We Dream of Genie
In antebellum America, the voyages and adventures of Sinbad and Aladdin in the Arabian Nights nourished a young nation's dreams.
Inventing an American Indian Rebellion
False rumors of an alleged Wampanoag uprising on Nantucket Island in 1738 were turned into a story of an Indian rebellion thwarted via a Boston newspaper.
The Post-Civil War Opioid Crisis
Many servicemen became addicted to opioids prescribed during the war. Society viewed their dependency as a lack of manliness.
“What to the Slave is The Fourth of July?”: Annotated
On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass gave a Fourth of July speech that became his most famous public oration.
From Handcuffs to Rainbows: Queer in the Military
The US military has done an about face on LGBTQ+ rights in just over a decade.
Declaration of Conscience: Annotated
In June 1950, Senator Margaret Chase Smith criticized Joseph McCarthy's anticommunist campaigns. She was the first of his colleagues to challenge his Red Scare rhetoric.
Coming Out Against The Vietnam War
The war radicalized many draft-age men, gay as well as straight. They helped normalize certain expressions of homosexuality while trying to avoid the draft.
Family and Revolution in the Borderlands
Paula Carmona, the founding mother of the magonista movement, was all but erased from Mexico’s revolutionary history.
The Debtor’s Blues: Music and Forced Labor
Debt peonage is often associated with agricultural labor, but in the early twentieth century, Black musicians found themselves trapped in its exploitative cycle.
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.