Gender Play in Nineteenth-Century Theater
In the 1800s, women playing tragic leads captivated crowds while critics struggled to reconcile talent with gender norms.
The Long History of High-Tech Border Policing
In the 1970s, sensors and computers turned the US–Mexico border into a testing ground for automated control.
How Cold War “Orphans” Sang Their Way into American Hearts
Touring choirs helped cast Korean children as ideal adoptees—and Americans as benevolent saviors.
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.
“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.
Defining “White Trash”
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.
Stonewall National Monument Declaration: Annotated
In June 2016, President Obama proclaimed the first LGBTQ+ national monument in the United States at the site of the 1969 Stonewall Uprising in New York City.
First Comes Love
A top divorce lawyer collected strangers’ marriage certificates and other wedding-related ephemera—a testament to her perhaps surprising faith in matrimony.
Transatlantic Studies: A Reading List
Using the Atlantic Ocean as a guiding metaphor, transatlanticism emphasizes the fluid nature of contrived national boundaries and identities.