A yellow and purple button with "Fight AIDS, Not People with AIDS" in yellow and purple font.

Pro-Epidemic Stigmatization

Prejudice and moralism interferes with public health, aiding and abetting the spread of the HIV and monkeypox viruses.
An image of The Sandman

In the Gutters of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman

Gaiman’s stories echo with narratives from the Western canon, taken from folktales and communal memory, displaced into something that feels fresh.

Death by Ice Cream

In the late nineteenth century, ice cream, a popular but poorly understood dessert, brought illness and death to America’s fairs and festivals.
A 1961 advertisement for Cutex lipstick

Lipstick’s Complex History

From antiquity to the present, the laws governing the wearing of lipstick have been shaped by gender, class, safety, and religion.
Bales of clothing are ready to be put on the sales floor at a Goodwill Outlet Center on July 27, 2022 in Hackensack, New Jersey.

Clothes Overload, Shared Emotions, and Procrastination

Well-researched stories from The Atlantic, Slate, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.
An illustration from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, 1831

The Hoax That Inspired Mary Shelley

In the hot summer of 1826, the British people—including science fiction author, Mary Shelley—embraced a fake and frozen Roger Dodsworth.
An electron microscopic image depicting a monkeypox virion

The Mpox 411

Although it’s less fatal and less transmissible than the related smallpox, there’s still serious cause for concern with the most recent outbreak.
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Madness_Network_News.png

How Mentally Ill People Fight for Their Rights

In the 1970s, a time of mass deinstitutionalization, former patients came together to found the Psychiatric Inmates Liberation Movement.
A Cane Toad is exhibited at Taronga Zoo August 9, 2005 in Sydney, Australia

Cane Toads, Dung Beetles, and Cork Hats

Predicting the effects of introducing a species into an ecosystem is difficult. Mitigating those effects later is even more so. Just ask Australia.
The Alamo by day with the Texas flag waving

How to Remember the Alamo?

A historian’s childhood visit to the Texas monument prompts questions about history, memory, and multiculturalism.