man jumping on the roof in city with abstract grunge,illustration painting

Walkers in the City—and Everywhere

In psychogeography, the journey is key. Each step a person takes helps them reshape and better understand the role the space around them plays in their life.
Kahlil Gibran

Kahlil Gibran: Godfather of the “New Age”

Published in 1923, The Prophet became a perpetual best-seller, birthed a genre, and marked the poet as retrograde, sentimental, and florid.
Loie Fuller

The Serpentine Career of Loïe Fuller

Rising from the ranks of touring comedies and Wild West shows, the American dancer dreamed of a future of light, movement, and metamorphosis.
An orangutan attacks a woman and pulls her hair in an illustration for the murder scene in Edgar Allan Poe's short story 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue,' early 1840s. A victim lies on the floor, and a witness watches through a window.

“The Murders in the Rue Morgue” by Edgar Allan Poe: Annotated

Poe's 1841 story, arguably the first detective fiction, contains many tropes now considered standard to the genre, including a brilliant, amateur detective.
Closeup of the edge of open book pages

The Theory Journal: Still Trendy after All These Years?

A wave of academic periodicals devoted to theory started appearing in the 1970s. Criticism wasn't far behind.
Portrait of William Blake, 1807

William Blake, Radical Abolitionist

Blake’s works offer an alternative to the failures of the Enlightenment, which couldn’t muster a consistent argument for abolition.
Florida car

Wild and Finally Free in Lauren Groff’s Florida

Lauren Groff’s latest story collection explores the literary archetype of the Orphan.
Queer aging

Queer Time: The Alternative to “Adulting”

What constitutes adulthood has never been self-evident or value-neutral. Queer lives follow their own temporal logic.
Giovanni's Room, Philadelphia

Book Club Made Me Gay

Book clubs and reading groups have long been important to marginalized communities.
eugenics eyes

How to Understand the Resurgence of Eugenics

The extreme right wing has brought the discredited idea of eugenics back into the national conversation. Brave New World and Gattaca offer perspective.