Editors’ Picks of 2023
...Comstock Walks Among US (Again) Liz Tracey April 19, 2023 Or, how a moribund act of legislation continues to shape the fight for reproductive rights in the United States. Ground...
What We’re Reading 2023
...In just eighty-one words, we’re reminded that violence isn’t new—nor is our apparent indifference to it. Liz Tracey “History is a silent record of people who could not leave, it...
Ulysses Obscenity Decision: Annotated
Ninety years ago this month, Judge John Woolsey of the Southern District of New York issued what would become one of the most widely published (and perhaps even read) legal...
“Tell Me about a Complicated Man”: A Homer Reading List
One could argue that a single man created the first creative franchise, which then spawned the first reboots, spin-offs, sequels, and prequels long before the birth of cinema, the novel,...
“A Time To Speak”: Annotated
Sixty years ago today, the city of Birmingham, Alabama, reeled from the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church, the latest attack in a period of terrorism against the Black...
“Now We Can Begin”: Annotated
Crystal Eastman, described as “the most neglected feminist leader of the twentieth century” (at least among those lost or faded from history), was a leader in multiple political and social...
Dave the Potter’s Mark on History
...where, writes Liz Tracey for JSTOR Daily, “mounds of shells tossed from consumed mollusks are found, sometimes with pottery, clothing, and plants mixed in.” Before the Civil War, “the American...
“What to the Slave is The Fourth of July?”: Annotated
On Monday, July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass gave a speech to the “Ladies of the Rochester Anti-Slavery Sewing Society,” which arguably became his most famous public oration. Rather than a...
Declaration of Conscience: Annotated
On the first day of June 1950, Senator Margaret Chase Smith, a Republican from Maine, gave a speech on the floor of the Senate that sounded the first shot in...
90 Years On: The Destruction of the Institute of Sexual Science
Ninety years ago this month, the Institute for Sexual Science (ISS) in Berlin was vandalized and looted, its library burned, in an early organized spectacle of the power of the...