Elements of Design: Spotlight on Color

Color, like line, shape, texture, and the other elements of art and design, communicates meaning and creates visually compelling experiences. Here's how.

What Can Native American People in Prison Teach Us About Community and Art?

An exploration of creativity, ingenuity, and resilience using the American Prison Newspapers collection and JSTOR. The second curriculum guide in this series.

Exploring Images In (and Out of) Context

When you think you understand an image, ask yourself what contextual information might be missing.
U.S. soldiers reading books in a YMCA library

Why Learn to Read?

The value placed on literacy has changed over time, shifting from a nineteenth-century moral imperative to a twentieth-century production necessity.
An advertisement by the Partnership for a Drug Free America

The Story Behind “This is Your Brain on Drugs”

How did the campaign behind the Partnership for a Drug Free America’s iconic commercials develop, and why were its products so memorable?
Studio portrait of Mourning Dove

Christine Quintasket

Better known by the pen name Mourning Dove, Quintasket was a leader and activist who used her position as a public intellectual to fight for Colville rights.
Part of a painting by Paul Sandby of Reading Abbey Gateway

The Reading Abbey Girls’ School

This all-girls boarding school in England produced a generation of accomplished female writers in the eighteenth century.
A dead whale being cleaned by whalers

So You Plan to Teach Moby Dick

The study of Melville’s novel is enhanced by contextualizing it with primary and secondary sources related to the American sperm whaling industry.
A birthday cake on a pastel background

Today: The Best Day of the Year to be Born

Children who are oldest in their class—those born in early autumn—enjoy both a physical and an academic advantage.
Three women and five men gathered in a room which opens up to classical architecture, the group on the left is making music while the others are engaged in conversation; representing the continent of Europe.

Musical Myth-Busting: Teaching Music History with JSTOR Daily

Harnessing the power of quirk to engage students and inspire research in an online learning environment.