How Fritz Lang’s Flight from Nazi Germany Shaped Hollywood
German expressionism--imported to Hollywood by Jewish exiles--brought a lasting tradition of shadows, duality, and mirroring to mainstream American cinema.
The Library That Walked Across Belgium
What two scholar-artists learned from taking ninety books on a very, very long walk.
Deep Mapping with Tim Robinson
By walking his way around an island off the coast of Ireland, the late artist broke with cartography's origins in marking ownership and conquest.
Do Series Books Turn Kids Off Adult-Approved Novels?
Goosebumps. The Baby-Sitters Club. Even Nancy Drew. In the 1990s, concerned educators wondered if series books were luring kids away from "literature."
The First Movie Kiss
The public fascination was so intense that fans soon started demanding live reenactments.
The Linguistics of Cooties (and Other Weird Things Kids Say)
The game of cooties lets children learn about the idea of contagion, but kid culture and wordplay aren't meant for adults.
Remembering Craig Gilbert and An American Family
The twelve-part documentary chronicling a family's dissolution was one of the most talked-about TV shows of the past fifty years.
America, Lost and Found at Wounded Knee
Stephen Vincent Benét’s lost epic “John Brown’s Body” envisions a nation sutured together after the Civil War, but fails to reckon with the war’s causes.
Yvonne Rainer, Postmodern Dance, and You
In the 1960s, a group of artists started experimenting with choreography based on ordinary movement and improvisation. Now your living room is the stage.
Casa Malaparte Is a Strangely Awesome House
Built by a fascist-turned-communist writer in the 1940s, it belongs to no one architectural style. But the views!