Culture

Jewish masculinity and the New York intellectuals.

Siskel and Ebert and the heyday of popular movie criticism.

He wrote one of my favorite songs, but was so much more than a composer.

Power and choice in the 1930s novel.

Ann Powers’s deeply personal biography of Joni Mitchell looks at how a generation of listeners came to identify with the folk singer’s intimate songs.

This 1969 film offers a compelling context for queer cinema and culture prior to the 1970s.

Country music boosters rebranded the genre and tied it to America's military mission as a way to build popularity.

An essential new volume collects accounts of Japanese incarceration by patriotic idealists, righteous firebrands, and downtrodden cynics alike.

Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso” is one of several recent hits bringing back the genre that never got a name.

The melee, the mayhem, the metal chairs.

The intersection of Black music and queer identity.

What we can learn from the history of maritime folk music.

She remade the American songbook in her image, uprooting the very meaning of musical performance.

Once a powerful voice in the Black press, Coleman all but disappeared from the literary landscape of the American Midwest after her death in 1948.

Starting in the 1960s, more and more Hollywood films depicted an increasingly violent and alienated American society quickly losing its mind.

Hollywood's first natural-color feature film and the breakout role for Anna May Wong, considered the first Chinese American movie star.

On the history of literature masquerading as primary source.

Why are buildings today simple and austere, while buildings of the past were ornate and elaborately ornamented? The answer is not the cost of labor.

The evolution of women's sportswear.

Gordon Parks’s most famous photograph, "American Gothic," was of a cleaning woman in Washington, D.C. She has a story to tell.

The politics of eccentric men in the early United States.

As the 150th Kentucky Derby kicks off, the achievements of jockey Oliver Lewis and trainer Ansel Williamson at the first Derby have been largely forgotten.

In Jack London’s novel, Martin Eden personifies debates still raging over the role and purpose of education in American life.

In the midst of the Depression, Conroy helped encourage a new generation of working-class writers.

From villain to antihero, nationalist to freedom fighter, the comic book character has always been a reflection of the Jewish cultural identity.

On the hostess Langston Hughes called the “Joy Goddess of Harlem.”

As the legend of the singer–poet–sex symbol grows, fans rarely acknowledge his conservative streak.

How preparation for a big purchase turned into an adventure through history.

The star of the 1920s silver screen who appears on Taylor Swift’s new album abruptly left Hollywood at the height of her success.

How Keith Haring got his halo.