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Collage of Edna Ferber, a still from the film "Giant," and symbols of Texas.

The Carpetbagger Who Saw Texas’s Future

The notion of political realignment in the Lone Star State is older than you think. It goes back to Giant, an acidic novel by Edna Ferber.
Richard Pryor.

Understanding Richard Pryor's Use of the N-Word

Pryor's use of the word represented something valiant.
The cover of "Martian Time-Slip," featuring a man tending to a farm on Mars.

“Multiple Worlds Vying to Exist”: Philip K. Dick and Palestine

A critique of colonialism from Martian science fiction.
A drawing of an angry, long-haired cat holding a sign that reads "Vote for Shes."

A Purrrrfect Political Storm

Crazy cat ladies have come to dominate this election season. It’s hardly the first time.
Characters in the 1934 film "The Thin Man."

Fools in Love

Screwball comedies are beloved films, but for decades historians and critics have disagreed over what the genre is and which movies belong to it.
Sinclair Lewis.

How to Study the “Village Virus”

Sinclair Lewis and the small-town science of yearning.
A crowd at an American Nazi Party rally raising their hands for the Nazi salute.

What Is the History of Fascism in the United States?

Bruce Kuklick traces the meaning of the term “fascist” from its origins to the present day and how it has, over the years, gradually lost its coherence.
John Montgomery Ward and Helen Dauvray.

Before Taylor and Travis, There Was Helen and John

She was an actress. He was a shortstop. What we can learn from the press parade around this 19th-century power couple.
Statue of Pocahontas.

Pocahontas, Remembered

After 400 years, reality has begun to replace the lies.
Digitally altered portrait of a man in a suit with his face pixelated, framed by computer windows.

What the Doomsayers Get Wrong About Deepfakes

Experts have warned that utterly realistic A.I.-generated videos might wreak havoc through deception. What’s happened is troubling in a different way.
The Battle of Tippecanoe
original

Lost Prophets and Forgotten Heroes

Tracing the currents of American history that run through the Great Lakes region.
Covers of popular history books.

Who Is History For?

What happens when radical historians write for the public.
Illustrated portrait of Don DeLillo against a firey background.

Secret Histories

Don DeLillo's Cold Wars.
Newspaper clipping from an Abolitionist paper

The Hypocrisy of This Nation!

How abolitionists viewed the American flag.
Comic strip: Bungleton Green and the Mystic Commandos: "Jon Smythe has escaped being lynched by Green Men but is captured by the "Dark Mystery!".

Jay Jackson’s Audacious Comics

Written during World War II, Bungleton Green and the Mystic Commandos imagined a future liberated from racism and inequality.
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.
Black-and-white collage style poster for the Jewish Museum

Fuzz! Junk! Rumble!

A show at the Jewish Museum surveys three eventful years of art, film, and performance in New York City—and the political upheavals that defined them.
Donald Duck with a U.S. military hat

How Disney Propaganda Shaped Life on the Home Front During WWII

A traveling exhibition traces how the animation studio mobilized to support the Allied war effort.
Lithograph of men and women drinking and dancing at an American Dance House.

The Influences of the Underworld: Nineteenth-Century Brothel Guides, Cards, and City Directories

Brothel guides tended to be small, making them easy to conceal. They also mimicked other publications to make it easier to hide the guides’ true purpose.
Woman holding syringe

How Anthony Comstock, Enemy to Women of the Gilded Age, Attempted to Ban Contraception

Hell hath no fury like a man with a vaginal douche named after him.
Edgar Allan Poe.

Edgar Allan Poe’s Other Obsession

Known as a master of horror, he also understood the power—and the limits—of science.
Ronald Reagan and popular musicians from 1980s, black and white collage with colorful shapes

I Want My Mutually Assured Destruction

How 1980s MTV helped my students understand the Cold War.
Paul Peter Porges with self-portrait, during his time in the US army, 1951-52.

‘They Were Survivors’: The Jewish Cartoonists Who Fled the Nazis

A new exhibition celebrates the work of three Austrian artists who escaped their country as Nazis took over and created daring work in the years after.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The Trouble with Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Charlotte Perkins Gilman authored the beloved short story "The Yellow Wallpaper," but also supported eugenics and nativism.
Frank Zappa.

How Weird Was Frank Zappa?

Alex Winter’s new documentary about the musician fails to capture his deeply conventional streak.
A collage of book covers.

The Radical Origins of Self-Help Literature

How did the genre of self-help go from one focused on collective empowerment to one serving the class hierarchy as it stands?
Vanilla Ice in front of an American flag

The Rise and Fall of Vanilla Ice, As Told by Vanilla Ice

Thirty years after "Ice Ice Baby," Robert Van Winkle is ready to talk about it all—his rise, his fall, and that infamous night on the balcony.
Ben Cohen giving a presentation

B. R. Cohen on How Food Became “Pure”

On the corrupt, contaminated, deceptive world of 19th-century food adulteration, and how Cohen's own work straddles pure academia and public-facing scholarship.
Two adults holding hands with a child in front of a Christmas tree

The Oracle of Our Unease

The enchanted terms in which F. Scott Fitzgerald portrayed modern America still blind us to how scathingly he judged it.
Still from "Apocolypse Now"

How a Wagner Opera Defined the Sound of Hollywood Blockbusters

“Ride of the Valkyries” has been featured in hundreds of films, including 'The Birth of a Nation,' 'Jarhead,' and most famously, Apocalypse Now.'

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