How Truman Capote Advanced the New Journalism
In Cold Blood changed the face of journalism. And yet years after its publication, we are still asking: how much of it was factually true?
Charles Dickens and Fame vs. Celebrity
Many of our current celebrities are famous for being famous. Charles Dickens, the first self-made global media star, would've had a lot to say about this.
The Tangled Language of Jargon
What our emotional reaction to jargon reveals about the evolution of the English language, and how the use of specialized terms can manipulate meaning.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” and Women’s Pain
Charlotte Gilman wrote her famous short story in response to her own experience having her pain belittled and misunderstood by a male physician.
“Telling the Bees”
In nineteenth-century New England, it was held to be essential to whisper to beehives of a loved one’s death.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: I Became Black in America
Adichie speaks on the meaning of blackness, sexism in Nigeria, and whether the current feminist movement leaves out black women.
When Harriet Beecher Stowe and George Eliot Were Penpals
These 19th-century novelists might seem to have little in common. But for 11 years they wrote each other letters, forging an unusual literary friendship.
The Legendary Language of the Appalachian “Holler”
Is the unique Appalachian dialect the preserved language of Elizabethan England? Left over from Scots-Irish immigrants? Or something else altogether?
What Exactly Is Jane Austen’s Sanditon?
An unfinished, fragmentary Austen novel is being adapted for television. Can we ever know what Austen meant for this book to eventually become?
Maroon Societies, Down Syndrome, and Food Justice
New books and scholarship from academic publishers.