Sandra Oh in The Chair

Who Looks Like a Professor?

Movie portrayals of faculty may influence the ideas about professors that students bring to the first day of class.
Opening title from Night of the Living Dead

The Summer Blockbusters of JSTOR Daily

Our favorite stories about popcorn movies! There may or may not be explosions.
An illustration of somebody using an inhaler

Asthma Tropes and the Kids Who Hate Them

Children with asthma respond to the movie executives who see them as weak people helped by magical inhalers.
Along the highway near Bakersfield, California. Dust bowl refugees by Dorothea Lange

The Photographers Who Captured the Great Depression

The Farm Security Administration had photographers fan out across the country to document agricultural conditions. But they brought back much more.
Black Swan record label of Alberta Hunter recording, 1921.

The History of Black-Owned Record Labels

Decades before Motown ruled the radio, labels like Black Swan and Black Patti put out records that didn't stereotype African American music.
Photograph: Female fans of Frank Sinatra gaze adoringly at a picture of him in a copy of Modern Screen magazine, c. 1950

Source: Getty

How Teenage Girls Invented Fandom

They were mocked for their obsession with movies. But the fan culture they constructed help build Hollywood.
From THEM!, 1954

Fear of an Insect Planet

"Big bug movies" of the 1950s have been interpreted as projections of nuclear anxieties. But what if they were about...actual fear of bugs?
Martin and Osa Johnson

How Two Kansans Invented the Safari Documentary

Martin and Osa Johnson were celebrities in their day, but their vision of Africa was way out of touch with reality.
Robert Mitchum aiming gun over car in a scene from the film 'Farewell, My Lovely', 1975.

QAnon as Neo-Noir

The popular conspiracy theory has intriguing parallels with classic noir by Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett.
The Killing of Sister George

Hollywood Goes to Its First Lesbian Bar and Can’t Stop Staring

The Killing of Sister George was the first Hollywood movie to depict a lesbian bar. Director Robert Aldrich was obsessed with its authenticity.