James Joyce

One of the earliest uses of intertitles, in this fin-de-siècle accident picture we can observe cinema discovering new forms of communication.

Explaining Joe Biden’s fondness for quoting Irish poets.

It was a setup: a stratagem worthy of wily Ulysses himself.

'Blank Space' and 'A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls' examine capitalism and the arts in different eras.

On Pascal Covici, the editor who nurtured some of the most iconic names in literature.

Considering a novel as a whole, rather than as the sum of its parts, was an approach favored by mid-20th-century literary critics. It was also useful for fighting book bans.

A review of Edwin Frank's short list of great 20th century novels.

Margaret Sanger and Mary Ware Dennett each had a different vision of reproductive freedom. Would reproductive rights be more secure if Dennett’s had prevailed?

A reading list tracing the history of the birth control movement through novels.

Samuel Roth was the sort of bookseller whose wares came wrapped in brown paper.

On 50 years of Thomas Pynchon’s “Gravity’s Rainbow.”

After the passing of William James, mediums across the US began receiving messages from the late Harvard professor.

Man Ray made art that looked like the future. How did he become a minor figure?

In the 1950s and 1960s, a new generation of American artists began to think of advertising and commercial imagery as the new avant-garde.

How we perceive the senses changes in different historical, political, and cultural contexts. Sensory historians ask what people smelled, touched and tasted.