All Travelers are Infiltrators: An Introduction to the Study of Travel Writing
Travel writing as a genre has arguably been around for centuries, but it didn’t emerge as a distinct field of academic study until the 1980s.
The Merchants of Venice—In Code
Sixteenth-century Venice conducted its affairs in code, so much so that cryptology was professionalized and regulated by the state.
A “Genre-Bending” Poetic Journey through Modern Korean History
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictée is an experiment in both lyric and epic modernism that uses form to invoke the tragedy of the wartime partition of Korea.
Katherine Mansfield and Anton Chekhov
Living in exile in Germany, the young New Zealand writer Katherine Mansfield found solace in studying—and copying—Chekhov’s short stories.
Charles Darwin and His Correspondents: A Lifetime of Letters
An epistolary network was critical for Darwin’s work, allowing him to obtain new information while sparking fresh ideas in his correspondents’ minds.
Searching for Home in Hmong American Writing
Two significant poetry anthologies deterritorialize home, showing that for Hmong Americans, home can be a process of moving and running despite living in a place.
What Is Punctuation For?
Between the medieval and modern world, the marks used to make writing more legible changed from “pointing” to punctuation.
I Hope This Finds You Well, or, Dude, You Good?
Are formulaic hoping and wishing statements in correspondence evidence of magical thinking?
Subversive Student Writing at Carlisle Indian School
In the early twentieth century, some Anishinaabe students turned writing assignments meant to showcase assimilation into celebrations of resistance.
Digital Overload
How can contemporary biographers contend with the explosion of materials at their disposal?