Lester Young playing at a charity concert held at the Philharmonic Hall, 1953

The Scholars Charting Black Music’s Timeline: Douglas Henry Daniels & Paul Austerlitz

Daniels and Austerlitz tell the story of jazz, from its origins in the blues, gospel, and funk to its impact on music around the world.
Close-up Vintage Wooden Hourglass on Wooden Background, Sand running through the bulbs for measuring the passing time

Editors’ Picks of 2022

Poetry, Polonius, and Prison: a collection of this year’s greatest hits from JSTOR Daily.
An illustration of mermaids from Puck, 1911, by Gordon Ross

Mermaids: Myth, Kith and Kin

Ariel epitomizes mermaids now, but these beguiling creatures precede her by millennia, sparking imaginations the world over with a hearty embrace of otherness.
An image from a manuscript from the 9th century AH/AD 15th century (Safavid dynasty)

Music and Gender in Medieval Islamic Court

As Islam spread across the Arabian peninsula and the Mesopotamian region, it changed the relationship between gender and musicianship.

How Muppets Add Meaning to a Mass Media Christmas

The Muppet Christmas Carol works hard to get people to engage with Charles Dickens, but its real success is becoming part of the holiday itself.

Edmund Dulac’s Fairy Tales Go to War

One of the best-known illustrators of the “golden age of children’s gift books,” Dulac was also a subtle purveyor of Allied propaganda during the Great War.
US infantrymen rest during their drive to follow armored units south from Normandy into Brittany, Villedieu, France. Some men sit and lean their rifles against a stone wall, while others lay on the ground, resting their heads on their backpacks.

Books on the Battlefield

During World War II, GIs battled boredom with novels provided by the Armed Service Division, raising questions about the “feminizing” effect of reading.
From the cover of Henry and June by Anaïs Nin

June Miller: More Than An Erotic Muse?

Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller, two writers in search of sexual and literary inspiration, modeled their most seductive characters on June Mansfield Miller.
A newspaper vendor reads an edition of the sports colum of a newspaper printed in Russian July 31, 2001 in downtown Baku, Azerbaijan. In accordance with a decree issued by President Heydar Aliyev last June, Azerbaijan had to change all its Azeric writing, including books, newspapers, and street signs from the old Soviet-era Cyrillic to Latin script on August 1.

Alpha. Bravo. Cyrillic.

Free from Russian dictates over language usage and education, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan prepare to embrace Latin lettering. It’s the latest chapter in the region’s fraught history of alphabet reform.
Nakagin Capsule Tower in 2021

Tearing Down Nakagin Capsule Tower

Japanese Metabolists argued that architecture should be adaptable, changing as a city changed. Why, then, is this icon of Metabolism being dismantled?