Ballerinas

Can Ballet Be Feminist?

Ballerinas have long made feminists both uneasy and excited, embodying fulfillment and the shackles of feminine performance.
JSTOR Daily Friday Reads

The Revelatory Rabbits of Watership Down

On Christmas Eve we lost Richard Adams, the British writer whose 1972 novel Watership Down became one of the bestselling children’s books of all time.
Carrie Fisher and Wim Wenders

Carrie Fisher and Women’s Voices in Hollywood

Remembering Carrie Fisher: Actress, writer, and so much more.
Christmas Carol illustration

How Charles Dickens Set the American Christmas Dinner Table

How did a religious celebration turn into a holiday that is all about home, family, and Christmas dinner? Turns out Charles Dickens has a lot to do with it.
Portrait of The Bard cut up symmetrically

The Art of Cutting Up Shakespeare

We should acknowledge the connection between cuts as bodily violence and cuts as violent ways of making art.
JSTOR Daily Friday Reads

Avi

The beloved and prolific children's literature author Avi was born on December 23, 1937.
His Girl Friday

Rory Gilmore: The New New Woman

Recently, Netflix brought us the Gilmore Girls revival–Rory, Lorelei, and Emily 10 years on, able to “end” the show as its creator intended.
Murió la Verdad (The Death of Truth)

The Collapse of Meaning in a Post-Truth World

2016 was certainly an unstable time in history. Even the way we use language to convey our collective fears about the state of society seems fractured.
Little Big Horn ledger art

The American Counter-Narrative of Ledger Drawings

Plains Indian ledger drawings offer a rich counter-narrative to the often-glamorized, or forgotten, history of the American West.
Madame Bovary illustration

What Madame Bovary Revealed About the Freedom of the Press

Gustave Flaubert was put on trial for obscenity. Why didn't he fight government censorship harder?