The cover of Bitter in the Mouth by Monique Truong

Monique Truong and the New Southern Gothic

Truong’s second novel, Bitter in the Mouth, expands the region and the meaning of “the South” in contemporary literature.
Two poachers with a sack. At their feet their lurcher dogs and the corpses of several hares.

Frederick Gowing, King of Poachers

The cultural construction of poaching meant Gowing’s trespasses were understood differently than other kinds of theft in an industrializing Britain.
Battleship NEW YORK at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard dry dock, Bremerton, Washington, ca. 1914

Postcolonial Pacific: The Story of Philippine Seattle

The growth of Seattle in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is inseparable from the arrival of laborers from the US-colonized Philippines.
Saint Clare of Montefalco

A Religious Studies Roundup

Stories from JSTOR Daily about religious traditions around the world and how they’ve shaped our politics, pleasures, and self-perceptions.
Andrew Jackson

Andrew Jackson’s Speech on the Indian Removal Act: Annotated

In December 1830, two months after the passage of the Indian Removal Act, President Andrew Jackson used his annual Congressional message to celebrate the policy.
Picking lemons in a grove on the Conca d'Oro (Golden Shell), outside Palermo, Sicily, ca. 1900-1910

The Lemon Gang: Citrus and the Rise of the Mafia

Poverty, disparities in wealth, widespread brigandage, and the dissolution of the feudal system enabled the predatory practices of Sicily’s citrus mafia.
The cover of The Joy of Sex by Alex Comfort

Dr. Sex and the Anarchist Sex Cookbook

Known for his runaway bestseller The Joy of Sex, Alex “Dr. Sex” Comfort was an anarchist and a pacifist who preferred love and sex to war crimes.
The location of T Coronae Borealis (circled in cyan)

John Birmingham’s Discovery of the Blaze Star

John Birmingham discovered T Coronae Borealis in the narrow window when astronomy flourished in nineteenth-century Ireland.
Casa Malaparte

The Ins and Outs of Architecture

Use this wide-ranging collection of stories about architecture, landscape, and design to fuel your imagination and your research interests.
A detail from Ophelia by John Everett Millais, c. 1851

JSTOR Daily’s Archives of Art History

Our editors have rounded up a collection of stories about art, artists, museums, and the way (and why) we study them.