Edward S. Curtis: Romance vs. Reality
In a famous 1910 photograph "In a Piegan Lodge," a small clock appears between two seated Native American men. In a later print, the clock is missing.
The Bright Future of Bangladesh: Researching The Storm
An interview with Arif Anwar, whose debut novel covers sixty years of Bengali history in five love stories.
Amazon’s Mechanical Turk has Reinvented Research
Online services like Amazon's "Mechanical Turk" have ushered in a golden age in survey research. But is it ethical for researchers to use them?
How Female Singer-Songwriters Taught Us to Love in the 70s
Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon offered a way to imagine more modern ideals of romance and sexual relationships.
The Magic Lantern Shows that Influenced Modern Horror
Eighteenth and early nineteenth century audiences were delighted and horrified by these spectral apparitions conjured in dark rooms.
My Summer of Watching Little Women
What the author learned from her mother, a feminist academic doing a research project on film adaptations of Little Women.
Kendrick Lamar and Black Israelism
Kendrick Lamar namechecked Black Israelism on his last album. The history behind the religious doctrine dates back at least to the eighteenth century.
How Rotten Tomatoes Changed the Film Industry
In 2008, a panel of film critics gathered to talk about the future of film reviewing as a profession in the age of the internet.
What This 19th-Century Poet Knew About the Future
The Anthropocene requires a new history to explain how humans transform the planet. The work of poet John Clare is a good place to start.
The Fairytale Language of the Brothers Grimm
How the Brothers Grimm went hunting for fairytales, accidentally changed the course of historical linguistics, and kickstarted a new field of scholarship in folklore.