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Tunnel Vision

When you dig beyond all purpose, digging becomes the purpose.
Alice Coltrane

The Visions of Alice Coltrane

In the years after her husband John’s death, the harpist discovered a sound all her own, a jazz rooted in acts of spirit and will.
Book cover that reads: "The Next Great American Novel," with the American flag in the background

"James" Is a Retelling of "Huckleberry Finn" that America Desperately Needs

It puts the people in the most peril in the center of the story: the people being systematically exploited, chained, whipped and raped.
A collage of suggestive images of women, a woman holding a camera, and a red letter X.

How Candida Royalle Set Out to Reinvent Porn

As a feminist in the adult-film industry, she believed the answer wasn’t banning porn; it was better porn.
Boxes with Black American history inside

The Black Box of Race

In a circumscribed universe, Black Americans have ceaselessly reinvented themselves.

The Great American Novels

136 books that made America think.

Past Tense

The historical novel isn’t cool. Popular? Yes. Enduring? Yes. A bit, well — for nerds? Also yes. Coolness lies in being at the right place at the right time.
Broken statue bust of a Black man.

A Bloody Retelling of 'Huckleberry Finn'

Percival Everett transforms Mark Twain’s classic 'Huckleberry Finn' into a tragedy.
"A Grain of Sand" record
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Charting the Music of a Movement

Galvanized by an act of racial violence, the band A Grain of Sand brought a new version of Asian American activism and identity to the folk music scene.
Painting of Arnold Schoenberg in Los Angeles.

How Arnold Schoenberg Changed Hollywood

He moved to California during the Nazi era, and his music—which ranged from the lushly melodic to the rigorously atonal—caught the ears of everyone.
"Alien Embrace" repeated artwork

The Institute for Illegal Images

Meditating on blotter not just as art, or as a historical artifact, but as a kind of media, even a “meta medium.”
Keith Haring spray painting

Keith Haring, the Boy Who Cried Art

Was he a brilliant painter or a brilliant brand?
Robert Stroud in his prison cell, surrouded by books and bird cages.
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Freeing Birdman of Alcatraz

Neither the Bureau of Prisons nor the Production Code Administration could stop the production of a movie about murderer and ornithologist Robert Stroud.
Books, diaries and poetry collections from the Issei Poetry Project.

Issei Poetry Between the World Wars

The rich history of Japanese-language literature challenges assumptions about what counts as U.S. art.
Mario Van Peebles in Outlaw Posse.

How a Century of Black Westerns Shaped Movie History

Mario Van Peebles' "Outlaw Posse" is the latest attempt to correct the erasure of people of color from the classic cinema genre.
South Pacific.

You've Got to Be Carefully Taught

Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific shows the limits–and power–of mainstream entertainment in addressing weighty social topics.
A photograph of George Washington Cable with Mark Twain.

The Dying Pelican

Romanticism, local color, and nostalgic New Orleans.
Two elderly Black women.

How the Memory of a Song Reunited Two Women Separated by the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

In 1990, scholars found a Sierra Leonean woman who remembered a nearly identical version of a tune passed down by a Georgia woman’s enslaved ancestors
Maria P. Williams, 1916.

The First Black Woman to Write, Produce, and Act in Her Own Film

Maria P. Williams pioneered filmmaking for African American women, but her life is even more thrilling than her sole film.
Harry Smith pointing finger upward

Outsider’s Outsider

At once famous and obscure, marginal and central, Harry Smith anticipated and even invented several important elements of Sixties counterculture.
Ledger drawing of Plains Indians on horseback.

A Shameful US History Told Through Ledger Drawings

In the 19th century ledger drawings became a concentrated point of resistance for Indigenous people, an expression of individual and communal pride.
An advertisement from China for soup with brain meat.

In Defense of Eating Brains

While some in the West are squeamish, globally, it's more common than not.
Peanuts' Franklin as a flat two-dimensional character.

It’s Flagrant Tokenism, Charlie Brown!

Peanuts’ Franklin has been a controversial character for decades. A new special attempts reparations.
A colorful drawing of Native Americans on horses.

Pictures From a Genocide

An astonishing new show of Native American ledger drawings brings a historic crime into focus.
A bedroom decorated with Bob Marley merchandise and the Jamaican flag.

Bob Marley’s ‘Legend’ Is One of the Bestselling Albums Ever. But Does It Tell His Full Story?

After 40 years and more than 25 million copies sold, what story does ‘Legend’ tell us about Bob Marley and the people listening to it?
Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in a scene from the 1966 film “Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?”

The Drama of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” Spilled Into Real Life

After "Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?," the nightmare of American familyhood was the only game in town.
Baltimore Colts' Jim O'Brien making a game-winning field goal kick in Super Bowl V in Miami, 1971.
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The Man Who Changed Field Goals Forever

A Hungarian immigrant first brought the soccer style field kick to the NFL.
A still from the film "It Happened One Night" of Clarke Gable watching Claudette Colbert hitchhike by showing her leg.

Our Timeless Romance With Screwball Comedy

Born out of the Great Depression, the genre reminds us that even in hard times there's laughter, love, and light.
A illustration depicts the Hopkinsville Goblins incident from 1955, when a group claims they were assaulted by aliens of some sort.

The Long, Surprising Legacy of the Hopkinsville Goblins

Or, why families under siege make for great movies.
Image from the filmstrip, showing a grieved woman with her head in her hands, being comforted by a man standing beside her

Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the Hands of the Red Scared

Again and again, a fervant British anticommunist's filmstrip of the novel shows images of women in states of distress.