Livia Gershon is a freelance writer in Nashua, New Hampshire. Her writing has appeared in publications including Salon, Aeon Magazine and the Good Men Project. Contact her on Twitter @liviagershon.
Medieval European elites inherited the classical concept of friendship as something possible only for men. Christine de Pizan and Margery Kempe beg to differ.
Out-of-the-ordinary mental states are the goal of many religious rituals, but they’re also important in “playful” situations like kids’ games and fraternal hazing.
As one family’s story reveals, labor organizing and the development of a co-op for waste collection has improved conditions for precariously employed workers in India.
Fears of AI often focus on domination by algorithm-powered capitalism, but science fiction once used societies ruled by computers as analogs for communism.
There were compensations for the hardscrabble life of the Gold Rush—like monkeys and parrots brought to California for companionship and entertainment.
The term “white trash” once was used to disparage poor white people. In the Civil Rights era, its meaning shifted to support business-friendly racial politics.
The neoliberal politics that developed in the 1970s created financial instability and fragmented cultural markets, helping to pave the way for Trumpism.
American newspapers portrayed members of immigrant groups as potential anarchists, linking the ideology to other anxieties and stereotypes about foreigners.
The popular musical poses Alexander Hamilton as a symbol of the value of immigrants brought to America, but over time, his party became increasingly xenophobic.
For both the Shawnee of North America and the Sámi of northern Europe, alcohol provided by colonizing powers was a symbolic and practical political issue.
