In physics, the whole point of the thought experiment is that it’s absurd. But in literature, it’s been used to explore all sorts of ideas and possibilities.

One of the sharpest female journalists of Britain’s Victorian era, Eastlake considered Jane Eyre an exercise in rudeness and vulgarity.

In this edition of Research Rabbit Hole, we dig up scholarship about what one academic calls "the signifying rabbit."

How New York City's tabloids sensationalized the murder case that inspired the classic film noir Double Indemnity.

Leslie Jamison's The Recovering is self-aware about being the same old story, recalling the redemption narratives of Rousseau and St. Augustine.

What constitutes adulthood has never been self-evident or value-neutral. Queer lives follow their own temporal logic.

Little Orphan Annie is the latest in a sequence of pop culture foundlings, but America’s orphans of the Great Depression weren’t endearing at all.