A bridge spanning a river collapses beneath the passage of a train, in a scene from the United Artists film 'The General', directed by and starring Buster Keaton, 1927

A History of Fakery on Film

Concerns about AI-made images have deep roots in the earliest years of filmmaking.
An illustration from the cover of Ted Hughes's 1968 novel The Iron Man

The Book That Became The Iron Giant

Before it was a cult classic, the Warner Bros. film began as a 1968 children’s novel by Ted Hughes, though the book and movie tell notably different tales.
Florence Welch of Florence + the Machine performs at the 2019 Governors Ball Festival at Randall's Island on June 01, 2019 in New York City.

The Pagan Heart of Florence + The Machine

Welch’s new album continues the band's long-running dialogue with magic, myth, and modern witchcraft.
Japanese settlers harvesting millet in Northern Manchuria

When the Dust Settles in Colonial Manchurian Writing

Takagi Kyōzō makes heavy use of natural imagery to decry the miserable status of the settler colonist population in Japanese-occupied Manchuria.
An illustration from Christine de Pizan's The Book of the City of Ladies, 1405

Medieval Friendships: No Girls Allowed

Medieval European elites inherited the classical concept of friendship as something possible only for men. Christine de Pizan and Margery Kempe beg to differ.
Hand Holding a Pocket Watch

Keeping Time: A New Year’s Collection

A selection of stories that chronicle our complicated notions of time.
William Butler Yeats with his wife Georgie Hyde Lees, 1923

Yeats and the Occult Imagination

Beneath his poems lay a lifelong devotion to magic, divination, and a visionary system that shaped his most prophetic work.
Snowflake Waltz in the White Forest (The Nutcracker Act I, Scene III) performed by The New York City Ballet in 1954.

Making Sense of The Nutcracker’s Libretto

Early audiences loved it, even as critics questioned its structure. Returning to the story helps illuminate what makes the ballet so strangely captivating.
Amanda Gorman, Walt Whitman, and Joy Harjo

Poetry’s Vital Role in Politics

Like Walt Whitman before them, Joy Harjo and Amanda Gorman are reimagining what it means to be a poet in this democratic republic.
An illustration from the cover of Amrita Pritam's Pinjar

Caught in Partition’s Violent Fray

Published seventy-five year ago, Amrita Pritam’s Pinjar explores the devastation suffered by the women of India and Pakistan after political rupture.