An Americanization Campaign image

Reading Between the Lines of an “Americanization” Campaign

Manuals used to teach “American” ways of homemaking in California c. 1915–1920 offer a rare opportunity to hear the voices of Mexican immigrant women.
Mausoleum of Augustus

Fascist Architecture in Rome

In Mussolini's Rome, the built environment struck a balance between the romance of the ancient past and the rationalism of avant-garde modernism.
Lunchroom in Chicago, 1896

How Gender Got on the Menu

As women began to be welcomed into restaurants, some started catering to what they perceived as “female tastes,” largely meaning the sugary stuff
The interior of the crater of Pico de Teide, Tenerife

The Canary Islands: First Stop of Imperialism

Before the New World, Europeans arrived in the Canary Islands and set the model for the enslavements, genocides, and radical ecological transformations to come.
Map illustrating legal erasure of roads in Fort Reno Park in 1943, following the clearance of Reno, a neighborhood.

Segregation by Eminent Domain

The Fifth Amendment allows the government to buy private property for the public good. That public good was long considered the expansion of white neighborhoods.
A uniformed member of the Nazi SA and a student of the Academy of Physical Exercise examine materials plundered from the library of Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, director of the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin on May 6, 1933.

90 Years On: The Destruction of the Institute of Sexual Science

In May 1933, Nazi-led student groups organized public burnings of "un-German" books, including those held in the library of the Institute for Sexual Science.
Patients stand in the Red Cross building in Walter Reed Hospital, c. WWI

The Birth of the Modern American Military Hospital

The founding of Walter Reed General Hospital at the beginning of the twentieth century marked a shift in medical care for military personnel and veterans.
From Paahao Press, November 1943

How Prisoners Contributed During World War II

Prisoners not only supported the war effort in surprising ways during World War II, they fought and died in it.
From the cover of The Black Mask magazine, June 1, 1923

The Gumshoes Who Took On the Klan

In the pages of Black Mask magazine, the Continental Op and Race Williams fought the KKK even as they shared its love of vigilante justice.
Annie Edson Taylor, 1902

American Daredevils

The nineteenth-century commitment to thrilling an audience embodied an emerging synergy of public performance, collective experience, and individual agency.