-radical vision.
Resilience: The Basics of a Concept
From the ecological to the social, “resilience” is a buzzword for our crisis-ridden age. But what is resilience exactly, and where did the idea emerge from?
Ye Olde Morality-Enforcement Brigades
The charivari (or shivaree) was a ritual in which people on the lower rungs of a community called out neighbors who violated social and sexual norms.
The Library That Walked Across Belgium
What two scholar-artists learned from taking ninety books on a very, very long walk.