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 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 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.
Painting Race
The construction and expression of race by skin color literally became visible in Western art in the eighteenth century.
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.
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.
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.
Gonna Make You a (Bangsawan) Star
The bangsawan theater in early twentieth-century Malaya offered women a chance to build a public identity beyond marriage and motherhood.
The Princess Brides of the Malay Annals
Narratives about women as gift objects in classical literature show the power dynamics of trade and diplomacy in the early modern Malay world.
Imperial Humo(u)r
Imperialism, experienced as both royal subject and new colonizer, has been a key element in the development, continuity, and disruption of American humor.