Cultural history - Topics

Why existentialist themes moved from Paris cafés into popular film Punk and anti-authoritarian style: politics or just aesthetics? When did reading silently and alone stop being strange? The muse as cultural role: worshipped and never credited Mass literacy and mass newspapers arrived together and permanently changed politics. Did an early modern public sphere exist before newspapers and coffee houses? Reading a 1900 newspaper archive tells you what editors thought mattered and not what happened Anthems and flags often date from a much later period than the nation they represent Where did the figure of the effeminate courtier come from? Christiania has been squatting a former barracks for fifty years — what keeps it going? How did mods and rockers become a national panic in Britain in 1964? What became of the Merry Pranksters once the bus stopped running? The Mona Lisa became world famous after it was stolen in 1911 Correspondence networks in the republic of letters decided which arguments reached print Why did the Kabouter movement vanish almost as fast as it appeared? The Hays Code shaped Hollywood plots long after anyone believed in it What were the students of May 1968 actually asking for under the paving stones? Bharatanatyam's temple origins are still argued over by dancers and by historians Commonplace books show how early modern readers actually assembled their ideas The Middle Ages were invented by people who wanted to insult them Retro is nostalgia for a decade the person never lived through Why did punk reject technique and then produce classically trained players a decade later? The pandemic sent everyone back to shows they had already finished Where the fork and the spoon and the chopstick each came from How does a goth night that started in one London club end up thriving in Jakarta and Lima? Where does cultural history stop and intellectual history begin? Skateboarding went from a police matter to an Olympic sport — what got lost on the way? Why is a dog a family member in one country and food in another? Why did the Yippies try to levitate the Pentagon and what did the stunt actually accomplish? How reception history turns a minor author into a canonical one The Renaissance man is a nineteenth-century invention Which countercultural demands quietly became ordinary government policy?