A woman kneels at the headstone in the Detroit Canine Cemetery in Michigan

An Epitaph for Fido

Pet cemeteries document how humans’ relationships with their pets—and their deaths—have evolved since the Victorian era.
Four versions of Hokusai's Great Wave, from the Art Institute of Chicago, LACMA, Tokyo National Museum, and British Museum

Under Hokusai’s Great Wave

Hokusai’s watery woodblock print is such a common sight that most people tend to look past the peril at its center.
Carter G. Woodson

Museum Roots

The founders of Black American museums in the post-World War II era were all shaped by Carter G. Woodson’s “Negro Canon” of history and art.
JSTOR Daily celebrates Black History Month

Celebrating Black History Month

JSTOR Daily editors pick their favorite stories for Black History Month.
Asahi Beer poster with a young woman of Dai Nippon Brewery. From the Taisho period, circa 1920s.

How Beer Came to Asia

Reactions to the introduced brew ranged from Japanese efforts to imitate German beers to a reluctance to imbibe among Muslims and Hindus in India.
A 19th century madstone

Dubious Medicine on the Texas Frontier

If you got sick in the Texas frontier area in the decades before the Civil War, your options were all pretty bad.
Punctuation Personified: or, Pointing Made Easy (London: John Harris, 1824).

What Is Punctuation For?

Between the medieval and modern world, the marks used to make writing more legible changed from “pointing” to punctuation.
An illustration of a sick horse in a barn, 1872

Civilization Without Horses: The Epizootic of 1872

We’re all now too familiar with the words “pandemic” and “epidemic,” but how about “epizootic”?
The dream of Zulaykha, from the Amber Album, c. 1670

Dreams in Islam

Even before the founding of Islam, Arabia was home to professional dream interpreters.
Paul Borduas

The “Refus Global”

Published in 1948 by the artist group Les Automatistes, the Refus Global manifesto challenged Québécois political, religious, and social traditions.