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Black and white headshot of author Livia Gershon

Livia Gershon

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.

Hurricane Katrina drawing

Helping Kids After Harvey

Right now, there’s an outpouring of support for families displaced by Harvey, but what happens after the waters recede in Texas?
Unite the Right flags

White Supremacists and the Rhetoric of “Tyranny”

White supremacists have declared themselves in danger of losing essential rights. It's the kind of argument racists have been making for a long time.
American middle school

The Invention of Middle School

In the 1960s, one scholar writes, there was no grand vision behind the idea of a middle school. The problem that the model sought to solve was segregation.
Drinking at the cafe

When is Public Drinking Cool?

The Wall Street Journal reports that property developers are pushing to allow public drinking on city streets, hoping to encourage a “lively atmosphere.”
Boy biking

How World War I Put Boys on Bikes

The first modern bicycles were for adults. Ads for boys’ bikes drew from, and fed into, a changing vision of boyhood during World War I.
JSTOR Daily Suggested Readings

Suggested Readings: American Fascism, North Korea’s Nukes, and Diet Soda

Well-researched stories from around the web that bridge the gap between news and scholarship. Brought to you each ...
Dressmaker strike

Does Disunity Hurt the Left?

Does disunity harm a political party? An account of the organizing by unemployed workers in the 1930s may offer some clues.
Christy Matthewson

How Baseball Became a Profession

Sports historian Steven A. Riess writes that the process that transformed baseball into a high-paid profession began in the 1860s.
Atomic Bomb and Mushroom Cloud over Rural Landscape

How Do We Teach Children About Existential Threats?

In 1986, in the midst of the Cold War, psychologists set out to find answers about how to talk to kids about nuclear war.
Little girl reading a book at park

Is Your Kids’ Summer Reading Actually Helping Them?

Some studies have found that simply getting kids to pick up a book during the summer may not actually help that much. What actually works?
Margaret Haley

The 19th-Century Activist Who Tried to Transform Teaching

Margaret Haley argued for unionization, insisting that “there is no possible conflict between the interest of the child and the interest of the teacher.”
JSTOR Daily Suggested Readings

Suggested Readings: Fake Surgery, Unending Plastic, and the Enduring Jane Austen

Well-researched stories from around the web that bridge the gap between news and scholarship. Brought to you each Tuesday from the editors of JSTOR Daily.
Mexican-American studies protest

How Arizona Banned Mexican-American Studies

An Arizona court is hearing a case that could roll back a 2010 ban on teaching Mexican-American studies in the state.
Obamacare signing

Access to Care Is Only Part of Public Health

While the U.S. debate over healthcare has been focused on Obamacare, we’ve been ignoring some other important aspects of health policy.
WPA mural masculinity

What Kind of Work is “Masculine”?

What's the fate of "masculinity" in a world where it’s hard for many men to achieve personal success? It's a question we asked in the 1930s, too.
Nixon and Daniel Patrick Moynihan

When “Welfare Reform” Meant Expanding Benefits

50 years ago, Republican politicians proposed, and sometimes won, welfare reform programs that were actually more comprehensive.
Woman looking at men whispering

The Pioneers in the Fight against Sexual Harassment

Some of the first precedent-setting sexual harassment cases were filed by women who were African-American, working class, or both
Fireworks Brooklyn Bridge

When Fireworks Told Stories

In Europe between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries, fireworks displays were performances that told a story or symbolized real-world battles.
Granger poster

What’s So Bad About A Monopoly?

Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods has drawn the ire of a new antitrust movement, which argues against the dangers of industry monopoly.
Fishing Victorian

How the Victorians Went Camping

If you’re going camping this summer, will you rough it on a wilderness hike, or relax in a ...
Barbed wire

How Barbed Wire Changed Farming Forever

On June 25, 1867, Lucien B. Smith of Ohio received the first patent for barbed wire. Within a few decades, barbed wire transformed the American West.
Birmingham trainyard

A Precedent for Today’s Political Violence

Illegal violence has always been a political tool, often serving the interests of the powerful. A historian looks at the case of 1930s Birmingham, Alabama.
Businessmen

The Secret Gay Business Network of Midcentury America

In the 1940s and 50s, a life of business travel represented a sense of freedom for gay men that would have been impossible in earlier decades.
DC African-American classroom, 1942

One Weird Trick for Raising Teachers’ Credentials

What's behind a drop in secondary school teachers' credentials? The profession has widened, but neither the its prestige, nor its pay has kept up.
Dagwood

What Father’s Day Jokes Really Mean

Comic strip dads give us some sociological clues into how views surrounding masculinity and fatherhood have changed.