In every society, individual choice and freedom are shaped at least to some degree by the needs of familial and marital institutions. Currently, negotiations between individuals and families are undergoing transformations due to late modern processes...

Who reads poetry? We know that poets do, but what about the rest of us? When and why do we turn to verse? Seeking the answer, "Poetry" magazine since 2005 has published a column called "The View From Here", which has invited readers "from outside the...

"Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife", wrote John Dewey in his classic work "The School and Society". In "School, Society, and State", Tracy Steffes places that idea at the center of her exploration of the con...

Montesquieu is rightly famous as a tireless critic of despotism, which he associates in his writings overtly with Asia and the Middle East and not with the apparently more moderate Western models of governance found throughout Europe. However, a care...

Nili Gold, who was born in Haifa to German-speaking parents in 1948, the first year of Israeli statehood, here offers a remarkable homage to her native city during its heyday as an international port and cultural center. Spanning the 1920s and '30s,...

"He presided over Virginia's great political barbeques for the last half of the nineteenth century, taught the young Prince of Wales to crave mint juleps in 1859, catered to Virginia's mountain spas, and fed two generations of Richmond epicures with...

In "Becoming a New Self", Moshe Sluhovsky examines the diffusion of spiritual practices among lay Catholics in early modern Europe. By offering a close examination of early modern Catholic penitential and meditative techniques, Sluhovsky makes the ca...

"Imagination may be thought of as a 'work-around'. It is a resourceful tactic to 'undo' a rule by creating a path around it without necessarily defying it... Transgression, on the other hand, is rule breaking. There is no pretense of reinterpretation...

In the last fifteen years, great strides have been made in advancing the rights of queer people. In the same period that these victories have been secured by queer movements, we've seen the rise of crony capitalism, violent consequences of the war on...

Did you know that for every human on earth, there are about one million ants? They are among the longest-lived insects – with some ant queens passing the thirty-year mark – as well as some of the strongest. Fans of both the city and countryside alike...