Menu
Idea

literature

406
View on Map
Filter by:

Filter by published date

Viewing 151–180 of 406 results. Go to first page
19th caricature of a dentist extracting a tooth

Sicko Doctors: Suffering and Sadism in 19th-Century America

American fiction of the 19th century often featured a cruel doctor, whose unfeeling fascination with bodily suffering readers found unnerving.
by Chelsea Davis via The Public Domain Review on July 1, 2020
A white hand holding white flowers.

100 Years of Edith Wharton's "The Age of Innocence"

Where does Edith Wharton's idea of innocence fall into our own world?
by Rachel Vorona Cote via Jezebel on June 24, 2020
Flannery O'Connor standing outside at her Georgia home.

How Racist Was Flannery O’Connor?

She has become an icon of American letters. Now readers are reckoning with another side of her legacy.
by Paul Elie via The New Yorker on June 15, 2020

Strategic Long-Term Propaganda

A new book considers the mid-century authors who were – and weren't – willing to have their work deployed in the service of the Cold War.
by Randy Boyagoda via First Things on June 1, 2020
Drawing of two angels flying above Longfellow

What Is There to Love About Longfellow?

He was the most revered poet of his day. It’s worth trying to figure out why.
by James Marcus via The New Yorker on June 1, 2020

Pandemics Go Hand in Hand with Conspiracy Theories

From the Illuminati to “COVID-19 is a lie,” how pandemics have produced contagions of fear.
by Frederick Kaufman via The New Yorker on May 13, 2020
The Oakland Municipal Auditorium set up as a hospital, with Red Cross nurses tending to flu patients, 1918.

The 1918 Flu Pandemic Killed Millions. So Why Does Its Cultural Memory Feel So Faint?

A new book suggests that the plague’s horrors haunt modernist literature between the lines.
by Rebecca Onion, Elizabeth Outka via Slate on May 3, 2020
Portrait of John Brown beside the American flag, c.1846.

America, Lost and Found at Wounded Knee

Stephen Vincent Benét’s lost epic “John Brown’s Body” envisions a nation sutured together after the Civil War, but fails to reckon with the war’s causes.
by Ed Simon, Frederick H. Jackson, Donald M. Foerster via JSTOR Daily on April 29, 2020

The Tangled History of Illness and Idiocy

The pandemic is stress-testing two concepts Americans have historically gotten wrong.
by Jessi Jezewska Stevens via The Nation on April 13, 2020
Sign noting that spitting spreads the Spanish flu.

Trapped on a Ship During a Pandemic

“Either they’ve got no conscience, or they’re not awake to the gravity of the situation.”
by Willa Cather via Lapham’s Quarterly on March 31, 2020

The Seminal Novel About the 1918 Flu Pandemic Was Written by a Texan

Katherine Anne Porter’s ‘Pale Horse, Pale Rider’ tells the tale of a pandemic she barely survived.
by Michael Agresta via Texas Monthly on March 25, 2020
The title page of Life and confession of Ann Walters, the female murderess.

How “Female Fiends” Challenged Victorian Ideals

At a time when questions about women's rights in marriage roiled society, women readers took to the pages of cheap books about husband-murdering wives.
by Dawn Keetley, Erin Blakemore via JSTOR Daily on March 25, 2020

What Our Contagion Fables Are Really About

In the literature of pestilence, the greatest threat isn’t the loss of human life but the loss of what makes us human.
by Jill Lepore via The New Yorker on March 23, 2020
A photo of William Faulkner

The Road to Glory: Faulkner’s Hollywood Years, 1932–1936

Lisa C. Hickman reconstructs William Faulkner’s tumultuous Hollywood sojourn of 1932–1936.
by Lisa C. Hickman via Los Angeles Review of Books on February 27, 2020

Emily Dickinson Escapes

A new biography and TV show present Emily Dickinson as a self-aware artist who created a life that defied the limits placed on women.
by Lynne Feeley via Boston Review on February 20, 2020
Nicholas Black Elk

Wounded Knee and the Myth of the Vanished Indian

The story of the 1890 massacre was often about the end of Native American resistance to US expansion. But that’s not how everyone told it.
by Livia Gershon, Lisa Tatonetti via JSTOR Daily on February 17, 2020

Ride Shotgun through Mid-Century LA with Ed Ruscha’s Photos and Jack Kerouac’s Words

A kinetic slice of Americana so pure you can almost smell Kerouac’s invoked apple pie – or maybe it’s the faint stench of exhaust fumes.
by Matthew Miller via Aeon on January 7, 2020

The Asian-American Canon Breakers

Proudly embracing their role as outsiders, a group of writer-activists set out to create a cultural identity—and a literature—of their own.
by Hua Hsu via The New Yorker on January 6, 2020

The History of O. Henry's 'The Gift of the Magi'

The beloved Christmas short story may have been dashed off on deadline but its core message has endured.
by Patrick Sauer via Smithsonian on December 23, 2019

Zombie Flu: How the 1919 Influenza Pandemic Fueled the Rise of the Living Dead

Did mass graves in the influenza pandemic help give rise to the living dead?
by Elizabeth Outka via The Conversation on October 28, 2019

“Ulysses” on Trial

It was a setup: a stratagem worthy of wily Ulysses himself.
by Michael Chabon via New York Review of Books on September 13, 2019

The Slow Clean

Mikaella Clements on the role of baths in twentieth-century literature.
by Mikaella Clements via The Times Literary Supplement on September 3, 2019

Jenny Zhang on Reading Little Women and Wanting to Be Like Jo March

Looking to Louisa May Alcott's heroine for inspiration.
by Jenny Zhang via Literary Hub on August 23, 2019

The Literal (and Figurative) Whiteness of Moby Dick

For Herman Melville, the color white could be horrifyingly bleak.
by Gabrielle Bellot via Literary Hub on August 1, 2019

Pulp Fiction Helped Define American Lesbianism

In the 50s and 60s, steamy novels about lesbian relationships, marketed to men, gave closeted women needed representation.
by Erin Blakemore, Yvonne Keller via JSTOR Daily on August 1, 2019

Herman Melville at Home

The novelist drew on far-flung voyages to create his masterpiece. But he could finish it only at his beloved Berkshire farm.
by Jill Lepore via The New Yorker on July 22, 2019

A Universe of One’s Own

Only in the science fiction genre can one compare an alien to a woman.
by Nicole Rudick via New York Review of Books on July 8, 2019
Rudyard Kipling

Rudyard Kipling in America

What happened to the great defender of Empire when he settled in the States?
by Charles McGrath via The New Yorker on July 1, 2019

Before Stonewall, There Was a Bookstore

Networks of activists transformed Stonewall from an isolated event into a turning point in the struggle for gay power.
by Jim Downs via The Atlantic on June 27, 2019

What Maketh a Man

How queer artist J.C. Leyendecker invented an iconography of twentieth-century American masculinity.
by Tyler Malone via Lapham’s Quarterly on June 10, 2019
View More
30 of
406

Filter Results:

Suggested Filters:

Idea

Person

brought to you by
© Bunk History