Betsy Golden Kellem

Betsy Golden Kellem

Betsy Golden Kellem is a scholar of the unusual. A historian and media attorney, she has written for The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, Atlas Obscura, The Washington Post and Slate, and serves on the board of the Barnum Museum and the Circus Historical Society.

Scene from 'Mischievous Matt,' Bracebridge Hemyng (Jack Harkway's), new story in No. 487 Frank Leslie's Boys' and Girls' Weekly

In the Limelight

Dime Novels and Story Papers for Kids

The rise of popular literature for children put a story, a role model, and a set of values in a young boy’s pocket.

From One-Third of a Nation

In the Limelight

The Living Newspaper Speaks

Scripted from front-page news, the Federal Theatre Project’s Living Newspaper plays were part entertainment, part protest, and entirely educational.

Dance marathon, April 20, 1923

In the Limelight

Dance Marathons

In the early twentieth century, dance marathons were an entire industry—and a surprisingly hazardous business.

The Nimatron

In the Limelight

The Nimatron

The world’s first video game made its debut at the Westinghouse pavilion at the New York World's Fair in 1939. Read all about it!

Actors Dennis Morgan and Betty Furness rehearsing a kissing scene for their movie Mama Steps Out, 1937

In the Limelight

The 1918 Flu Pandemic’s Impact on Movie Theaters

With WWI coming to end, 1918 should have been a good year for the movies. Then along came influenza.

Editors' Picks

Politics & History

Thurgood Marshall

In a speech marking the bicentennial of the US Constitution, Marshall argued that its framers intentionally inscribed slavery into the American economy.

Politics & History

Building the Olympic Games

A close connection between architecture, athletics, and the urban fabric is central to the idea of the modern Olympic Games.

Politics & History

Policing the Holocaust in Paris

Unlike in the rest of Nazi-occupied Europe, the arrest of Jewish people was largely in the hands of ordinary policemen in France, especially in Paris.

Dorothy Richardson and the Stream of Consciousness

Though often associated with Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, “stream of consciousness” novels spilled first from the pen of British modernist Dorothy Richardson.

Education & Society

Endangered: North American Cricket

Cricket was played and cheered in the United States and Canada in the nineteenth century. Why did it fall out of favor with sports fans?