Nella Larsen’s Lessons in Library School
Larsen’s novels were influenced by her training in the New York Public Library system, where she faced rigid ideas about the racial classification of knowledge.
Dorothy Richardson and the Stream of Consciousness
Though often associated with Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, “stream of consciousness” novels spilled first from the pen of British modernist Dorothy Richardson.
The Ethics of On-Screen Violence in The Sympathizer
Film scholar Sylvia Shin Huey Chong offers a feminist reflection on the theme of rape in Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer-winning novel The Sympathizer.
The Governess, in Her Own Written Words
Although few women were employed as governesses in Victorian Britain, their potential for social and class transgression left Britons awash with worry.
The Princess Brides of the Malay Annals
Narratives about women as gift objects in classical literature show the power dynamics of trade and diplomacy in the early modern Malay world.
Imperial Humo(u)r
Imperialism, experienced as both royal subject and new colonizer, has been a key element in the development, continuity, and disruption of American humor.
The Spiritual Side of Calligraphy
Chinese calligraphy is a personal art that draws on Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism as well as spiritual practices that date to the second century CE.
The History of Peer Review Is More Interesting Than You Think
The term “peer review” was coined in the 1970s, but the referee principle is usually assumed to be as old as the scientific enterprise itself. (It isn’t.)
History’s Footnotes
The addition of footnotes to texts by historians began long before their supposed inventor, Leopold von Ranke, started using them (poorly, as it turns out).
Revolutionary Writing in Carlos Bulosan’s America
Bulosan’s fiction reflects an awareness of the inequality between the Philippines and the US and connects that relationship to his own class experience.