Before Palmer Penmanship
The creation and propagation of standard penmanship in the American education system is almost as old as the United States itself.
Archival Adventures in the Abernethy Collection
An archival collection shared by Middlebury College invites the curious to make connections across the history of American literature.
Elephant Executions
At the height of circus animal acts in the late nineteenth century, animals who killed their captors might be publicly executed for their “crimes.”
Time in a Box
Humans like to seal collections of ephemera in containers that they then hide in soon-to-be-forgotten places. Whither the time capsule?
Renewable Energy and Settler Colonialism
What can we learn from colonial legacies in pursuit of sustainable futures?
The Fashionable Tour: or, The First American Tourist Guidebook
Offering advice for visiting Sarasota Springs and other sights, Gideon Davison combined the travel narrative and road book to create a new type of travel guide.
What Convenience Stores Say About “Urban War Zones”
The Korean-owned corner shop in a Black neighborhood serves as shorthand for racial conflict, obscuring Los Angeles’s intersectional histories.
When All the English Had Tails
Where did the myth that English men (and probably women) were hiding tails beneath their clothing come from? And what was that about eggs?
Remembering Sun Yat Sen Abroad
Museums around the world honor the history of the revolutionary, but as Singapore’s Sun Yat Sen Nanyang Memorial Hall shows, those memories aren’t easy to read.
Taking Slavery West in the 1850s
Before the Civil War, pro-slavery forces in the South—particularly the future president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis—tried to extend their power westward.