two people knee before a white cross and flowers at a makeshift memorial for the five people killed by a gunman during a mass shooting at Club Q in Colorado

Red Flag Laws and the Colorado LGBTQ Club Shooting

What are red flag laws? Could they have prevented the killing at Club Q?
Homemade Air Fryer potato chips in a paper lined wire basket on dark background

The Fakelore of Food Origins

Where did potato chips come from? How about clams casino? Are the origin stories for these foods true, or do they fall into the category of “fakelore”?
Woman Drinking Coffee by Léon Étienne Tournes, part of the collection of the Gothenburg Museum of Art

The Swedish-American Coffee Tradition

For many Swedish immigrants to the United States, coffee was a key to hospitality and a way to signal prosperity.
Chinese astronauts from China's Manned Space Agency, left to right, Tang Hongbo, Nie Haisheng, and Liu Boming wave at a departure ceremony before launch of the Senzhou-12 at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center on June 17, 2021 in Jiuquan, Gansu province, China.

Challenging the Hegemoon: the Geopolitics of Space Infrastructure

Cooperative space initiatives between non-US powers such as China and South America are under-explored in scholarship and misunderstood in popular politics.
From the cover of the September, 1990 issue of The Angolite, a newspaper published by the inmates of Louisiana State Penitentiary

The Fatal Current: Electrocution as Progress? 

The electric chair was promoted as civilized and at the same time imbued with the technological sublime, the mystery of electrical power harnessed by humans.
The cover of the September, 1990 issue of The Angolite

Cold War Flames on US Soil: The Oakdale Prison Riot

In the 1980s, Cold War tensions led to thousands of Cubans languishing in American prisons, unable to be released or repatriated. Uprisings followed.
Mesa Verde National Park

Why Did They Leave the Pueblos?

The Ancestral Puebloans were driven from their homes in the American Southwest by a combination of factors rather than a single cause.
French lawyer and politician Simone Veil, the Minister of Health, addresses the French Senate in Paris, on the subject of abortion, 13th December 1974

The Manifesto of the 343

In a dramatic act of civil disobedience, more than three hundred French women publicly confessed to having had an illegal abortion.
Pictorial Map of the American Continent Following the Pan American Highway, c. 1930

The Pan-American Highway and the Darién Gap

The Pan-American Highway began a century ago with a vision of unfettered motor-vehicle access between Alaska and Tierra del Fuego. What happened to the dream?
Harper's Weekly, October 17, 1874 issue. Illustration by John A. Randolph of the scene of "A Colorado Tragedy."

The Colorado Cannibal

Prospector Alferd Packer, stranded in the San Juan Mountains, was forced to eat his companions to survive the brutal winter conditions. Or was he?