Aerial view of University Square (Piata Universitatii), Bucharest, Romania

The Three Cs of Bucharest

Three big Cs dominate the history of Romania and its capital city, Bucharest. You may know communism and Ceaușescu, but what about Cuza?
The covers of two books, Not Out of Hate by Ma Ma Lay and Irrawaddy Tango by Wendy Law-Yone.

Burmese Women Novelists Speak Out

The novels of Ma Ma Lay and Wendy Law-Yone challenge the limits placed on the voices of Burmese women in the twentieth century.
Bride of Frankenstein, 1935

Bride of Frankenstein

Drawn from the margins of Mary Shelley's 1818 novel, the cinematic Bride of Frankenstein is never just one thing, and she never goes away.
Laura Kieler

Laura Kieler: A Life Exploited

Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen mined Kieler's life for the plot of his most famous play, The Doll's House.
A circle of white claymation guys around a black claymation guy

Racist Humor: Exploratory Readings

An introduction to the history and theory of racist humor and the social role it plays in Western societies.
The Book of Salt by Monique Truong

Monique Truong’s The Book of Salt

Centered on the Stein-Toklas household and written from the point of view of their gay Vietnamese cook, Binh, this novel tells a story of converging queer diasporas.
Title page for Sinners in the hands of an angry God, 1741

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God: Annotated

Jonathan Edwards’s sermon reflects the complicated religious culture of eighteenth-century America, influenced not just by Calvinism, but Newtonian physics as well.
Women walk on a bustling city street looking at store windows

Grand Illusions

By the time L. Frank Baum introduced the world to Dorothy and the gang, he’d already made his name as a shop window dresser par excellence.
The evolution of a single line from David Walker’s Appeal

Comparing Editions of David Walker’s Abolitionist Appeal

Digitization allows researchers to trace editorial and authorial changes in archival content. Both are central to the study of this famous abolitionist pamphlet.
Donald Goines, from the back cover of an early edition of Dopefiend

Donald Goines, Detroit’s Crime Writer Par Excellence

The writer used hard-boiled fiction as a wide lens to accurately capture the widescreen disparity of Black life in the 1970s.