Culture

The Depression was the gravitational pull that created country stars and their nationwide universe of listeners.

As seemingly all of the American food media tripped over itself to create listicles around National Taco Day, I shook my head in disgust.

The black filmmaker Oscar Micheaux was one of the first to make films for a black audience, a rebuke to racist movies like "The Birth of a Nation."

“Leather-laden outlaws struck fear into the hearts of civilians and cops alike, as they tore through towns with gleeful irreverence.”

How online fandoms are allowing people to find themselves in the narrative.

The political rumblings beneath his 1969 album, "Hot Buttered Soul."

In the mid-1990s, Sarah McLachlan set out to prove a woman's place was center stage.

Kehinde Wiley unveils his new equestrian statue in Times Square. In December, it will be installed in Richmond, with those of Civil War generals nearby.

Reflections on the centennial of America’s greatest sports scandal.

A new book explores the tangled politics behind a global addiction.

The heroines of 1970s and 80s teen horror movies were traditionally feminine, tough, and sexually confident.

How Charles Schulz's classic strip shaped the comic medium.

For decades, conspiracy theorists have clung to the fiction that thousands of soldiers are being held captive in Asia.

Thomas Dixon’s racist discourse lurks in American politics and society even today.

A documentary about his life and circle is a study in complicity.

In 19th-century New England, rule-breaking Yankees were a source of national pride.

“¿DEFACEMENT?,” Inspired by the 1983 Police Murder of Michael Stewart.

The recent passing of Pal Benko and Shelby Lyman draws the curtain on an American period that produced some of the game’s most sparkling play.

There's room for the haute and folk traditions but the market-driven style taking over is the most problematic.

A brave band of scholars set out to save us from racism and sexism. What happened?

It’s surprisingly hard to protect beloved public art.

It was a struggle to even get the president to go to a game.

An abstract expressionist and master of collage, an intellectual and outspoken activist, Bearden evolved as much as his times did.

Eighty years ago, MGM’s sparkly pink rendering of Glinda expanded American pop culture’s definition of free-flying women.

Far from wallowing in nostalgia, Tarantino is using alternative history to critique conventional Hollywood endings.

What the author of "If—" learned about empire from the United States

Created in New York by Jewish immigrants, the first comic book superheroes were mythic saviors who could combat the Nazi threat.

A review of Casey Cep's new book on Harper Lee's never written true crime book, "The Reverend."

It also inspired my own scholarship on the national anthem.

Maybelle Carter witnessed the dawn of the recording era and helped create country music as one of the genre's biggest acts.