Robert Hayden’s Relatable Fatigue
There’s a constant attention to the burdens of history in Robert Hayden’s poems. Even amid the beauties of life, the ghosts of the past linger.
Sick of Streaming? Try This Really Long Cult Novel
Marguerite Young's Miss MacIntosh, My Darling is a dense fusion of poetry and prose. One critic says it's unjustifiably forgotten.
Everyday Life, Revisited—with Bernadette Mayer’s Memory
In the poet’s work, the small and ordinary rise to the level of heroic adventures. If we value human life, then we should value what makes up a life.
How Terrence McNally Reimagined the Danse Macabre
The centerpiece of the prize-winning Love! Valor! Compassion! is a rehearsal for an affirming staging of Swan Lake—in drag.
Hollywood Cast Laurette Luez as a One-Size-Fits-All “Exotic”
Like many actresses of her day, Laurette Luez was expected to be a beautiful siren in skimpy clothing who could be from almost anywhere—just not here.
Disease Theory in Mary Shelley’s The Last Man
Shelley's third novel, about the sole survivor of a global plague, draws on the now-outdated miasma theory of disease.
COVID-19, Locusts, and Elephant Minds
Well-researched stories from The Atlantic, The Guardian, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.
Why Modern Women Got All Colonial in the 1920s
Flappers stole the headlines for their hemlines and wild ways. But were some of them stitching samplers in the meantime?
The Masculinization of Little Lord Fauntleroy
The 1936 movie Little Lord Fauntleroy broke box office records, only to be toned down and masculinized amid cultural fears of the “sissified” male.