Culture

Skepticism drove some of this more cynical or realistic worldview, based on their experiences growing up in the 70s and 80s.

"I thought, surely after the success of 'Sesame Street' and my contribution to it, all kinds of Latinx talent would flood the media. Not so."

These caricatures of well-known Philadelphians transpose human heads onto animal forms.

The rediscovery of demos performed by the songwriters of the legendary Memphis recording studio reveals a hidden history of soul.

Defenses of the recent killing of Jordan Neely suggest that the film’s reactionary, Wild West–style vigilante violence still holds the imagination of many.

In the eighteenth century, if people in British North America had to travel, they stayed at public houses that were often just repurposed private homes.

In the pages of "Black Mask" magazine, the Continental Op and Race Williams fought the KKK even as they shared its love of vigilante justice.

The nineteenth-century commitment to thrilling an audience embodied an emerging synergy of public performance, collective experience, and individual agency.

A cooking assignment helps illuminate the lives of Jewish women in the past for students.

Two differing explorations of post-WWII culture, politics, and ideals.

A new biography examines the life and times of the pioneering activist, abolitionist, and writer.

Who was that traveler? And what did she signify to the poet?

The earliest-known version of the dish was a winey, briny, bready casserole.

Black identity is a reality, not an idea.

David Hackett Fischer's book "African Founders" should be the starting point for any reflection on the enduring African ­influence on American national ideals.

The woman with the pen name Onoto Watanna had a stunningly productive literary career as a cookbook writer, novelist, and screenwriter.

For 50 years, this bizarre act was one of the Atlantic City's biggest attractions.

The long, strange, history of the baseball cap.

Attendees packed D.C.’s Griffith Stadium in 1951 for the wedding spectacular of gospel singer Rosetta Tharpe, who’s now the subject of a show at Ford's Theatre.

Isaac Murphy was once called ‘The Prince of Jockeys’ during the fleeting era when African Americans reigned on the nation’s racetracks.

On Chuck Berry.

Europeans translated the "Chinese Book of Changes" in the nineteenth century, but the philosophy really took off in the West after 1924.

A new, Pulitzer Prize–winning opera adapts the memoir of Omar ibn Said, an African Muslim who spent much of his life enslaved in North Carolina.

An unlikely pair of Southern California businessmen paved the way for the sushi revolution in Los Angeles, upending American dining — and their own lives.

A classic ghost story has something to say about America—200 years ago, 100 years ago, and today.

At every stop, he enthralled audiences with a device called a “stereopticon.”

A camp diva, a queer icon, and a model of feminism—the memorable Mae West left behind a complicated legacy, on and off the stage.

A short history of a misunderstood literary genre and the world it created.

The new documentary “I Am Everything” explores the gulf between what Richard accomplished and what he got for it.

The ragtime composer's life, career, and resurrection.