Convicts in Sydney, Australia, 1830

Colonial Masquerade: Convict, Pirate, Gentleman, Con

The convict ships that colonized Australia carried people desperate to get out of their sentence. At least, that was true of Michael Stewart.
Source: https://harvardartmuseums.org/collections/object/313378

Self Care and Community in 1901 Indianapolis

For Black women engaged with local institutions, the “Delsarte” technique was a means of supporting struggling city residents while advancing political power.
Ambrotype of African American Woman with Flag - believed to be a washerwoman for Union troops quartered outside Richmond, Virginia

Home Front: Black Women Unionists in the Confederacy

The resistance and unionism of enslaved and freed Black women in the midst of the Confederacy is an epic story of sacrifice for nation and citizenship.
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.