Saint Clare of Montefalco

Autopsy of a Saint

In the late thirteenth century, followers of the Italian abbess Clare of Montefalco dissected her heart in search of a crucifix.
An Obeah figure brought to England in 1888, taken from a man arrested in Morant Bay, Jamaica, in 1887. The police had suspected him of being an Obeah-man, and thought his possession of this figure proved it.

Poison and Magic in Caribbean Uprisings

Witchcraft and poisoning were closely connected for both West Africans and the Europeans who enslaved them in the eighteenth-century Caribbean.
American athlete Nancy Voorhees clears the bar as she trains for the high jump event ahead of the 1922 Women's World Games, during a training session at Weequanic Park in Newark, New Jersey, 1922

Sport in America: A Reading List

Covering the colonial era to the present, this annotated bibliography demonstrates the topical and methodological diversity of sport studies in the United States.
Bright and colorful land- and seasape of St Kitts and Nevis.

Saint Kitts and Nevis

Sandy beaches and luxury hotels seem to define this Caribbean nation, but its the music and architecture that truly speak to its complicated history.
The Virginia opossum

The Strange Career of the Lady Possum of the New World

Marsupials make people think of Australia, but Europeans encountered and described their first marsupial, the Virginia opossum, in 1499.
Ezra Stiles, 1770

Yale’s Lost Indian Museum

The (now lost) collection of Native American artifacts at Yale College reveals the mechanics and high cost of the settler-colonialist nation-building project.
A Hundred Years Peace: The Signature of the Treaty of Ghent (Belgium), 1814

The Treaty of Ghent: Annotated

The Treaty of Ghent ended the War of 1812, an oft overlooked conflict that continues to shape the politics and culture(s) of North America.

What Can Native American People in Prison Teach Us About Community and Art?

An exploration of creativity, ingenuity, and resilience using the American Prison Newspapers collection and JSTOR. The second curriculum guide in this series.
Natural Lace from the Lace Bark Tree

Lacebark as a Symbol of Resilience

For the enslaved people of Jamaica, the lacebark tree was a valuable natural resource and a means of asserting one's dignity.
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.