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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.
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.
Girls reading "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn."

Betty Smith Enchanted a Generation of Readers with ‘A Tree Grows in Brooklyn’

No other 20th-century American novel did quite so much to burnish Brooklyn’s reputation.
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.
Exhibit

Moving Pictures

Tracing the history of Americans' relationships with the silver screen, from film's earliest days to the cinematic creations of our own times.

Leonard Bernstein smoking a cigarette

The Bernstein Enigma

In narrowly focusing on Leonard Bernstein’s tortured personal life, "Maestro" fails to explore his tortured artistic life.
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.
Two American soldiers in UCP uniforms with an Iraqi man in the background.

Universal Failure

Universal Camouflage Pattern became a symbol of an unpopular war. Today, it’s being reappraised by those too young to remember the invasion of Iraq.
Kris Kringle with children from the film 'Santa Claus is Comin' to Town.'
partner

A Classic Christmas Movie Offers a Lesson About Antisemitism

Nazis play a key role as villain in American collective consciousness—but without broad understanding of antisemitism.
Silhouette of Oppenheimer wearing a fedora.

How Do We Know the Motorman Is Not Insane?

Oppenheimer and the demon heart of power.
Latina suffragists Andrea and Teresa Villarreal.

Recovering Histories of Gendered State Violence

And how those with few resources at their disposal found ways to navigate and negotiate even the direst of situations.
A turntable and records.

What’s Old is New Again (and Again): On the Cyclical Nature of Nostalgia

Retro was not the antithesis to the sub- and countercultural experiments of the 1960s, it grew directly out of them.
A still from The Exorcist of Chris, played by Ellen Burstyn, standing next to a priest.

Exorcising American Domestic Violence

The Exorcist in 1973 and 2023.
Bayard Rustin by a sign that reads "integration means better schools for all".

Bayard Rustin Was No Hollywood Figurehead

This new biopic about the socialist organizer Bayard Rustin stops at the March on Washington. What is it leaving out?
Conference of Studio Unions' months-long strike against Hollywood studios in 1945.

How Hollywood’s Black Friday Strike Changed Labor Across America

A 1945 union vs. studios battle set off broad right-wing hysteria—its lessons should resonate today.
Gremlins climbing on a World War II warplane.

How Gremlins Went From Fairy Stories to Warplanes to Hollywood Legend

Meet these slippery, mischievous reflections of our anxieties about technology.
Women with blankets and fans, in a scene from Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon.”

The Missing Politics of Scorsese’s ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’

Blaming corrupt individuals rather than federal Indian policy for the violence and exploitation perpetrated against the Osage Nation misses the mark.
A still from the 1960 film Spartacus of two Roman gladiators fighting.

How Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus Broke the Hollywood Blacklists

The 1960 film was penned by two blacklisted Communist writers. Its arrival in theaters was a middle finger to the McCarthyist witch hunt in Hollywood.
A portion of the author’s music collection; bootleg cassette tapes and CDs. Photo by Maya Walker.

The Pirate Preservationists

When keeping cultural archives safe means stepping outside the law.
Lebanese auto worker Eva Habib in her work coveralls in 1929.

Arab American Labor

On the centrality of the working classes to the Arab American immigrant experience and the pivotal roles Arab Americans played in American labor.
Helen Mirren as Golda Meir.

The Strange Feminism of “Golda”

The biopic starring Helen Mirren shies away from the moral implications of Golda Meir’s decisions.
Bruce Lee in a classic pose from the movie ‘Enter the Dragon.'

The Fighting Spirit of Bruce Lee

The actor and martial arts star also wanted to be regarded as a poet-philosopher.
Harry Smith.

‘Cosmic Scholar’ Review: Harry Smith’s Strange Frequencies

Smith collected rare books, paper airplanes, Pennsylvania Dutch tools—and harvested the folk music recordings that changed a generation.
Max Fleischer’s Superman

On the Men Who Lent Their Bodies (and Voices) to the Earliest Iterations of Superman

A wrestler, a Sunday school teacher, and a mystery man walk into a studio.
Captain Lightfood on horseback firing a pistol.

Thunderbolt and Lightfoot: The American Creation of Irish Outlaw Folk Heroes

Martin’s confession relates outlaw adventures that appear to be original. But were they real? 
Cover of the book "When Crack Was King," and Donovan X. Ranmsey.

A History of the Crack Epidemic From Below

How documenting the history of the drug war is a “community project” and reflections on 1990s rap music's anti-crack hits.
Marker at the Trinity test site in New Mexico.

Nolan’s Oppenheimer Treats New Mexico as a Blank Canvas

There is no acknowledgement in the film of the existence of downwinders from the test, in New Mexico or elsewhere.
Still from the film 'Oppenheimer.'

‘It’s Really First-Class Work’

Watching 'Oppenheimer' with the author of a definitive account of the Manhattan Project.
Movie poster for "Bad Day at Black Rock."

Buried in the Sand

On John Sturges’s “Bad Day at Black Rock” and Japanese America.
Drawing from "Little Nemo in Slumberland" by Winsor McCay
partner

The Cutting-Edge Cartoons of Winsor McCay

A prolific, meticulous artist, McCay created characters and storyscapes that inspired generations of cartoonists and animators.

‘Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer’ Tell the Same Terrifying Story

The “Barbenheimer” double feature captures the dawn of our imperiled era.

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