Photograph: Twins Michael and Mary Kerby fail to convey any enthusiasm upon winning a trophy in a Baby Show at Ruislip, Middlesex, May 1934

Darling or Degrading? Baby Shows in the Nineteenth Century

A stunningly popular form of entertainment, baby pageants promoted the cult of domesticity, showcased maternal pride, and opened a path to fame and wealth.
Ramón y Cajal in Valencia, 1884-1887

Imag(in)ing the Brain

Nobel winner Santiago Ramón y Cajal preferred to draw his own renderings of neurons rather than avail himself of photomicrography's wonders.
An illustration of pollen and dust in the atmosphere from Popular Science Monthly, 1883

The Mystery of Crime-Scene Dust

In the late nineteenth century, forensic investigators began using new technologies to study minute details—such as the arrangement and makeup of dust.
Source: https://www-jstor-org.bibliotheek.ehb.be/stable/community.28032326?seq=6

Parthenogenesis, Medieval Whales, and Debating Science

Well-researched stories from Slate, Knowable Magazine, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.
Woman in military clothes on a background of rainbow

From Handcuffs to Rainbows: Queer in the Military

The US military has done an about face on LGBTQ+ rights in just over a decade.
The cover of Kwame Brathwaite: Black Is Beautiful by by Kwame Brathwaite, Tanisha C. Ford and Deborah Willis, 2019

Kwame Brathwaite Showed the World that Black is Beautiful

Photographing everyone from musicians to athletes to the person on the street, Brathwaite found the beauty in Blackness and shared it with the world.
The Book of Salt by Monique Truong

Monique Truong’s The Book of Salt

Centered on the Stein-Toklas household and written from the point of view of their gay Vietnamese cook, Binh, this novel tells a story of converging queer diasporas.
The noble Ikhlas Khan with a petition, c. 1650

The Habshi Dynasty of India

Amongst the hundreds of minorities within the Subcontinent, Black Indians of African origin stand out.
Margaret Chase Smith being sworn into the House of Representatives on June 10, 1940

Declaration of Conscience: Annotated

In June 1950, Senator Margaret Chase Smith criticized Joseph McCarthy's anticommunist campaigns. She was the first of his colleagues to challenge his Red Scare rhetoric.
Martian Moon Deimos

Deimos: A Chip Off the Old Martian Block?

A new space probe suggests that the moonlet Deimos isn’t a captured asteroid after all.