Christine de Pizan: Europe’s First Professional Female Writer
Christine used her pen to make a living at the French court, but even more pointedly, she used it to argue the value of educated women.
10 Contemporary Pastoral Poems
Poems that reflect and reinterpret the pastoral tradition, by Louise Glück, Alex Dimitrov, Rebecca Lehmann, Sam Sax, Natasha Trethewey, and more.
Rebecca Lehmann on Breaking the Rules of Poetry
An interview with writer and poet Rebecca Lehmann, who finds splendid things can follow when she stretches the rules of craft.
Miners and Monkeys
There were compensations for the hardscrabble life of the Gold Rush—like monkeys and parrots brought to California for companionship and entertainment.
Ford Country…in Rural Essex?
Between 1931 and 1947, Henry Ford financed an experimental farm in Essex to see if industrial American farming methods could be applied to British fields.
Misunderstood Malthus
The English thinker whose name is synonymous with doom and gloom has lessons for today.
Defining “White Trash”
The term “white trash” once was used to disparage poor white people. In the Civil Rights era, its meaning shifted to support business-friendly racial politics.
A Multiculturalism of the Undead
Labeling the undead figures in non-European mythology, popular culture, and academia as “vampires” doesn’t make sense.
Islamic Calligraphy in West Africa
The Hausa people of northern Nigeria have adapted—and continue to transform—sacred Islamic calligraphy that originated in the Arab world.
Power Posing in the Taiwan Photo Studio
As photography became more popular in occupied Taiwan, the camera subtly captured the shifting boundaries between Japanese colonizers and their Taiwanese subjects.