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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: Animal Sacrifice and the Greek Gods
The ritual of animal sacrifice in ancient Greece brought humans closer to the gods even as it defined their differences.
A Hundred Years of Mrs. Dalloway
An exemplar of modernism, Virginia Woolf's revolutionary novel explored ideas—psychology, sexuality, imperialism—that roiled the twentieth century.
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.