Citizen Journalism: A Reading List
The ubiquity of smartphones has ushered in a new era for journalism—facilitating citizen journalism and changing the very nature of reporting.
The Bloomsbury Group: A Reading List
In 1905, a group of writers and painters gathered in a London home and began a conversation on politics, love, sex, and art that lasted decades.
Transatlantic Studies: A Reading List
Using the Atlantic Ocean as a guiding metaphor, transatlanticism emphasizes the fluid nature of contrived national boundaries and identities.
Man of Science, Man of God
In The Water-Babies, Charles Kingsley parodied the dogmatic belief held by many in Victorian England that faith and reason are incompatible.
Annotations: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Scrooge became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world.
What Do Gardens and Murder Have in Common?
Writers have long plotted murder mysteries in gardens of all sorts. What makes these fertile grounds for detective fiction?
How Madagascar’s Queen Ranavalona Helped Define Queen Victoria
In the nineteenth century, Queen Ranavalona became a foil to Queen Victoria, her “savage” queenship held in contrast to that of the “civilized” female monarch.
Red House: The Perfect Home for a Victorian Socialist
Subject to myriad interpretations over the last 150 years, William Morris’s Gothic-inspired home has been an enduring influence on Anglo-American architecture.
William Morris, Anti-Capitalist Publisher
By drawing on traditional typefaces for Kelmscott Press, Morris showed that he was unwilling to yield to capitalism’s demands for speed and efficiency.
Public Paw-licy: Dog Breeding, from Pedigrees to Bans
Harmony between human and canine shouldn’t be difficult to find, but poorly defined policies and breed uncertainties makes mutts vulnerable to public biases.