history
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Remaking Historical Memory
For JSTOR Daily, Ellen C. Caldwell examines historical “memory-making” and our changing interpretations of historical events over time. Caldwell focuses on the 1746 Battle of Culloden, a battle that ended the Jacobite Uprising and decisively transformed the British monarchy and Scottish…
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Rediscovering Amber Reeves
For Full Stop, Emma Schneider reviews a recently republished book: Amber Reeves’s 1914 novel A Lady and Her Husband, which Schneider aligns with “American pre-war feminist classics such as The Awakening and The Yellow Wallpaper.” Reeves’s novel offers a comparatively…
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Catch My (Trendy) Disease
Pale skin, thin waists, sparkling eyes, rosy cheeks, red lips—all trademarks of 19th century English beauty trends, and all symptoms of the tuberculosis epidemic that ran rampant until the advent of germ theory in the early 20th century. Emily Mullin…
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The Lives of Cyborgs
An automaton symbolizes the creepy resemblance between us and the clockwork mechanisms we’ve invented… and to explore the awe and apprehension of mechanical existence. Michael Peck writes for Lit Hub on the literary history of cyborgs and robots through the…
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The Cost of Gay Liberation
Jim Downs writes for Aeon on the radical socialist roots of the gay liberation movement in America, as well as the role of economics in allowing individuals to shape an openly gay identity.
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Wanted/Needed/Loved: Torres’s Family Portrait
I’m constantly making up stories, and writing histories, even when I’m not putting them into songs.
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The Rumpus Interview with Minsoo Kang
Writer and historian Minsoo Kang talks about his new translation of The Story of Hong Gildong, a touchstone novel of Korea written in the 19th century.
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The Rumpus Interview with Campbell McGrath
Campbell McGrath talks about his new collection, XX: Poems For The Twentieth Century, capitalism, history, and what it might mean to write a wordless poem.
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It’s Literally Genesis
Tara Isabella Burton revisits historical interpretations of the Bible’s Book of Genesis and the emergence of fundamentalist/literal readings of a text that, for centuries, had been interpreted as allegory.
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Digging Deep into a Jawn
The word “jawn” is unlike any other English word. In fact, according to the experts that I spoke to, it’s unlike any other word in any other language. It is an all-purpose noun, a stand-in for inanimate objects, abstract concepts,…
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What Country… Should Give You Harbour?
Allison Meier writes at Hyperallergic on a speech, recently digitized by the British Library, that proves to be the only example of Shakespeare’s handwriting other than a few signatures. The excerpt comes from Sir Thomas More, a play written in collaboration,…
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A Blind Eye to History
At Aeon, Robert Neer discusses the particular absence of military history from American universities. While general history courses cover the overall societal impact of some military campaigns and political science covers the effect of military action on government, Neer notes…