An illustration of a crocodile head

“The Crocodile,” Dostoevsky’s Weirdest Short Story

Why being eaten by a crocodile named Little Karl is really a lesson in the dangers of foreign capital.
Silhouette of man using mobile phone with a Qing Dynasty era painting in the background

Writing Online Fiction in China

Many amateur “fan fiction” writers on the Chinese internet use real history as a canvas for time-travel stories that often break the fourth wall.
A collage of jazz albums

How Jazz Albums Visualized a Changing America

In the 1950s, the covers of most jazz records featured abstract designs. By the late 1960s, album aesthetics better reflected the times and the musicians.
The Children's Reading Room at the 135th street Branch of the New York Public Library

Nella Larsen’s Lessons in Library School

Larsen’s novels were influenced by her training in the New York Public Library system, where she faced rigid ideas about the racial classification of knowledge.
Dorothy Richardson

Dorothy Richardson and the Stream of Consciousness

Though often associated with Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, “stream of consciousness” novels spilled first from the pen of British modernist Dorothy Richardson.
The Sympathizer

The Ethics of On-Screen Violence in The Sympathizer

Film scholar Sylvia Shin Huey Chong offers a feminist reflection on the theme of rape in Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer-winning novel The Sympathizer.
Louise de Kéroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth by Pierre Mignard I

Painting Race

The construction and expression of race by skin color literally became visible in Western art in the eighteenth century.
The Governess, 1855

The Governess, in Her Own Written Words

Although few women were employed as governesses in Victorian Britain, their potential for social and class transgression left Britons awash with worry.
Madonna and Child with Saint Jerome and Saint John the Baptist

How Renaissance Art Found Its Way to American Museums

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.
Ceiling of the Room of the giants in Palazzo Del Te, Mantua

Lessons in Mannerism at the Palazzo del Te

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.