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Willa Cather sitting on a bench, wearing a fur scarf and feathered hat and looking at the camera

Never-Ending Nostalgia: Who and What Inspired Willa Cather

On the early years of America's chronicler of the Great Plains.
by Benjamin Taylor via Literary Hub on November 15, 2023
Chalude Shannon, William Weaver, and Italo Calvino, on a background of binary code

Language Machinery: Who Will Attend to the Machine's Writing?

The ultimate semantic receivers, selectors, and transmitters are still us.
by Richard Hughes Gibson via The Hedgehog Review on November 7, 2023
Statue of Paul Revere on Boston's Freedom Trail.

On the Trail—to Freedom?

Touring the palimpsests of cities.
by Charlie Riggs via The Hedgehog Review on November 1, 2023
Lenore Kandel’

The Forgotten Poet at the Center of San Francisco’s Longest Obscenity Trial

Amid Reagan’s late-sixties crackdown on the California counterculture, a jury was tasked with deciding whether Lenore Kandel’s psychedelic sex poems had “redeeming social importance.”
by Joy Lanzendorfer via The New Yorker on October 13, 2023
Henry Louis Gates Jr., Great Zimbabwe, circa 1996; photograph by Graham Smith.

Finding My Roots

The storytellers who taught me over the course of my career all knew how to bring Black history vividly to life.
by Henry Louis Gates Jr. via New York Review of Books on September 29, 2023

What Even Is "Leadership"?

And why won't all the worst people stop talking about it?
by Charles Petersen via Making History on September 21, 2023
Chairs on top of tables in an empty classroom

Are A.P. Classes a Waste of Time?

Advanced Placement courses are no recipe for igniting the intellect beyond high school. They’re a recipe for extinguishing it.
by Aaron R. Hanlon via The New Republic on September 6, 2023
The Garden Cafeteria, New York City.

Jews and Joe

From European streets to Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Jews have been deeply involved in the history of coffee and the café scene.
by Orge Castellano via Tablet on August 29, 2023
An old journal with cursive writing on the pages

Slanting the History of Handwriting

Whatever writing is today, it is not self-evident. But writing by hand did not simply continue to “advance” until it inevitably began to erode.
by Sonja Drimmer via Public Books on August 9, 2023
Captain Lightfood on horseback firing a pistol.

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot: The American Creation of Irish Outlaw Folk Heroes

Martin’s confession relates outlaw adventures that appear to be original. But were they real? 
by Jerry Kuntz via Commonplace on August 8, 2023
Edgar Allan Poe

Poe vs. Himself: On the Writer’s One-Sided War with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The story of the Little Longfellow War.
by Anne Whitehouse via Literary Hub on July 24, 2023
Basketball players resting on court

Game Changer

On the mismatched sporting advice of Clair Bee and John R. Tunis.
by Dan McQuade via Lapham’s Quarterly on July 10, 2023
The stairs leading to the segregated section of a cinema in Belzoni, Mississippi, in 1939.

The Writers Who Went Undercover to Show America Its Ugly Side

In the 1940s, a series of books tried to use the conventions of detective fiction to expose the degree of prejudice in postwar America.
by Samuel G. Freedman via The Atlantic on July 10, 2023
An illustration of Anthony Comstock, published in Puck magazine in 1906.

The 150-Year-Old Comstock Act Could Transform the Abortion Debate

Once considered a relic of moral panics past, the 1873 law criminalized sending "obscene, lewd or lascivious" materials through the mail.
by Ellen Wexler via Smithsonian Magazine on June 15, 2023
Illustration of a man with a shovel working a farm; the background shows scenes of family and communal life

Deep States

The old Midwest was a place animated by the belief that a self-governing republic is the best regime for man.
by Wilfred M. McClay via Claremont Review of Books on May 31, 2023
African American school children at Horatio Greenough’s statue of George Washington at the US Capitol, 1899.

Why the Age of Revolution Loved the Classical World

Radicals in the Age of Revolution saw the classical world as a common inheritance that could aid their fight for liberty.
by Francesca Langer via Aeon on May 30, 2023
U.S. Supreme Court building, left, and Kurt Vonnegut, right.

The Largely Forgotten Book Ban Case That Went Up to the Supreme Court

Library book bans are fueling national fights and a new Florida lawsuit. But only one case has come before the Supreme Court: Island Trees v. Pico.
by Anthony Aycock via Retropolis on May 20, 2023
Drawing of Phillis Wheatley writing at a desk.

The Great American Poet Who Was Named After a Slave Ship

A new biography of Phillis Wheatley places her in her era and shows the ways she used poetry to criticize the existence of slavery.
by Tiya Miles via The Atlantic on April 22, 2023
Native American and Black girls tossing around a medicine ball in a circle.

Right Living, Right Acting, and Right Thinking

How Black women used exercise to achieve civic goals in the late nineteenth century.
by Ava Purkiss via Lapham’s Quarterly on April 17, 2023
A painting of a Victorian-style room with an ornate bookshelf and books sitting on a table.

A Degenerate Assemblage

How Charles Lamb and his collection of well-loved books inspired a generation of American collectors.
by Anthony Grafton via London Review of Books on April 13, 2023
The sillhouette of a Civil War statue on a night sky.

The Spirit of Appomattox

Why is Shelby Foote's Civil War subject to so much contemporary debate?
by Jonathan Clarke via The Hedgehog Review on March 1, 2023
German observation balloon launched near the Somme, September 1916.
partner

Why a Spy Balloon Inspires Such Fear and Fascination

When it comes to protecting our personal privacy, we’re not in Kansas anymore.
by Alison Byerly via HNN on February 19, 2023
Map of John Proctor's 15 acres of property in Ipswich, MA

"The Crucible" and John and Elizabeth Proctor of Salem

It is worth digging a bit deeper into the family matters between John and Elizabeth.
by Benjamin Ray via Commonplace on February 7, 2023
John Winthrop.

When Perry Miller Invented America

In a covenantal nation like the United States, words are the very ligaments that hold the body together, and what words we choose become everything.
by Ed Simon via Los Angeles Review of Books on February 5, 2023
Professor Wendy Roberts holding a book.

UAlbany Professor Finds New Poem by Famed Early American Poet Phillis Wheatley

Discovery of Phillis Wheatley's earliest known elegy in a commonplace book gives us important insights into her early life and how her work circulated.
by Bethany Bump via SUNY Albany on January 17, 2023
A still from "Ulitza Sezam" with the cast and puppet characters sitting around a table.

When the Muppets Moved to Moscow

A new book details the tangled tale of "Ulitsa Sezam," a "Sesame Street" spinoff that aired until visions of Russia's democratic future faltered.
by Brigit Katz via Smithsonian Magazine on October 14, 2022
Collage image of Emily Dickinson in Dunkin Donuts

Did Emily Dickinson Have A Boston Accent? An Investigation

An exploration of the potential effects of regional accents on poetry and slant-rhyme.
by Kelsey McKinney via Defector on October 11, 2022
Mark Wallinger's "Self-Portrait," a painting showing black dripping paint in the silhouette of an unfurled scroll on a grey background

The Illusion of the First Person

The personal essay is the purest expression of the lie that individual subjectivity exists prior to the social formations that gave rise to it.
by Merve Emre via New York Review of Books on October 11, 2022
The ‘Grizzly Giant’ sequoia tree in Mariposa Grove, Yosemite, California.

Emerson & His ‘Big Brethren’

A new book explores the final days of Ralph Waldo Emerson - traveling from Concord to California, and beyond.
by Christopher Benfey via New York Review of Books on September 29, 2022
Black and white lithograph drawing of a white man dragging away a Black woman as another white man holds her baby.

Maternal Grief in Black and White

Examining enslaved mothers and antislavery literature on the eve of war.
by Cassandra Berman via Nursing Clio on September 22, 2022
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