Club Zara Boston postcard

When “Middle Eastern” Nightclubs Swept America

In the 1950s, nightclubs featuring "Middle Eastern" music and belly dancers mixed and matched cultures, serving white audiences an exotic experience.
Bestselling author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie at HCLS Miller Branch.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: I Became Black in America

Adichie speaks on the meaning of blackness, sexism in Nigeria, and whether the current feminist movement leaves out black women.
Colorful tabs marking pages in a book

John McCain, Reproduction Myths, and Drinking

Well-researched stories from Aeon, Mental Floss, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.
Antiques Roadshow

The Religious Experience of Antiques Roadshow

What has made this slow, quiet television show about antiques the sleeper hit of PBS? One scholar describes the show as enacting near-religious rituals.
Harriet Beecher Stowe George Eliot

When Harriet Beecher Stowe and George Eliot Were Penpals

These 19th-century novelists might seem to have little in common. But for 11 years they wrote each other letters, forging an unusual literary friendship.
Appalachian Mountains dialect

The Legendary Language of the Appalachian “Holler”

Is the unique Appalachian dialect the preserved language of Elizabethan England? Left over from Scots-Irish immigrants? Or something else altogether?
Photograph: a promotional image of Robert Preston in "The Music Man" (1962)


Source: http://lantern.mediahist.org/catalog/boxofficeaprjun182boxo_0208

How a Beloved Musical Became a Cold War Weapon

The 1962 film The Music Man was seen as so all-American that some hoped it would help win the Cold War by transmitting American values abroad.
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Friendship, Stonehenge, and Making it to College

Well-researched stories from the Guardian, the Conversation, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.
Therapist communicating with man while sitting by book shelf at home office

How Storytelling Heals

Illness can challenge the notion of the self and disrupt patients' narratives about their own lives. Some scholars suggest that storytelling can help.
Colorful tabs marking pages in a book

Meat Allergies, McCarthyism, and World Leadership

Well-researched stories from the Conversation, Atlas Obscura, and other great publications that bridge the gap between news and scholarship.