The Legacy of Racial Hatred in the January 6 Insurrection
The U.S.’s politics of racial hatred are sustained by a culture of making political compromises when bold action is required.
Plant of the Month: Venus Flytrap
The carnivorous plant, native to the Carolinas, has beguiled botanists and members of the public alike since the eighteenth century.
How Aztecs Reacted to Colonial Epidemics
Colonial exploitation made the indigenous Aztec people disproportionately vulnerable to epidemics. Indigenous accounts show their perspective.
Morgan Jerkins: Exploring the Multitudes within American Blackness
In her new book, Wandering in Strange Lands, Morgan Jerkins takes a deeply personal look at the effects of the Great Migration.
European Colonization and Epidemics Among Native Peoples
What you learned about the diseases that decimated Native communities is probably wrong.
Bolívar in Haiti
Simón Bolívar was a man of contradiction. He was willing to set in motion the gradual abolition of slavery, but that would be as far as he would go.
![Travels through Virginia. [From Theodor de Bry's 'America', Vol. I, 1590, after a drawing of John White].](https://daily.jstor.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/the_construction_of_america_in_the_eyes_of_the_english_1050x700-600x400.jpg)
The Construction of America, in the Eyes of the English
In Theodor de Bry’s illustrations for Thomas Harriot’s Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia, the Algonquin are made to look like the Irish. Surprise.
The Lumpy Pearls That Enchanted the Medicis
There’s a specific term for these irregular pearls: “baroque,” from the Portuguese barroco.
Wild Rice’s Refusal to Be Domesticated
The reality of wild rice defeated the best efforts of Europeans to domesticate it.
The Question of Race in Beowulf
J.R.R. Tolkien’s seminal scholarship on Beowulf centers a white male gaze. Toni Morrison focused on Grendel and his mother as raced and marginal figures.