The construction and expression of race by skin color literally became visible in Western art in the eighteenth century.

Although few women were employed as governesses in Victorian Britain, their potential for social and class transgression left Britons awash with worry.

We take for granted the Titians and Botticellis that hang in galleries across the United States, little aware of the appetites and inclinations of those who acquired them.

The offbeat and unexpected Palazzo del Te, designed by Giulio Romano for Federigo II Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, has become an icon of Mannerist architecture.

The bangsawan theater in early twentieth-century Malaya offered women a chance to build a public identity beyond marriage and motherhood.

Narratives about women as gift objects in classical literature show the power dynamics of trade and diplomacy in the early modern Malay world.

Imperialism, experienced as both royal subject and new colonizer, has been a key element in the development, continuity, and disruption of American humor.

The appearance of the vigilante crime fighter known as the Shadow in the writings of Plath, Kerouac, and Baraka reveals a twentieth-century duality.

In the late twentieth century, the image of the American quilt shifted from one of practicality and handicraft to a celebration of modernist abstraction.

The rich origins of an everyday word about everyday sound—and why we celebrate composer R. Murray Schafer on World Listening Day.