JSTOR Daily: Where News Meets Its Scholarly Match

Soap Bubbles by Jean Simeon Chardin, ca.1733

The Soap Bubble Trope

Throughout the history of philosophy, literature, art, and science, people have been fascinated with the shimmering surfaces of soap bubbles.

Security State of Mind

Settlements and the Israel-Palestine Conflict: Background Reading

Scholarship about Israeli settlement in occupied Palestinian territories provides historical context for recent violence in the region.

Open Community Collections

The Unicorns of JSTOR

These rare creatures have by turn—and somewhat paradoxically—been associated with purity, fertility, seduction, healing, sacrifice, immortality, and divinity.

Black Radicals

George Washington Williams and the Origins of Anti-Imperialism

Initially supportive of Belgian King Leopold II’s claim to have created a “free state” of Congo, Williams changed his mind when he saw the horrors of empire.

Reading Lists

The Global History of Labor and Race: Foundations and Key Concepts

How have workers around the world sought to change their conditions, and how have racial divisions affected their efforts?

Most Recent

Education

What Does It Mean to Call Helen Keller a Fraud?

A TikTok trend is only the most recent example of how people often question the abilities of marginalized groups.

Arts & Culture

When Tornadoes Strike at Night

Injuries and fatalities tend to be higher if people are asleep.

A crystal ball with an oil field inside of it

Politics & History

The Mediums Who Helped Kick-Start the Oil Industry

Apparently some people communed with spirits to locate the first underground oil reserves.

An anatomical machine of Prince Raimondo di Sangro

Cabinet of Curiosities

The Anatomical Machines of Naples’ Alchemist Prince

Rumor had it that these machines were once the Prince’s servants, whom he murdered and transformed into anatomical displays. Scholars showed otherwise.

Security State of Mind

Settlements and the Israel-Palestine Conflict: Background Reading

Scholarship about Israeli settlement in occupied Palestinian territories provides historical context for recent violence in the region.

Open Community Collections

The Unicorns of JSTOR

These rare creatures have by turn—and somewhat paradoxically—been associated with purity, fertility, seduction, healing, sacrifice, immortality, and divinity.

Black Radicals

George Washington Williams and the Origins of Anti-Imperialism

Initially supportive of Belgian King Leopold II’s claim to have created a “free state” of Congo, Williams changed his mind when he saw the horrors of empire.

Reading Lists

The Global History of Labor and Race: Foundations and Key Concepts

How have workers around the world sought to change their conditions, and how have racial divisions affected their efforts?

What Does It Mean to Call Helen Keller a Fraud?

A TikTok trend is only the most recent example of how people often question the abilities of marginalized groups.

Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Chess_Game_-_Sofonisba_Anguissola.jpg

Politics & History

Catherine de’ Medici Was Good at Chess

The game was a way for early modern women in royal courts to prove their skill in political life.

Education & Society

Herbs & Verbs: How to Do Witchcraft for Real

Like for real real.

Long Reads

Art & Art History

The Hunt of the Unicorn Tapestries Depict a “Virgin-Capture Legend”

They’re big in elementary school, but unicorn tableaux also have a complex iconographic history that combines religious and secular myths.

Arts & Culture

Venn Diagram of LGBTQ+ and Gaming Communities Goes Here

Video games offer many LGBTQ+ people avenues for meaning, community, and escape, but in-game cultures of harassment still pose serious problems.

Politics & History

How LGBTQ+ Activists Got “Homosexuality” out of the DSM

The first DSM, created in 1952, established a hierarchy of sexual deviancies, vaulting heterosexual behavior to an idealized place in American culture.

Education & Society

The Truth about Lying

You can’t spot a liar just by looking, but psychologists are zeroing in on methods that might actually work.

Editors' Picks

Politics & History

The Story of Juneteenth

The Emancipation Proclamation was issued on January 1, 1863. It took over two years for the news to reach some enslaved people.

Politics & History

Juneteenth and the Emancipation Proclamation

The emancipation of enslaved people in the U.S. took place over a protracted period. The articles in this curated list dig into the complicated history.

Politics & History

How Black Americans Co-opted the Fourth of July

After the Civil War, white southerners saw the Fourth of July as a celebration of Confederate defeat. Black southerners saw opportunities.

Politics & History

Celebrating Immigration on the Fourth of July

For many immigrants to the U.S. in the late 19th century, July 4th was deeply significant: Their own home countries were fighting for independence.

Politics & History

Colleges’ Reluctant Embrace of MLK Day

The push for a national Martin Luther King holiday prompted a fierce political tug-of-war, on campus and off.

Social History

An image from the cover of the September 4, 1980 issue of Philadelphia Gay News

Discovering the “Gay Lifestyle” through 1970s Magazines

The gay men's magazines QQ and Ciao! were unabashedly liberated, but they still catered to an exclusive audience.

A Jewish Welfare Board cookout for soldiers

Community Cookbooks and the Women Who Wrote Them

Before "local" became a foodie obsession, small groups of women published collections of their own recipes. And still do!

A poster promoting healthy eating from between 1941 and 1945

The Idea of “Good Nutrition” Has Changed Over Time

But one thing has been constant: the tendency to call some foods better for you than others.

Columns

The Anatomical Machines of Naples’ Alchemist Prince

Rumor had it that these machines were once the Prince’s servants, whom he murdered and transformed into anatomical displays. Scholars showed otherwise.

Intricate Paper cutting of a hunting scene by Dutch artist Joanna Koerten

Joanna Koerten’s Scissor-Cut Works Were Compared to Michelangelo

And then, snip by snip, she was cut out of the frame of Renaissance art history.

Terracotta memorial portrait (nsodie) of an Akan ruler from present-day southern Ghana

The “Deviant” African Genders That Colonialism Condemned

European travellers and anthropologists found that their gendered worldview didn’t easily map onto the societies they encountered.

Audio Stories

a caricature of three women whose depicted clothing satirizes the beginnings of neo-classical fashion influences in England.

Why Are So Many Romances Set in the Regency Period?

The British Regency era lasted less than a decade, but it spawned a staggering number of unlikely fictional marriages.

The cover of the first edition of Slan by A.E. van Vogt

The Self-Styled Sci-Fi Supermen of the 1940s

Way before there were stans, there were slans. Too bad about their fascist utopian daydreams!

A Brief History of the Women’s KKK

The Women’s KKK, an affiliated-but-separate racist organization for white Protestant women, courted members through an insincere “empowerment feminism.”