One knight consoling another knight on the ground

The Swooning Knights of Medieval Stories

In romantic literature of the fourteenth and fifteen centuries, fainting wasn’t just for ladies.
An illustration of Shakespeare's poem Venus and Adonis

Shakespeare’s First Published Work

Celebrated for his plays, Shakespeare actually opened his writing career with a derivative poem.
Up the Junction by Nell Dunn

Up the Junction: A Place, A Fiction, A Film, A Condition

In addition to a New Wave hit, Nell Dunn's 1963 book about young women in a poor London neighborhood inspired a Ken Loach adaption that helped shift British attitudes toward abortion.
Eileen Gray, 1914

Eileen Gray: Architect In Her Own Right

Without formal training as an architect, Gray created magnificent designs that sensitively blended traditional craft with a modern aesthetic.
The cover of the album A Grain of Sand

Charting the Music of a Movement

Galvanized by an act of racial violence, the band A Grain of Sand brought a new version of Asian American activism and identity to the folk music scene.
Academy Award statue

A Night at the Oscars

All (or at least a lot) of what you need to know before going to this year’s Academy Awards watch party.
J. Robert Oppenheimer

The Annotated Oppenheimer

Celebrated and damned as the “father of the atomic bomb,” theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer lived a complicated scientific and political life.
A rose, Zéphirine Drouhin, against a black background

What Do Gardens and Murder Have in Common?

Writers have long plotted murder mysteries in gardens of all sorts. What makes these fertile grounds for detective fiction?
The cover of the Chinese edition of Three Body Problem

Chinese Science Fiction Before The Three Body Problem

Viewing the genre as a means to spread modern knowledge, Chinese novelists have been writing science-fiction stories since at least 1902.
José Garcia Villa

José Garcia Villa, an American Poet Ahead of His Time

While Villa’s otherness created an opening for his work in the US, American critics ultimately held both his modernism and his nationality against him.