Culture

"Blonde," a heavily fictionalized film by Andrew Dominik, explores the star's life and legend in a narrative that's equal parts glamorous and disturbing.

Today, mourning attire is subdued and dutiful. It wasn’t always that way.

Hip-hop DJ culture provides a rich site for exploring how culture and industry can converge and collaborate, as well as how they need each other to move forward.

Produced by the master entertainer P. T. Barnum, a melodrama about the dangers of alcohol was the first show to run for a hundred performances in New York City.

In 1931, an entire new cast and crew reshot Dracula in Spanish on the Universal Studios lot.

John Jacob Astor’s "A Journey in Other Worlds" is a high-voltage scientific romance in which visions of imperialism haunt a supposedly “perfect” future.

How a best-selling series gave young readers a new sense of agency.

In this modern Indigenous kitchen, every dish is made without any ingredient introduced to the continent after Europeans arrived.

'Pet of the Petticoats' extends the reach of Anglo-Atlantic anti-Catholicism to the stage, illustrating the ways its tropes and anxieties moved across genres.

Theodore Roosevelt said his made him look like “a mewing cat.” Lyndon Johnson called his “the ugliest thing I ever saw.” Ronald Reagan ordered a do-over.

How an Asian American literary pioneer fell into obscurity.

The genre is the product of migration, rebirth, and the struggle to be heard.

The skin and strength on display at Santa Monica’s Muscle Beach aggravated American fears of gender transgressions and homosexuality.

The defining boundaries and problematic categorizations carried by our culture's treatment of the label "millennial."

Discovering the naturalist and artist, and the darker trends within.

They’re global icons who have left a lasting imprint on American culture. But do recent controversies threaten the squad’s future?

The nationwide spread of a counterculture.

George Kennan made hierarchy seem seductive.

Creedence Clearwater Revival’s unique blend of traditional and progressive sensibilities.

Her private writing offers another, more idiosyncratic angle to understand the famed poet.

Abortion and "The Scarlet Letter."

Indigenous Americans knew how to avoid starvation. Colonists were too hungry to notice.

A new book on Claude McKay is part of an effort to place the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance within the Black radical tradition.

Two new studies ask readers to think expansively about art’s involvement in a broader system of racial capitalism.

Black femininity was always considered a hard sell in Hollywood, but Hattie McDaniels and Dorothy became the perfect women to peddle racist stereotypes.

It's the resurrection of an old dream.

A contemporary Atlantic writer reflects on one of the voices from the magazine's archives who helped shape the publication—and the nation.

A contemporary Atlantic writer reflects on one of the voices from the magazine's archives who helped shape the publication—and the nation.

A few weeks in the woods have taught kids to face new situations, make their way among strangers, solve their own problems—and live a more authentic life.

The humble origins and complex future of cowboy competition.