What Skulls Told Us
The pseudoscience phrenology swept the popular imagination, and its practitioners made a mint preying on prejudices, gullibility, and misinformation.
The Caricature Who Couldn’t Appear on American Born Chinese
The television adaptation of Gene Luen Yang's graphic novel called for significant changes to the character of Chin-Kee.
Every Good Bird Does Fine
Is birdsong music, speech, or something else altogether? The question has raged for millennia, drawing in everyone from St. Augustine to Virginia Woolf.
From La Jetée to Twelve Monkeys to COVID-19
If the pandemic has you wishing for yesteryear, watching 12 Monkeys—and the time travel art film that inspired it—is just the thing.
Disease Theory in Mary Shelley’s The Last Man
Shelley's third novel, about the sole survivor of a global plague, draws on the now-outdated miasma theory of disease.
Is It Really Carnival if You’re Not Drunk?
Carnival is known for overturning the rules of society for a short time. But strangely, many scholars don't discuss what a big role alcohol plays in it.
A Decades-in-the-Making Artwork in a Dormant Volcano
James Turrell is building an observatory that uses the human eye instead of optical instruments. It may soon be open to the public for the first time.
Krazy Kat’s Complex Relationship with Race
Behind the slapstick antics in this beloved comic strip simmered ambivalence about color and race.
The Many Different Annes of Green Gables
Anne Shirley, created almost 100 years ago, has been reimagined countless times. Why do we still love Lucy Maud Montgomery's plucky orphan?