The Religious Experience of Antiques Roadshow
What has made this slow, quiet television show about antiques the sleeper hit of PBS? One scholar describes the show as enacting near-religious rituals.
When Harriet Beecher Stowe and George Eliot Were Penpals
These 19th-century novelists might seem to have little in common. But for 11 years they wrote each other letters, forging an unusual literary friendship.
The Legendary Language of the Appalachian “Holler”
Is the unique Appalachian dialect the preserved language of Elizabethan England? Left over from Scots-Irish immigrants? Or something else altogether?
How a Beloved Musical Became a Cold War Weapon
The 1962 film The Music Man was seen as so all-American that some hoped it would help win the Cold War by transmitting American values abroad.
Friendship, Stonehenge, and Making it to College
Well-researched stories from the Guardian, the Conversation, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.
How Storytelling Heals
Illness can challenge the notion of the self and disrupt patients' narratives about their own lives. Some scholars suggest that storytelling can help.
Meat Allergies, McCarthyism, and World Leadership
Well-researched stories from the Conversation, Atlas Obscura, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.
What Exactly Is Jane Austen’s Sanditon?
An unfinished, fragmentary Austen novel is being adapted for television. Can we ever know what Austen meant for this book to eventually become?
Maroon Societies, Down Syndrome, and Food Justice
New books and scholarship from academic publishers.
Summertime Poems and Paintings
Summery poems by Mary Oliver, Matthew Zapruder, and other poets, along with seasonal paintings by Claude Monet and other artists.