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activities, experiences, or artistic products that pervade society in a particular time

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Postcard of Marshall Field & Co.’s Retail Store, Chicago.

Race and Class Identities in Early American Department Stores

Built on the momentum of earlier struggles for justice, the department store movement channeled the power of store workers and consumers to promote black freedom.
by Traci Parker, Phillip Loken via UNC Press Blog on February 23, 2022
Close up of Sidney Poitier in In the Heat of the Night

The Slap That Changed American Film-Making

When Sidney Poitier slapped a white murder suspect on screen, it changed how the stories of Black Americans were portrayed on film.
by Steve Ryfle, Ashawnta Jackson via JSTOR Daily on February 4, 2022
Comic of a boy inside an atom structure while a man looks on.

The Surprising History of the Comic Book

Since their initial popularity during World War II, comic books have always been a medium for American counterculture and for nativism and empire. 
by J. Hoberman via The Nation on January 25, 2022
Test launch of an ICBM, reminiscent of a star with a long tail in the night sky.

“Do You Hear What I Hear” Was Actually About the Cuban Missile Crisis

The holiday favorite is an allegorical prayer for peace.
by Reba A. Wissner via Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists on December 22, 2021
Unaccompanied children in a train station

Novel Transport

The anatomy of the “orphan train” genre.
by Kristen Martin via Lapham’s Quarterly on November 1, 2021
Book cover of Pushing Cool, featuring a photo of a cigarette ad on the side of a building.

Selling Menthol: On Keith Wailoo’s “Pushing Cool”

A history of the menthol cigarette and its effects on Black people.
by Vesper North via Los Angeles Review of Books on October 31, 2021
Richard Nixon smiles with his arms crossed as he looks off to the side of the camera.

Nixon’s Political Football

Football's uniform appeal during the 20th century made it a popular analogy for candidates trying to relate to voters during the 1972 presidential election.
by Ryan Reft via Library of Congress Blog on October 21, 2021
A board game with different continents of the world and markers.

Playing with the Past: Teaching Slavery with Board Games

Board games invite discussions of counterfactuality and contingency, resisting the teleology and determinism that are so common to looking backward in time.
by Patrick Rael via Perspectives on History on October 13, 2021
Photo of Philip Rieff at microphone waiting to speak

The Importance of Repression

Philip Rieff predicted that therapy culture would end in barbarism.
by Park MacDougald via UnHerd on September 29, 2021
CNN studio with monitor in the foreground and anchor at desk in the background.

From TV News Tickers to Homeland: The Ways TV Was Affected By 9/11

There is a long list of ways America was transformed by the terrorist attacks. But the question of how TV itself was changed is more complicated.
by Eric Deggans via NPR on September 10, 2021
Drawing of Stranger Things main characters on bikes

Historicizing Dystopia: Suburban Fantastic Media and White Millennial Childhood

On the nostalgic and technophobic motives of the recent boom in suburban fantastic media.
by Angus McFadzean via Los Angeles Review of Books on August 30, 2021
Chester Higgins photo of man looking out the window of a cafe on to the early morning street

Chester Higgins’s Life in Pictures

All along the way, his eye is trained on moments of calm, locating an inherent grace, style, and sublime beauty in the Black everyday.
by Jordan Coley via The New Yorker on August 27, 2021
Oscar Wilde

How Oscar Wilde Won Over the American Press

When the U.S. first encountered the “Aesthetic Apostle."
by Nicholas Frankel via Literary Hub on July 19, 2021
A diagram of the phases of the Moon.

Man-Bat and Raven: Poe on the Moon

A new book recovers the reputation Poe had in his own lifetime of being a cross between a science writer, a poet, and a man of letters.
by Mike Jay via London Review of Books on June 24, 2021
Bob Dylan singing

Bob Dylan, Historian

In the six decades of his career, Bob Dylan has mined America’s past for images, characters, and events that speak to the nation’s turbulent present.
by Sean Wilentz via New York Review of Books on June 19, 2021
Lady with black hair tied up in a bun

Dickinson’s Improvisations

A new edition of Emily Dickinson’s Master letters highlights what remains blazingly intense and mysterious in her work.
by Brenda Wineapple via New York Review of Books on June 12, 2021
A black and white photograph of a person playing the guitar.

My Father, Cultural Appropriator

The daughter of Buddy Holly's bandmate reflects on the defensiveness some white people have about the roots of rock 'n' roll.
by Sarah Curtis via Los Angeles Review of Books on June 5, 2021
Black and white photo of roller skaters in Central Park.

The Great New York City Roller-Skating Boom

In 1980, the whole city seemed to be on skates. I’m not sure why.
by Nick Paumgarten via The New Yorker on May 1, 2021
partner

Covid-19 Changed the Way We Watch Movies. The 1918 Pandemic Set the Stage

The 1918 flu pandemic helped to usher in the Hollywood studio system. Could Covid-19 transform the industry?
via Retro Report on April 21, 2021
A collage of significant people from the time like the Beatles and Elvis.

How Americans Re-Learned to Think After World War II

In ‘The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War,’ Louis Menand explores the poetry, music, painting, dance and film that emerged during the Cold War.
by Carlos Lozada via Washington Post on April 16, 2021
An illustration featuring a man smoking a cigarette.

When the CIA Was Everywhere—Except on Screen

Hollywood was just fine avoiding all portrayals of the Central Intelligence Agency for years after the agency's founding in 1947.
by Simon WIllmetts, Matthew Wills via JSTOR Daily on April 15, 2021
"Neighborhood of Fear" book cover

Abolishing the Suburbs

On Kyle Riismandel’s “Neighborhood of Fear: The Suburban Crisis in American Culture, 1975–2001.”
by David Helps via Los Angeles Review of Books on April 13, 2021
Linda Kay Klein as a teenager
partner

Shamed Over Sex, a Generation Confronts the Past

Former followers of an evangelical “purity” movement that promoted a strict view of abstinence are grappling with aftershocks.
via Retro Report on April 6, 2021
Pocahontas characters overlaid onto a landscape.

Deconstructing Disney: Queer Coding and Masculinity in Pocahontas

Disney gets inventive when they need to circumvent white people’s historical responsibility for genocidal atrocities — and queerness is a useful scapegoat.
by Jeanna Kadlec via Longreads on April 1, 2021
A graffiti mural in Los Angeles

The Emergence Of Gangsta Rap

A review of "To Live and Defy in LA: How Gangsta Rap Changed America."
by Katherine Rye Jewell via The Metropole on March 30, 2021
A shoe stepping on money.

Islands in the Stream

Musicians are in peril, at the mercy of giant monopolies that profit off their work.
by David Dayen via The American Prospect on March 22, 2021
H.P. Lovecraft.

The Shadow Over H.P. Lovecraft

Recent works inspired by his fiction struggle to reckon with his racist fantasies.
by Siddhartha Deb via The New Republic on March 19, 2021
Morgan Wallen
partner

The Crossroads Facing Country Music After Morgan Wallen’s Use of a Racist Slur

Will the industry remain a bastion of conservatism, or take advantage of the opportunity to broaden its base?
by Amanda Marie Martinez via Made By History on February 17, 2021
Photograph of a newsstand selling magazines

What Are Magazines Good For?

The story of America can be told through the story of its periodicals.
by Nathan Heller via The New Yorker on February 16, 2021
A group of five wealthy women in Victorian dress.

A Pool of One’s Own

Group biographies and the female friendship vogue.
by Noelle Bodick via The Drift on January 28, 2021
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