Humanities Magazine (October 20, 2024): The Fall 2024 Issue features…
A major exhibition takes us inside the private, busy lives of women by Angelica Aboulhosn
A new digital project looks at the forgotten history of America’s submerged communities by Anna Webb
Humanities Magazine – Spring 2024 Issue:
The great Italian poet, in light of a new documentary
Qui est per omnia secula benedictus are the final words of La Vita Nuova, Dante Alighieri’s collection of poetry and prose.
The Latin renders to “who is blessed for ever” and concludes an enigmatic, brief paragraph. First published in 1294, La Vita Nuova is a tantalizing prelude to the Florentine poet’s masterpiece, La Commedia, known today as The Divine Comedy. For centuries, readers and scholars have pored over La Vita Nuova (Italian for, literally, the new life)—convinced, as we often are, that a gifted writer’s nascent work contains the answers to longstanding mysteries.
How I Created a Picture Book About Rome
“Building Stories,” the new exhibition at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., explores themes of architecture, construction, and design through children’s books, such as Rome Antics by David Macaulay.
I first met Rome as a student in 1968. Rome is complicated and demanding and can be overwhelming—especially if you are homesick. Eventually, the riches and surprises of the imperial city will render all attempts to keep one’s distance useless. I didn’t realize how attached I had become until a few years later.
Humanities Magazine – Winter 2024 Issue:
A new exhibition looks at Europe’s earliest societies
As visitors exit “First Kings of Europe,” the gift shop offers a kind of test. Two craft beers were created for the exhibition, a collaboration between the museum and Off Color Brewing: Beer for Kings, made from top-quality rich and ancient grains, and Beer for Commoners, made from the more modest ingredients of the poor. Beneath the racks of beer hang T-shirts with the art for each. Which identity does the visitor want to take home: commoner or king? The answer for most exhibitions celebrating the awe-inspiring treasures of royalty would be easy, but “First Kings of Europe” is a different kind of show, with an ambitious new approach to how we display and envision power, kingship, and history.
During World War II, Axis espionage inspired a media panic, but amateurish German agents turned out to be “underwhelming”
Humanities Magazine – Summer 2023 Issue
In the 1970s and ’80s, geographer Ken Martis mapped every congressional district and color-coded them by political party, going all the way back to the first Congress.
The Man in Black grew up in Dyess, Arkansas, in a community of poor farmers working government land.
A traveling exhibition explores the underworld
In the captivating survey “Comparative Hell: Arts of Asian Underworlds,” the damned are boiled alive. Writhing in pain, they are skewered, mauled by dogs, and devoured by ink-black birds. But the show is dotted throughout by charming reprieves: a lush jade-green garden, creamy-white blossoms, and whirling clouds. This is a hell that delights as much as it punishes.
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