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Articles with keyword "history"

Jonathan Spence, the 39th Jefferson Lecturer in the Humanities

Conversation

The China Scholar

Jonathan Spence and NEH Chairman Leach discuss key moments in four hundred years of Chinese history.

Manuscript from Michael of Rhodes

Feature

Sailor of Fortune

Michael of Rhodes was not your typical fifteenth-century Venetian, and he left his manuscript as proof.

Whalemen remove the jaw of a sperm whale

Feature

Whaling the Old Way

Life on a nineteenth-century whaler was thrilling, tedious, and often disgusting.

Curio

Confederate Cattle Call

There is pleasure to be had in looking to the past for examples of the familiar or near familiar. But one can also look to it for a good blast of the freaky, the strange, and the unrecognizable.

Curio

Fast Track To Sainthood

St. Francis has gone in and out of style.

Curio

Telecommunications Triumphs

Staying up all night working on his code and such for the glory of France, Napoleon still had time for other long-lasting achievements—namely, his optical telegraph.

The Economic Activities of the Narragansett Planters, 1939

Curio

Name-Dropping In Rhode Island

Familiarly known as the “Ocean State,” Rhode Island’s full official name includes “and Providence Plantations,” words the state legislature has resolved to drop.

Laura Claridge, author of Emily Post: Daughter of the Gilded Age

IQ

Impertinent Questions with Laura Claridge

On the private life of Emily Post.

Ken Sullivan, Executive Director of West Virginia Humanities Council

In Focus

West Virginia's Ken Sullivan

Ken Sullivan stresses the role of the Civil War in the formation of his state.

Martha Hill improvises on Bennington’s tennis courts, 1936.

Feature

Grassroots Modern

New York dancers take to the country.