De-Bunking the Barbarians
The idea of barbarian invasions comes from the nineteenth century, when they were constructed as the decisive event that wrenched the West into modernity.
“It’s Tight Like That”
A "dirty" song recorded by Georgia Tom and Tampa Red in 1928 launched the "hokum" blues.
Traditional Dance in the Limelight at Pilipino Culture Night
Traditional dance offers Filipino Americans a sense of pride and legitimacy while allowing them to cherish different aspects of this heritage practice.
Gay Mass Consumption Before Stonewall
In the 1960s, the Mattachine Society had only a few thousand members. But tens of thousands of men subscribed to physique magazines published by gay entrepreneurs.
The Mystery of Crime-Scene Dust
In the late nineteenth century, forensic investigators began using new technologies to study minute details—such as the arrangement and makeup of dust.
Parthenogenesis, Medieval Whales, and Debating Science
Well-researched stories from Slate, Knowable Magazine, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.
Kwame Brathwaite Showed the World that Black is Beautiful
Photographing everyone from musicians to athletes to the person on the street, Brathwaite found the beauty in Blackness and shared it with the world.
Monique Truong’s The Book of Salt
Centered on the Stein-Toklas household and written from the point of view of their gay Vietnamese cook, Binh, this novel tells a story of converging queer diasporas.
Declaration of Conscience: Annotated
In June 1950, Senator Margaret Chase Smith criticized Joseph McCarthy's anticommunist campaigns. She was the first of his colleagues to challenge his Red Scare rhetoric.
Deimos: A Chip Off the Old Martian Block?
A new space probe suggests that the moonlet Deimos isn’t a captured asteroid after all.