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Shelley's third novel, about the sole survivor of a global plague, draws on the now-outdated miasma theory of disease.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.
How “Female Fiends” Challenged Victorian Ideals
At a time when questions about women's rights in marriage roiled society, women readers took to the pages of cheap books about husband-murdering wives.
18th-Century Lovers Exchanged Portraits of Their Eyes
The miniature paintings celebrated and commemorated love at a time when public expressions of affection were uncouth.
Boccaccio’s Medicine
In the Decameron of Boccaccio, friends tell one another stories of love to while away the hours of quarantine.
How Emily Dickinson Wrestled with Darwinism
The current vogue for the Amherst poet needs to give credit to the way she readily examined her childhood ideas about fixed and immutable truth.