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From the cover of Unstaged Grief: Musicals and Mourning in Midcentury America by Jake Johnson.
Arts & Culture

The Hidden Grief of American Musicals

Musicology professor Jake Johnson argues that beneath the bright songs and happy endings of midcentury musicals lay the grief and anxieties of postwar America.

Archive Adventures

Abstract geometric blue and red polka dot background covering a series of Atlas images from a 1776 atlas

The Atlas Behind the Revolution

While George Washington struggled to obtain reliable maps, British readers could consult this remarkable 1776 atlas.

Plant of the Month

How the Himalayan Blackberry Took Over the Pacific Northwest

The tangled history of an invasive plant and a scientist’s troubling quest to engineer a more efficient natural world.

Cabinet of Curiosities

Conolly's Folly, built in 1740 by laborers hired during an earlier Irish famine, anticipated the make-work projects of the Great Famine a century later.

The Ghost Roads of Ireland’s Great Famine

Starving families were forced to earn aid by carving roads through rock, fields, and mountainsides.

Reveal Digital Collections

Source: https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.42478893

Rollerena: New York’s Fairy Godmother

A newly digitized archive traces a roller-skating queer icon from Pride marches and discos to AIDS activism.

Most Recent

From left to right: Jamil Jan Kochai, Michael Deagler, Danielle Evans, Christine Schutt, Thomas Bernhard, Catherine Niu.
Roundup

Six Stories with First-Person Narrators

Distinctive voices and unforgettable perspectives, by Danielle Evans, Jamil Jan Kochai, Catherine Niu, Thomas Bernhard, Christine Schutt, and Michael Deagler.
Image from the book Kim, by Rudyard Kipling, illustrated by J. L. Kipling, 1901
Education & Society

Rudyard Kipling’s Buddhism

Long read as an imperial novel, Kim also reflects Britain's changing ideas about Buddhist thought and spiritual practice.

More Stories

Archive Adventures

Abstract geometric blue and red polka dot background covering a series of Atlas images from a 1776 atlas

The Atlas Behind the Revolution

While George Washington struggled to obtain reliable maps, British readers could consult this remarkable 1776 atlas.

Plant of the Month

How the Himalayan Blackberry Took Over the Pacific Northwest

The tangled history of an invasive plant and a scientist’s troubling quest to engineer a more efficient natural world.

Cabinet of Curiosities

Conolly's Folly, built in 1740 by laborers hired during an earlier Irish famine, anticipated the make-work projects of the Great Famine a century later.

The Ghost Roads of Ireland’s Great Famine

Starving families were forced to earn aid by carving roads through rock, fields, and mountainsides.

Reveal Digital Collections

Source: https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.42478893

Rollerena: New York’s Fairy Godmother

A newly digitized archive traces a roller-skating queer icon from Pride marches and discos to AIDS activism.

Trending

JSTOR Collections

Rediscovering The Jewish Gazette

A rare archive reveals how Ireland’s Jewish community navigated identity, culture, and rising antisemitism in the 1930s.
micro apartment
Arts & Culture

Dorm Life Forever? The Problem with Micro-Living

Research suggests compact housing may normalize economic insecurity rather than address the roots of the affordability crisis.
An illustration of someone eating from a plate
Education & Society

The Hidden Rules of Fine Dining

Research shows restaurant critics reward technique, creativity, and authenticity differently, shaping which cuisines earn prestige and higher prices.

Long Reads

JSTOR Collections

Rediscovering The Jewish Gazette

A rare archive reveals how Ireland’s Jewish community navigated identity, culture, and rising antisemitism in the 1930s.
A collage featuring the cover of the Battle of Dorking
Arts & Culture

The Evolution of Britain’s Invasion Fiction

How fears of foreign plots and national decline moved from nineteenth-century novels into today's thrillers.
Source: https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.40754518?seq=22
Reveal Digital Collections

The Oral Histories of the AIDS Crisis

The voices of artists and activists illuminate the human experience behind the AIDS epidemic.
Preaching to the Birds by Fritz Eichenberg
Art & Art History

Fritz Eichenberg’s Art of Human Connection

A master printmaker defended the emotional power of representational art in an increasingly mechanized world.

Editors' Picks

Arts & Culture

Rebecca Lehmann on Breaking the Rules of Poetry

An interview with writer and poet Rebecca Lehmann, who finds splendid things can follow when she stretches the rules of craft.
Politics & History

The Voting Rights Act 1965: Annotated

The passing of the Voting Rights Act in August 1965 prohibited the use of Jim Crow laws and discriminatory tests to disenfranchise Black voters.
Science & Technology

A Practical Machine: The Wright Brothers in Dayton

Orville and Wilbur Wright wanted to create a practical machine—not a novelty or a gimmick—and they accomplished that at Ohio’s Huffman Prairie on October 5, 1905.
Science & Technology

Jane Goodall

An intellectual powerhouse and dedicated conservationist, Goodall showed generations of humans how to engage with—and take care of—the natural world.
Arts & Culture

From Oriental Riviera to Global Asia: Hong Kong in Travel Posters

A collection of travel posters shared via JSTOR by Hong Kong Baptist University highlights Hong Kong’s unique place in the global imagination over the decades.

Quirky History

Miss May Hibbert displays two of her musquash or muskrats at Mears Ghyll Fur Farm in Caton, England

The Rise and Fall of Britain’s Muskrat Empire

A fur-farming experiment unleashed a prolific rodent—and sparked one of the rare successful eradications of an invasive species.
An engraving depicting visitors admiring a group of African mammals, taxidermied exhibits at Bullock's Museum, in Piccadilly, London, England, circa 1815.

Empire on Display: The Rise of Taxidermy

New preservation methods transformed animal remains into persuasive displays that circulated widely in museums and popular culture.
Illustration from a woman standing on a soapbox speaking into a microphone, 1944

The Golden Age of the American Soapbox

Across the country, impromptu speakers drew crowds and arrests alike, turning public oratory into a defining feature of civic life.

Collections on JSTOR

Rediscovering The Jewish Gazette

A rare archive reveals how Ireland’s Jewish community navigated identity, culture, and rising antisemitism in the 1930s.

Inside the Newspapers of Iran’s Revolution

An expansive digital archive captures how journalists, satirists, and tabloids documented revolutionary Iran in real time.

Preserving the Art of Ed Aulerich-Sugai

An artist’s work is traced through memory, stewardship, and decades of care.

Reading Lists

Colorful landscape with colorful mountains and sun

Rights of Nature: A Reading List

What would it mean for rivers, forests, and animals to have legal rights? A global movement is rethinking law’s relationship to nature.
Landscape garden showing the foot path, lawn area, benches, water feature and pavilion on background. This sketch created, drawn in pen and marker.

Landscape Architecture: A Reading List

A survey of classic and contemporary works revealing how cities, materials, power, and ecology shape landscapes—and how design can create healthier, more just places.
A view of the landscape seen along the Golden Gate Trail in the Paradise area of Mount Rainier National Park, Washington.

The Promise and Problems of Public Lands: A Reading List

Discover key research on U.S. public lands through scholarly works exploring conservation, Indigenous knowledge, and public policy.

Partner Posts

Tonka beans

Tonka Bean: The Tale of a Contested Commodity

The rise and fall of the sweet-smelling seeds of Dipteryx odorata stands in stark contrast to the tree’s lasting presence in global markets.
An old oyster bed now lying exposed on a beach in South Carolina. The oysters are no longer alive, but many shells remain in their original position.

Shucking the Past: Can Oysters Thrive Again?

Dredging and pollution devastated the once-bountiful reefs. Careful science may help bring them back.
An image of magnetic loops on the sun, captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory on July 18, 2012.

“Space Tornadoes” Could Cause Geomagnetic Storms

But these phenomena, spun off ejections from the Sun, aren’t easy to study.

Unlike already established symbols such as the peony, peach, or pomegranate, the mango had no preexisting meaning in China and, importantly, no association with emperors or divinity.

When Mao’s Mango Mania Took Over China

Annotations

The Fifteenth Amendment and its results, drawn by G.F. Kahl, 1870

The Fifteenth Amendment: Annotated

The brevity of the Fifteenth Amendment of the US Constitution belies its impact on American voting rights.
Copy of the signature page of the Declaration of Sentiments, 1848

“Declaration of Sentiments”: Annotated

The document that came out of the 1848 Seneca Falls Convention extended the long-lived and hard-fought movement for women’s rights in the United States.
Bill of Rights, 1791

The Bill of Rights: Annotated

Proposed as a compromise to ensure the ratification of the new US Constitution, the Bill of Rights has become a critical protector of civil liberties.

Teaching Resources

From left to right: Jamil Jan Kochai, Michael Deagler, Danielle Evans, Christine Schutt, Thomas Bernhard, Catherine Niu.

Six Stories with First-Person Narrators

Distinctive voices and unforgettable perspectives, by Danielle Evans, Jamil Jan Kochai, Catherine Niu, Thomas Bernhard, Christine Schutt, and Michael Deagler.
A collection of objects from the civil war

Celebrating the Fourth of July

Take a moment to contemplate the history and complexity of Independence Day, American Style.
From left to right: Audre Lorde, Chen Chen, Richard Siken, Adrienne Rich, Eileen Myles, and Ocean Vuong.

10 Modern and Contemporary Poems by Queer Writers

Love poems, political declarations, lyrical confessions, and formal experiments by Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Ocean Vuong, Eileen Myles, and more.

Reveal Digital Collections

Source: https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.40754518?seq=22

The Oral Histories of the AIDS Crisis

The voices of artists and activists illuminate the human experience behind the AIDS epidemic.

Preserving the Art of Ed Aulerich-Sugai

An artist’s work is traced through memory, stewardship, and decades of care.
Frank O'Hara

12 Poems by Frank O’Hara

Plus his manifesto on Personism and writings about O’Hara by Ted Berrigan, Joseph LeSueur, and Joe Brainard.

Roundup

From left to right: Jamil Jan Kochai, Michael Deagler, Danielle Evans, Christine Schutt, Thomas Bernhard, Catherine Niu.

Six Stories with First-Person Narrators

Distinctive voices and unforgettable perspectives, by Danielle Evans, Jamil Jan Kochai, Catherine Niu, Thomas Bernhard, Christine Schutt, and Michael Deagler.
A collection of objects from the civil war

Celebrating the Fourth of July

Take a moment to contemplate the history and complexity of Independence Day, American Style.
From left to right: Audre Lorde, Chen Chen, Richard Siken, Adrienne Rich, Eileen Myles, and Ocean Vuong.

10 Modern and Contemporary Poems by Queer Writers

Love poems, political declarations, lyrical confessions, and formal experiments by Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Ocean Vuong, Eileen Myles, and more.

Natural Science

A photograph of an atomic bomb umbrella detonation as part of Operation Hardtack in the Enewetak/Bikini/Johnnston Island Area.

The Nuclear Test Site That Advanced Oceanography

A postwar expedition to Bikini Atoll helped confirm Darwin’s theory of coral reef formation and reshaped the future of marine science.
From the cover of Sidereus Nuncius

Anatomy of a Galileo Forgery

It was hailed as a historic discovery—until a trail of clues revealed one of the rare-book world's most audacious scams.
An illustration of a fossilized claw from Megalonyx Jeffersonii, a giant ground sloth, found in a cave in Greenbriar County, West Virginia.

Jefferson’s Fossils

What can Thomas Jefferson’s mistaken ideas about fossils tell us about science and belief in the early United States?

Sustainability & The Environment

John Steinbeck, 1935.

Returning to Steinbeck’s Sea of Cortez

A literary classic doubles as data, helping scientists trace decades of ecological change in the Gulf of California.
Source: https://collections.artsmia.org/art/36169/gathering-wild-rice-seth-eastman

Wild Rice and the Rights of Nature

A groundbreaking lawsuit asks whether wild rice, or manoomin, can hold legal rights under tribal law and the growing rights of nature movement.
Colorful landscape with colorful mountains and sun

Rights of Nature: A Reading List

What would it mean for rivers, forests, and animals to have legal rights? A global movement is rethinking law’s relationship to nature.