essay
Human rights and justice
Lydia Maria Child, abolitionist
Taking up arms against slavery, the famous novelist foreshadowed the vexed role of the white woman activist today
Lydia Moland
essay
History
Medieval babycare
From mansplaining about breastfeeding to debates on developmental toys, medieval parenting was full of familiar dilemmas
Katherine Harvey
essay
Archaeology
What the tablets say
Some 3,700 years ago, an enslaved girl, a barber, and a king crossed paths in a city by the Euphrates. This is their story
Amanda H Podany
essay
History
Women at the barricades
The transgressions of working-class women formed the revolutionary heart of the 1871 Paris Commune
Carolyn Eichner
essay
History
The politics of pain
Medical science can only tell us so much. To understand pain, we need the cultural tools of history, philosophy and art
Rob Boddice
essay
Global history
Geopolitics is for losers
The concept of geopolitics comes from German and Russian attempts to explain defeat and reverse loss of influence
Harold James
essay
Stories and literature
The honesty of pornography
Often vilified as a weapon of male supremacy, pornography in fact has much to tell us about ourselves and our culture
Kathleen Lubey
essay
History
The doxxing of Rose Mainville
When a young street vendor found her name in a guidebook to the sex workers of Paris, she couldn’t live with the shame
Amanda E Herbert & David N Woodworth
video
History
From manners to mud – two women recall coming of age in Victorian London
10 minutes
essay
History
Freedom from liquor
Ken Burns’s account of prohibition tells a popular story of booze in America. The historical record is far more sobering
Mark Lawrence Schrad
essay
History
History by numbers
Is history a matter of individual agency and action, or of finding and quantifying underpinning structures and patterns?
Claire Lemercier & Claire Zalc
video
War and peace
A peace activist’s harrowing account of nuclear war is a visceral case for disarmament
26 minutes
essay
Nations and empires
The discontent of Russia
Lenin envisioned Soviet unity. Stalin called Russia ‘first among equals’. Yet Russian nationalism never went away
Joy Neumeyer
essay
History
The smile: a history
How our toothy modern smile was invented by a confluence of French dentistry and Parisian portrait-painting in the 1780s
Colin Jones
video
Computing and artificial intelligence
How machine learning can help historians decode ancient inscriptions
7 minutes
essay
History
Cowboy progressives
You likely think of the American West as deeply conservative and rural. Yet history shows this politics is very new indeed
Daniel J Herman
video
The ancient world
Walk like a Roman in this digital reconstruction of the ancient city
9 minutes
video
War and peace
When his grandfather won’t talk about the war, Bastien is left to his imagination
15 minutes
essay
History of science
Fringe theories stack
Believe in the Loch Ness monster and you’re more likely to believe the Apollo missions were fake. How do weird beliefs work?
Michael D Gordin
essay
History
Tattoos and trousers
Let your imagination take flight to the hunting, riding, adventurous lives of Scythia’s warrior women, the real Amazons
Christine Lehnen
essay
History
Those born later
How does a nation begin to take responsibility for its past wrongs? The German case suggests courage comes locally
Helmut Walser Smith
video
Art
An artistic collaboration across centuries brings a 1432 battle scene to arresting life
2 minutes
essay
The ancient world
Uncovering Sparta
Mythological home of Helen, war-making polis of Leonidas and now a modest municipality: the city is a palimpsest
Daphne D. Martin
essay
Art
In pursuit of the hole
Dig into the voids, pin-pricks and cut-outs of art and history, and those absences speak volumes about what’s been missed
Kim Beil