Plate Number 191. Dancing (fancy) by Eadweard Muybridge, 1887

The Intersection of Dance and Science

Lynn Matluck Brooks dives into the ever-evolving relationship between movement and technology.
A portrait of Lin Yutang beside the cover of his novel, Chinatown Family

The Chinatown Novel That Wasn’t

Examining Lin Yutang’s 1948 novel Chinatown Family, Richard Jean So reveals the ways in which literature is shaped by editorial interventions.
Photo: English crime writer Agatha Christie and her daughter, Rosalind, are featured in a newspaper article reporting the mysterious disappearance of the novelist. 

Source: Getty

Agatha Christie’s Mysterious Disappearance

In December 1926, Christie went missing for more than a week. Where did she go, and what was she up to?
A painting of The Belgic, the ship on which Ella Sheldon wrote many of her diaries.

Lonely Diarist of the High Seas

As ship stewardess, Ella Sheldon tended to upper-crust women onboard and battled a range of workplace demons. Her journals tell her story.
The Three Princes of Serendip

What Is Serendipity?

We often credit unexpected events to serendipity. But who amongst us knows The Three Princes of Serendip, the tale from which the word derives?
The cover of "Go" by Kazuki Kaneshiro

Race and American Pop Culture in Zainichi Stories

A close reading of the 1996 novel GO suggests zainichi identity is in dialogue with multiple national cultures, including American.
Leo Tolstoy in Yasnaya Polyana, 1908

Tolstoy’s Christian Anarchism

A fateful visit to a market in Moscow entirely upended Tolstoy’s view on life and society—and changed the trajectory of his work and purpose.
Miss Songkran Surin contest in 1953

She’s the Very Model of a Modern Militant Woman

A gun-toting killer seems like an unlikely heroine for a nationalist classic novel, but that’s the story of Luang Wichit Wathakan’s Huang rak haew luk.
From the cover of From Rupture to Refuge: The Coordinates of Contemporary Refugee Narratives by Peter Sloane

Refugee Lit Stakes Its Worthy Claim

Peter Sloane’s new study examines the narratives put forth by asylum seekers striving to reclaim their stories from mainstream media and political discourse.
Portrait of Indian author and poet Rabindranath Tagore, circa 1935.

Tagore in Saigon: Culture, Contradictions, Champagne

Rabindranath Tagore’s visit to Vietnam in 1929 fanned the debate about the region’s potential future without the French.