Joseph Durham looking at an urn

The Care of the Dead: A Reading List

An interdisciplinary bibliography exploring the care of the dead and how our final choices are shaped by culture, religion, economics, technology, and war.
A page from The Angolite that features a photograph of a prison guard holding a shotgun while watching prisoners work in a field.

Slavery and the Modern-Day Prison Plantation

"Except as punishment for a crime," reads the constitutional exception to abolition. In prison plantations across the United States, slavery thrives.
Dr Spurzheim phrenology chart

What Skulls Told Us

The pseudoscience phrenology swept the popular imagination, and its practitioners made a mint preying on prejudices, gullibility, and misinformation.
Coster-girl by H.G Hine and E. Whimpers, 1851

The Radical Street Sellers of London

Many considered street vendors dangerous, not just for their general skirting of the law but because they comprised an outspoken political force.
A view of the Raffles Hotel, Singapore, between 1920 and 1939

“Microcosms of Empire” in the Colonial Grand Hotel

While Singapore's iconic Raffles Hotel may be marketed as a tranquil throwback to a bygone age, it also reveals the complicated truths of imperialism.
The cover of the March, 1963 issue of Tomorrow's Man

Gay Mass Consumption Before Stonewall

In the 1960s, the Mattachine Society had only a few thousand members. But tens of thousands of men subscribed to physique magazines published by gay entrepreneurs.
Photograph: Twins Michael and Mary Kerby fail to convey any enthusiasm upon winning a trophy in a Baby Show at Ruislip, Middlesex, May 1934

Darling or Degrading? Baby Shows in the Nineteenth Century

A stunningly popular form of entertainment, baby pageants promoted the cult of domesticity, showcased maternal pride, and opened a path to fame and wealth.
Lunchroom in Chicago, 1896

How Gender Got on the Menu

As women began to be welcomed into restaurants, some started catering to what they perceived as “female tastes,” largely meaning the sugary stuff
Six young men riding on a horse-drawn wagon filled with corn at the Manual Training and Industrial School for Colored Youth in Bordentown, NJ, 1935

Even the Best Jim Crow School…Was Still a Jim Crow School

Before Brown v. Board of Education, Black activists split between integrationist and separatist factions, particularly at New Jersey’s Bordentown School.

The First Famous Football Team Behind Bars

Sing Sing's football team, The Black Sheep, ascended to fame even though its players were incarcerated. One player was so good, he signed with the Eagles.