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.
How to Teach with JSTOR Text Analyzer
JSTOR Text Analyzer provides students with an additional resource for finding scholarly material.
Women’s Rights in the Early Republic
The U.S.A.'s founders focused on the rights of white men to vote, own property, and govern. The idea that women should have similar rights came later.
Funerals Once Included Swag
In eighteenth-century New England, funeral attendees went home with funeral tokens–usually a pair of gloves or a ring that declared their sorrow.
The Obscured History of Jamaica’s Maroon Societies
Maroon societies in Jamaica and the rest of the Americas have survived for hundreds of years.