The Long and Winding Island
New York’s Long Island has long served as a backdrop for social and political conflicts between the newly arrived and the established residents.
Enchanting Imposters
Johns Hopkins University’s Bibliotheca Fictiva Collection of Literary and Historical Forgery shows that humans have been creating fan fiction and fake news for millennia.
The Enduring Popularity of Harry Potter
How has the Harry Potter series remained so beloved across decades filled with young adult and fantasy novels?
Dissident Memoirs Across Rust-Iron Curtains
Soviet dissident memoirs, like their authors, had to cross the Iron Curtain—an iron curtain of meaning and interpretation.
The Enduring Value of Student Newspapers
More than curiosities, college papers are unique pedagogical tools that help undergraduates achieve media literacy.
What Was Behind Jonathan Swift’s Modest Proposal?
Swift’s savage animosity towards the Irish Protestant elites is front and center in his biting (perhaps literally) critique of the landlord class.
The Politics of Our AI Overlords
Fears of AI often focus on domination by algorithm-powered capitalism, but science fiction once used societies ruled by computers as analogs for communism.
Christine de Pizan: Europe’s First Professional Female Writer
Christine used her pen to make a living at the French court, but even more pointedly, she used it to argue the value of educated women.
10 Contemporary Pastoral Poems
Poems that reflect and reinterpret the pastoral tradition, by Louise Glück, Alex Dimitrov, Rebecca Lehmann, Sam Sax, Natasha Trethewey, and more.
Rebecca Lehmann on Breaking the Rules of Poetry
An interview with writer and poet Rebecca Lehmann, who finds splendid things can follow when she stretches the rules of craft.