Connie Converse Wasn’t Just a Folk Singer. She Was a Scholar, Too.
The disappeared—but recently rediscovered—folk musician edited and published in academic journals under the name Elizabeth Converse.
It’s Not as Good to Be the King as It Used to Be
The trial and execution of Charles I irrevocably sundered the tradition of a divine, anointed king.
Workers of the World, Take PTO!
Vacations in the Soviet Union were hardly idylls spent with one’s dearest. Everything about them—from whom you traveled with to what you ate—was state determined.
Mao Zedong: Reader, Librarian, Revolutionary?
Before becoming leader of communist China, Mao was an ardent library patron and then worked as a library assistant.
Fruit Geopeelitics: America’s Banana Republics
The one-way movement of wealth in the banana trade contributed to the political and economic conditions that challenged its hegemony after World War II.
Clemencia López and the Philippine Struggle for Freedom
López’s gender and appearance helped her contribute to anti-imperial and suffrage movements in a way her male peers couldn’t.
Black Power on British TV
International television coverage of the American Civil Rights struggle was critical in the construction of racial identity and experience in postwar Britain.
Isaac Babel’s Red Cavalry
Set during the Polish-Soviet War of 1919–1920, Babel’s novel captured the indiscriminate violence and injustice of warfare.
The Artists Who Hated the Eiffel Tower
Now an icon of modernism and avant-garde design, the Eiffel Tower was once seen by Parisian writers and artists as a blight on the cityscape.
How Did Amy Robsart Die?
Five centuries later, we’re still not sure whether Robsart, wife of Robert Dudley, fell accidentally, was pushed, or threw herself down the stairs to her death.