Miné Okubo

The Contested Legacy of Miné Okubo’s World War II Art

Okubo’s art showed the work of Japanese Americans forced to rehabilitate both the “enemy alien” on the home front and the enemy in the Pacific after the war.
Bay Area Renaissance Festival in Tampa Florida, 2011

Reasons for Re-Enacting at the Renaissance Faire

Why do we love donning period costumes and re-enacting our history through mock battles, pioneer villages, and Renaissance Faires?
A collage of photographs by Doris Ulmann

The “Vanishing Types” of Doris Ulmann

As her extensive body of work shows, Ulmann felt the loss of an imagined simpler time and tried to preserve it with her camera.
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Barnhill_from_above_-_geograph.org.uk_-_2230480.jpg

Jura: George Orwell’s Scottish Hideaway

Discover the austere island retreat where Big Brother was born.

JSTOR Daily: What I Learned

Go behind the scenes with our writers as we celebrate JSTOR Daily’s tenth anniversary!
Beata Beatrix by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, ca 1864-70.

Becoming Beatrice

Dante adored her so much that he cast her as his guide in the Divine Comedy. But who was Beatrice Portinari?
The covers of three Chinese Science Fiction novels

What’s so Chinese About Science Fiction from China?

Commentators have latched onto science fiction to explain all manner of social phenomena in China, from unemployment and the economy to air pollution.
Concert of Apollo and the Muses on Mount Helicon by Maerten van Heemskerck

A Brief History of the Muses

Scholar Alison Habens tells us more about the Greek goddesses who provided divine inspiration for ancient poets.
Poster for the film The Deadly Mantis, 1957

The War on Bugs

In the 1950s, supersized insects were the villains in a rash of big-screen horror movies. What did those monstrous roaches represent, and how were they vanquished?
Ludicrum chiromanticum Praetorii engraved title page emblematizes chiromancy's practical and philosophical components. In the center of the page a pair of hands flank a face; planetary symbols adorn their key features.

In the Palm of Your Hand

Palm reading, also known as palmistry or chiromancy, has fascinated us as a practice and a party trick for centuries.