The History Department Bracket Is Here and It Has Tenure

There isn’t much turnover with these selections.

How a Group of Journalists Turned Hip-Hop Into a Literary Movement

Looking back at the golden era of rap writing.

Agriculture Wars

On country music as a lens through which to trace the corporatization of American farming.

Fine Specimens

How Walt Whitman became the quintessential poet of disability and death.

Black Atlantis

Why do white people love Black Panther, just as they love Star Wars?

The Unlikely Pulp Fiction Illustrations of Edward Hopper

When the iconic painter drew cowboys for the pulp-fiction magazine, 'Adventure.'

The Media and the Ku Klux Klan: A Debate That Began in the 1920s

The author of "Ku Klux Kulture" breaks down the ‘mutually beneficial’ relationship between the Klan and the media.
Melania Trump wearing a Dior pantsuit.

The 1968 Fashion Show, the History Lesson Melania Missed

What the First Lady could learn from the fashion show that was supposed to showcase America First fashion.

Hollywood Has Always Been Political. And it Hasn’t Always Been Liberal.

Conservatives have used celebrity glitz effectively, too.

Voices in Time: Horror Movie Scene-Setting

The author of 'High-Risers' revisits 'Candyman,' in which public housing is the greatest horror of all.
Still from Black Panther film.

What Would W. E. B. Du Bois Make of 'Black Panther'?

Considering Du Bois' complex ideas on the role of black artists in the struggle against white supremacy.

An Investigation Into the History of the 'Ditz' Voice

How pitch, tonality, and celebrity imitation have portrayed cluelessness.

Boston’s Most Radical TV Show Blew the Minds of a Stoned Generation in 1967

When a Tufts instructor launched the trippy TV show on WGBH, it was unlike anything viewers had ever seen.
Guernica by Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso's Guernica and Modern War

A primary source set and teaching guide created by educators.
Victorian couple courting with a church steeple in the background

Victorian Era

A primary source set and teaching guide created by educators.
Vintage print of the Guggenheim Museum

Frank Lloyd Wright and Modern American Architecture

A primary source set and teaching guide created by educators.
Illustration of  Laura Bridgman sitting at a desk engaged in writing the manual alphabet on her left hand

Nineteenth-Century Schools for the Deaf and Blind

A primary source set and teaching guide created by educators.
Willa Cather

Willa Cather, Pioneer

Willa Cather's life and work broke with the standards of her time.
Still from Black Panther

The Many Dimensions of "Black Panther"

The blockbuster refuses to flatten its characters into simple heroes or villains — and that's exactly what makes it so refreshing.

Bohemian Tragedy

The rise, fall, and afterlife of George Sterling’s California arts colony.
Charles Dickens writing at his table, 1858.

Charles Dickens, America, & The Civil War

What might Charles Dickens have thought about the American Civil War and the American struggle for abolition and social reforms?

Can the World’s Biggest Dictionary Survive the Internet?

The costs of achieving the centuries-old lexicographical dream of capturing the entire English language.
Still from Dirty Dancing.

In the Dark All Katz Are Grey: Notes on Jewish Nostalgia

Searching for where I belong, I find myself cobbling together a mongrel Judaism—half-remembered and contradictory and all mine.
Title page of baseball rulebook from 1845.

Baseball's First Stolen Base Exploited a Loophole in the Rulebook

People in the audience thought the player who stole the base was playing a joke.
New Mexico landscape painting by Marsden Hartley.

A Tramp Across America

How a Los Angeles Times editor helped create the myth of the American West.
Still from Black Panther film.

'Black Panther' and the Invention of 'Africa'

The film's hero and antagonist represent dueling responses to five centuries of African exploitation at the hands of the West.
Still from Black Panther

How 'Black Panther' Taps Into 500 Years of History

The film draws on centuries of black dreams of independence to create Wakanda.

Rat Race

Why are young professionals crazy for marathons?
Uranium-rich ore sample from the Shinkolobwe Mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Searching for Wakanda

The African roots of the Black Panther story.

Ghost Dancers Past and Present

Thinking beyond the dichotomies of oppressor and victim reveals the human urges that inspire so much of our expressive culture.