A couple listening to their hi-fi system in a specially converted music room, 1974.

Making Music Male

How did record collecting and stereophile culture come to exclude women as consumers and experts?

The Tricky Sentimentality of Lan Cao’s Monkey Bridge

The Vietnamese American literary classic undermines the readers’ expectations of a redemptive narrative of immigration and memory.
A collage of posters for popular Bollywood films

How the Indian Middle Class Came to Define Bollywood

The Hindi film industry has undergone tremendous change since the late 1940s, reflecting India's shift from a socialistic republic to a privatized democracy.
Members of Tjapukai Dance Theatre

Reggae in Australia

In the 1970s, Willie Brim, a member of the Buluwai people, learned about Peter Tosh and Bob Marley from hippies who lived near his community. And the joy began.
Libyan Sibyles by Michelangeo

Delts Don’t Lie

Renaissance artists routinely used men as models for their depictions of female subjects, yet only the musculatures of Michelangelo tell that story.
A drawing of three chairs by Thomas Chippendale

The Shakespeare of English Furniture?

Not much is known about eighteenth-century furniture designer Thomas Chippendale, making his life and work perfect for mythologizing after his death.
A woman at a desk with digital windows flowing behind her

Digital Overload

How can contemporary biographers contend with the explosion of materials at their disposal?
J. Marion Sims: Gynecologic Surgeon, from "The History of Medicine"

Legacies Lost and Found

Say Anarcha tells the story of the enslaved women experimented on by a self-aggrandizing gynecologist. Its related online archive aims to reinvent the nature of bibliography.
An image from the Wasmuth Portfolio drawn by Marion Mahoney

Marion Mahony Griffin, Prairie School Architect

A founding member of the Prairie School, Mahony defined the movement’s now-familiar aesthetic for a global audience.
Hilda Doolittle, 1921

Remembering H.D.

Hilda Doolittle, aka H.D., had her champions among modern scholars, but she's still often left off modern poetry course syllabi.