Halloween Stories
Why are Victorians the default haunted house, what do ghosts have to do with the imagination, and why do we like to be scared?
“Tell Me about a Complicated Man”: A Homer Reading List
The amount of scholarship on Homer and his works can be daunting. We've created this introductory reading list to help guide your explorations.
Jane Birkin’s Famous Love (Sex) Song
How the songs of the 1960s and ’70s captured the sexual liberation of women.
The Concert That Promised a Thousand Years of Peace
Guru Maharaj Ji, the teenage leader of the Divine Light Mission, was poised to usher in a new era. His huge Houston gathering proved to do anything but.
Kahlil Gibran: Godfather of the “New Age”
Published in 1923, The Prophet became a perpetual best-seller, birthed a genre, and marked the poet as retrograde, sentimental, and florid.
The Serpentine Career of Loïe Fuller
Rising from the ranks of touring comedies and Wild West shows, the American dancer dreamed of a future of light, movement, and metamorphosis.
The Cross-Dressing Superstar of the Belle Époque
Mathilde de Morny's commitment to a masculine aesthetic and a non-traditional lifestyle in nineteenth-century France challenged the boundaries of gender identity.
“The Poet Is a Man Who Feigns”
Portuguese modernist Fernando Pessoa channeled a grand, glorious chorus of writers—heteronyms, he called them—robust inventions of his unique imagination.
The Incredible Versatility of Adrienne Rich
Rich challenged the language of the past in poetry and prose while not quite embracing a fully inclusive future.