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Joseph Russell Smith
Plants & Animals

He Spoke for the Trees (and Also the Soil)

A champion of agroforestry, J. Russell Smith argued for the restoration of forests as key to sustainable agriculture in his seminal work Tree Crops.

The Where We Were

Lesedi Cultural Village, South Africa

Cultural Villages in South Africa

Originally viewed as a way to educate tourists on the multiple peoples and traditions of South Africa, cultural villages may soon be a thing of the past.

Cross Reference

Cross Reference image

Introducing Cross Reference

The new JSTOR Daily crossword puzzle is here to entertain and educate you.

Read Before You Go

Greenland village of Kulusuk in winter

Greenland: Polar Politics

Though it may seem like a new topic of concern, the glaciated landscape of Greenland has floated in and out of American politics for decades.

Reading Lists

Vienna, Austria. The Naturhistorisches (Natural History) Museum, Vienna

Natural History: A Reading List

This annotated bibliography samples scholarship on the rich—and difficult—history of natural history.

Most Recent

a concept of diverse races and crowd cooperation symbol as hands holding together the planet earth in a 3D illustration style.
Unearthing Justice

Survival Strategies: The Next Chapter of Environmental Justice

The environmental justice movement may look to the past to determine how to move forward during times of austerity.
Close-up of sourdough starter and flour in jars
Education & Society

The Science of Sourdough: How Citizens Are Helping Shape the Future of Fermented Foods

Citizen scientists are drawing on personal experience to help researchers create new plant-based fermented foods and maximize their health benefits.

More Stories

The Where We Were

Lesedi Cultural Village, South Africa

Cultural Villages in South Africa

Originally viewed as a way to educate tourists on the multiple peoples and traditions of South Africa, cultural villages may soon be a thing of the past.

Cross Reference

Cross Reference image

Introducing Cross Reference

The new JSTOR Daily crossword puzzle is here to entertain and educate you.

Read Before You Go

Greenland village of Kulusuk in winter

Greenland: Polar Politics

Though it may seem like a new topic of concern, the glaciated landscape of Greenland has floated in and out of American politics for decades.

Reading Lists

Vienna, Austria. The Naturhistorisches (Natural History) Museum, Vienna

Natural History: A Reading List

This annotated bibliography samples scholarship on the rich—and difficult—history of natural history.

Trending

Saint Patrick stained glass window from Cathedral of Christ the Light, Oakland, CA. By Sicarr (Flickr) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Politics & History

Will the Real St. Patrick Please Stand Up

The "St. Patrick" celebrated on March 17 every year has never existed. He was, and is, a metaphorical, literary, and religious conceit.
A circle of white claymation guys around a black claymation guy
Reading Lists

Racist Humor: Exploratory Readings

An introduction to the history and theory of racist humor and the social role it plays in Western societies.
Precious Newberry, a United States Postal Service mail handler, works to unload her mail truck at the Processing and Distribution Center after collecting mail on the busiest mailing day of the year for the U.S. Postal Service on December 14, 2015 in Miami, Florida.
Politics & History

How Mail Delivery Has Shaped America

The United States Postal Service is under federal scrutiny. It’s not the first time.

women's history

JSTOR Daily Women's History Month Header
Roundup

Celebrating Women’s History Month

Celebrate Women’s History Month with JSTOR Daily. We hope you’ll find the stories below a valuable resource for classroom or leisure reading.
Passengers freshening up in the ladies' restroom at the Greyhound bus terminal, Chicago, 1943
Politics & History

In the Ladies’ Loo

Gender-segregated bathrooms tell a story about who is and who is not welcome in public life.
Sofia Kovalevskaya
Natural Science

Science in Defiance of the Tsar: The Women of the 1860s

Sofia Kovalevskaia became the first woman in Europe to obtain her doctorate in mathematics—but only after leaving Russia for Germany.
A collage of photographs by Doris Ulmann
Archive Adventures

The “Vanishing Types” of Doris Ulmann

As her extensive body of work shows, Ulmann felt the loss of an imagined simpler time and tried to preserve it with her camera.

Editors' Picks

Politics & History

Birth of A National Immigration Policy

Until the Civil War, regulating immigration to the US was left to individual states. That changed with Emancipation and the legal end of slavery.
Politics & History

Lviv: Open to the World

The history of the Ukrainian city of Lviv is long, complex and mirrors some of the larger conflicts of the Eastern European region.
Politics & History

The Making and Meaning of Greenland: A Reading List

A selection of research reports and peer-reviewed articles offers insight into the history and potential future of the autonomous territory of Greenland.
Business & Economics

The Art of the Deal or the Dirt?

Will so-called Trump Tariffs ensure that the United States has the minerals it needs to transition to sustainable energy?
Education & Society

The Wild West of Papal Conclaves

In the sixteenth and seventeenth century, the death of a pope led to all sorts of chaos, from the destruction of art to armed violence in the streets.

Quirky History

Tantalus

Tantalus, Pac-Man, and Unsated Hungers

What does a violent, ancient Greek myth reveal about our modern addiction to technology and the enduring power of stories?
Goodyear blimps, Puritan and Reliance, in Florida.

Blimps in the Heavens Over Akron

A Goodyear executive dreamt of populating the sky with dirigibles. He settled for securing his company—and his blimps—a place in the public imagination.

What “Pain” Means

The English word “pain” once meant punishment, but over time, it’s been used to refer to different kinds of unpleasant experiences.

Collections on JSTOR

A series of posters created by the American Forces Information Service (AFIS)

Life Advice From the Armed Forces

These American Forces Information Service posters shared via JSTOR by The University of Alabama in Huntsville offer us the wisdom we didn’t know we needed.
Photograph of Mr. Harrison Williams Holding a Camera

Seeking Clues in Cabinet Cards

The poignant images, at once banal and intimate, in the Lynch Family Photographs Collection contain mysteries perhaps only the public can solve.
Goodyear blimps, Puritan and Reliance, in Florida.

Blimps in the Heavens Over Akron

A Goodyear executive dreamt of populating the sky with dirigibles. He settled for securing his company—and his blimps—a place in the public imagination.

Reading Lists

People wait for trains on the platform at Kyiv train station on February 28, 2022 in Kyiv, Ukraine.

Ukraine, Russia, and the West: A Background Reading List

Research reports and scholarly articles on the history of the Ukraine–Russia conflicts of the past and possible paths for peace.
A map of North America

The Making and Meaning of Greenland: A Reading List

A selection of research reports and peer-reviewed articles offers insight into the history and potential future of the autonomous territory of Greenland.
Poet Johnathan McClain reads his poetry at the Bowery Poetry Club December 6, 2002 in New York City.

The Legacy and Power of Performance Poetry: A Reading List

MTV might take credit for getting spoken word on the pop cultural radar, but it’s a tradition that spans millennia and continents.

Syllabus

Dakota pipeline protestors

Celebrating Indigenous Peoples and Cultures

More and more states are choosing to celebrate Indigenous Peoples' Day instead of Columbus Day.
"I Voted" stickers

Voting in American Politics: A Syllabus

From battles to expand the franchise to the mysteries of turnout, voting is one of the most important things to understand about US politics.
An illustration of a hand holding a set of hand cuffs

A True Crime Syllabus

How did we become so obsessed with “true crime”? This multidisciplinary syllabus shows how we view crime as a whole and how those views have changed over time.

The impoundment was seen as a violation of the Congressional “power of the purse,” one granted to Congress by Article 1, Section 9, Clause 7 of the Constitution.

The Power of the Purse

Annotations

Source: https://www.jstor.org/stable/community.31886897

“Lynch Law in America”: Annotated

Ida B. Wells-Barnett, whose January 1900 essay exposed the racist reasons given by mobs for their crimes, argued that lynch law was an American shame.
Citizens United Money Globe

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission: Annotated

The 2010 decision, enabling the rise of super PACS, made possible new and more covert mechanisms for funding election campaigns in the United States.
Alastair Sim as Scrooge in the film of the same name, adapted from Charles Dickens' novel A Christmas Carol

Annotations: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Scrooge became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world.

Roundup

10 Sestinas by Modern and Contemporary Poets

The sestina form features the repetition of end words across stanzas. Here are sestinas by Louise Glück, Terrance Hayes, Elizabeth Bishop, Patricia Smith, and more.
JSTOR Daily Women's History Month Header

Celebrating Women’s History Month

Celebrate Women’s History Month with JSTOR Daily. We hope you’ll find the stories below a valuable resource for classroom or leisure reading.
George Washington portrait

A Presidents’ Day Roundup

Who—or what—do Americans celebrate on the third Monday of February?

American Prison Newspapers 1880-2020

An incarcerated student attending an Indigenous Studies course at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, where they also have JSTOR access.

The Impact JSTOR in Prison Has Made on Me

Tim Johnson, serving a life sentence in North Carolina, shares how access to JSTOR creates opportunities that cultivate change in prison and beyond.
Viewing the projection of a solar eclipse using a colander

Watching an Eclipse from Prison

For incarcerated people, being able to experience something collectively with those beyond the walls is a type of reprieve that buoys the soul and psyche.
From the cover of Volume 7, Issue 6 of The Angolite, 1982

The Cost of Inflation in Prison

In prisons across the country, the long history of legal forced labor intersects with present-day inflation.

Mathematics

Doing Math with Intellectual Humility

Math class is an opportunity to teach students both how to use conjecture to arrive at knowledge and how to learn from the logic of peers.
Photo taken in the Bourbaki Congress of 1938 in Dieulefit

The Mathematical Pranksters behind Nicolas Bourbaki

Bourbaki was gnomic and mythical, impossible to pin down; his mathematics just the opposite: unified, unambiguous, free of human idiosyncrasy.
Karate chop

The Physics of Karate

A human hand has the power to split wooden planks and demolish concrete blocks. A trio of physicists investigated why this feat doesn't shatter our bones.

Sustainability & The Environment

a concept of diverse races and crowd cooperation symbol as hands holding together the planet earth in a 3D illustration style.

Survival Strategies: The Next Chapter of Environmental Justice

The environmental justice movement may look to the past to determine how to move forward during times of austerity.
James Dalton Highway, Alaska.

State Politics and Public Lands Management

Judging by past executive orders, the US president’s newest policies on public lands may turn federal responsibilities over to state or local governments.
The Fire of Rome, 18 July 64 AD by Hubert Robert , 1785

A History of Fire

It’s only as we brought fire under better control that we stopped thinking so much about it—and, with climate change, that may be shifting again.

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