cultural history

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  4/28/2022
  

  Dog Breed Stereotypes are Poor Guides to Behavior; Historian Explains Why they Are So Common

  Science Historian Michael Worboys explains that the Victorian craze for dog breeding enshrined both a focus on dogs' outward appearances and the idea that heredity was all-important to a dog's quality, leading to frequent disappointment for owners who find their pets don't fit expectations. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  4/27/2022
  

  Why Doesn't the Fitness Industry Respond to Americans' Real Needs for Exercise?

  Reporter Amanda Mull links a new book by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela and the work of some outside-the-box fitness influencers to examine the mismatch between how big business sells fitness and how Americans want and need to move their bodies. 

• 
• SOURCE: Nursing Clio
  4/19/2022
  

  Love on Credit: Meditations on Fatness, Queerness, and Transformation

  by T.J. Tallie

  "By seeing ourselves as temporarily embarrassed fatties, as body problems we are in the midst of fixing, we lock ourselves into a devastating cage, one where we ration love like we do calories."

• 
• SOURCE: Vanity Fair
  4/21/2022
  

  Previewing Tulsa's New Bob Dylan Center

  by Douglas Brinkley

  "The center—a high-tech vessel holding the man’s oeuvre and an overview of the man—will be the spiritual home of Dylan, a relentless performer who is forever on the road."

• 
• SOURCE: Reason
  4/18/2022
  

  The History of Saloons Helps Understand the Social Harm of the Pandemic

  "In the century and a half after the founding, saloons continued to be a key social institution, places of business, leisure, and community for many men—until Prohibition wiped them out, destroying in one fell stroke the cultural and economic infrastructure they had long provided."

• 
• SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
  4/12/2022
  

  Greg Ginn, SST Records, and the Rise of SoCal Punk

  "In its 1980s heyday, SST released at least a dozen canonical rock albums that were notable for their rejection of convention."

• 
• SOURCE: The Conversation
  4/7/2022
  

  "Is It Cake?" is Brain Candy for Pandemic-Weary, but also Part of Long History of Visual Illusion

  by Maggie Cao

  "At a time when we often don’t know if what we encounter on our screens can be trusted, it feels good to alleviate those anxieties with a show in which the only consequence of being fooled is cutting into a shoe that we assumed was a cake."

• 
• 4/3/2022
  

  Ralph Lauren's HBCU Tribute Line is Part of a Long History of Fighting for Recognition through Fashion

  by Einav Rabinovitch-Fox

  The designer's new collaboration with Morehouse and Spelman Colleges is more than a marketing ploy; it reflects the long history of Black college students (and Jewish tailors and designers) working to make the fashionable representation of the American ideal more inclusive.

• 
• SOURCE: The New Republic
  3/24/2022
  

  How American Culture Ate the World

  by Dexter Fergie

  Sam Lebovic's book "A Righteous Smokescreen" seeks to explain how the cultural globalization of the 20th century was a one-way exchange of American culture that left Americans dominant but isolated from and ignorant of the rest of the world. 

• 
• SOURCE: Global Sport Matters
  2/22/2022
  

  Building a Fitness Culture with Inclusion and Creativity?

  by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela

  What will it take for the culture of fitness and bodily health to draw in people with disabilities and push out narrow normative ideas of the ideal body? 

• 
• SOURCE: Hyperallergic
  

  Mississippi Museum of Art Exhibition Opens on Legacies of Great Migration

  Opening April 9, this exhibition features newly commissioned works by 12 acclaimed Black contemporary artists, including Carrie Mae Weems, Theaster Gates, and more.

• 
• SOURCE: NPR
  2/22/2022
  

  Black People at Work, Play and Rest are a Picture of American Democracy

  Smithsonian NMAAHC curator Aaron Bryant talks about photographs that tell untold stories about American history and life. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Metropole
  2/17/2022
  

  Hardcore Urban Renewal: The Punk Origins Of The City Creative

  The authors' study and advocacy for place-based and democratic redevelopment policies is rooted in their experiences in underground punk music scenes in the 1990s. 

• 
• SOURCE: Boston Review
  2/14/2022
  

  Selling Hope

  by Wendy A. Woloson

  After a cancer diagnosis, the author still couldn't escape a world of consumerism that relentlessly commodifies even the worst experiences.

• 
• SOURCE: Slate
  2/14/2022
  

  The Enlightenment Precursor of the Social Media "Wife Guy"

  by Meghan Roberts

  The "wife guy" who self-servingly projects an image of domestic bliss and romantic devotion is not just a creation of the social media age. 

• 
• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  2/2/2022
  

  The Reborn Ebony Test Kitchen was the Home of Black Cuisine

  The Museum of Food and Drink has salvaged and reconstructed the test kitchen from Ebony Magazine for display at an exhibition at the Africa Center in Harlem this month, preserving a key site in Black culinary and cultural history. 

• 
• 2/13/2022
  

  Anyone for Existential Torment this Valentine's Day?

  by Barbara H. Rosenwein

  From ancient Greece to the Romantic period, philosophers and artists have endorsed an idea of love that was closer to torture than to the anodyne sentiments of contemporary Valentines. 

• 
• SOURCE: Thirteen
  1/21/2022
  

  Jeans: The History of the People's Pants Coming to American Experience

  Denim touches the history of American slavery, immigration, industrialization and counterculture. An upcoming "American Experience" feature tells the story. 

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  1/27/2022
  

  Does America Need to Return to Medieval Sleep Habits?

  Historian Roger Ekrich describes the medieval biphasic sleep cycle – falling asleep at nightfall, waking at midnight, and sleeping again till dawn – but says it was a response to living conditions, not a natural pattern or preferable to modern sleep habits.

• 
• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  1/23/2022
  

  Is Old Music Killing New Music?

  by Ted Gioia

  The growth in sales in music is coming overwhelmingly from old songs. Can the music industry sustain new performers if money keeps flowing to old catalogues?