What if Robinson Crusoe was a Girl?
In nineteenth-century England, stranding a (fictitious) girl on an island made a good argument for imperialism.
Canada’s Most Controversial Novel
Marian Engel's 1976 novel Bear is famous for its embrace of bestiality, but it also offers a commentary on humans' relationship with the natural world.
Laughing Matters
Sophia McClennen, author of Trump Was a Joke, discusses how political satire decoded the chaos of the forty-fifth presidency.
A Literary Hit Job: Julian Hawthorne Takes Down Margaret Fuller
Fuller’s works, and works about her, sold very well until Hawthorne cast her as a “fallen woman” in his biography of his parents.
Punitive Portraits of the Renaissance
The Italian legal tradition called for the public display of a humiliating—but recognizable—portrait of the disgraced person.
The Cutting-Edge Cartoons of Winsor McCay
A prolific, meticulous artist, McCay created characters and storyscapes that inspired generations of cartoonists and animators.
Elena Guro and the Cubo-Futurism Group
Informed by the philosophies of the Futurists, Guro's painting and poetry represented an era of experimentation and innovation in Russian art.
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.
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.