Emil Nolde, Red Clouds, watercolour on handmade paper, 34.5 x 44.7 cm.

How a Postwar German Literary Classic Helped Eclipse Painter Emil Nolde’s Relationship to Nazism

While Nolde was one of the many victims of the Third Reich’s repressive responses to “degenerate art,” he was also one of Nazism’s great admirers.
Members of the Goldwyn Cover Girls in bakery in a scene from the film 'Palmy Days', 1931.

Queer Representation in Pre-Code Hollywood

Before the establishment of the Hollywood Production Code in the 1930s, filmmakers deployed gender and sexuality stereotypes for glamour, humor, and drama alike.
The "Hungaria Skins" group on the 1997 Day of Honour demonstration, Budapest, Hungary

How Hungary’s Hard Rock Became Hard Right

Punk and hard rock—or at least extremist, right-wing versions of them—are alive and well in post-Cold War Hungary.
Leo Tolstoy in Yasnaya Polyana, 1908

Tolstoy’s Christian Anarchism

A fateful visit to a market in Moscow entirely upended Tolstoy’s view on life and society—and changed the trajectory of his work and purpose.

The Geographical Misdirection of Cold War B-Movies

Some American Cold War films meant to allude to the contested theater of Vietnam were filmed in Thailand or the Philippines. Why the positional shenanigans?
The Sam and Ruth Van Sickle Ford House

Organic and Unusual: The Architecture of Bruce Goff

Both choice and circumstance forced Bruce Goff to forge his own path as an architect, freeing him to develop an individualistic yet natural approach to design.
Unclassics: Obscure Electronic Funk and Disco, 1975–1985

Quebec Disco: Influenced by Italo Disco?

Ostensibly developing on continents apart, the sounds Quebec Disco and Italo Disco exhibited an identifiable sonic kinship.
Crowd taking photographs on mobile phones

Citizen Journalism: A Reading List

The ubiquity of smartphones has ushered in a new era for journalism—facilitating citizen journalism and changing the very nature of reporting.

From Oriental Riviera to Global Asia: Hong Kong in Travel Posters

A collection of travel posters shared via JSTOR by Hong Kong Baptist University highlights Hong Kong’s unique place in the global imagination over the decades.
Isis Theater, 1932

The Chinese Movie Theater in Shanghai’s “No Man’s Land”

The Isis Theater of pre-war Shanghai occupied a unique space as a Chinese-run cinema in an international “contact zone.”