Creativity requires wonder and space: “A brain crammed with information is morally blind.” Maxine Sheets-Johnstone handles weighty philosophy like a dancer: she writes gracefully of the body, movement, creativity, the smile, and... Read More

‘Vogue (vōg)… The mode of fashion prevalent at any particular time’; […] It was just the name needed to identify their social gazette. None of them could imagine, in 1892, that they were creating a brand that would become famous... Read More

Within the scope of cross-cultural literature and women’s studies, insights into the lives and contributions of African women have been, at best limited and more often overlooked. This work, the second of a four-volume series,... Read More

Popular culture—fact or fiction, highbrow or lowbrow—imprints indelible images in the minds and psyches of most individuals about life, society and, equally important, themselves. In many respects, popular culture defines a society... Read More

The author, a novelist, wrote these sparkling, discursive essays during Japan’s brutal World War II occupation of Shanghai. Readers are likely to consider her a carefree commentator, writing about home, siblings, fathers (and their... Read More

What celebrity has ever gone wrong with a Valentino gown on the runway? The designer himself admits that he has never been revolutionary, but instead he strives for “an elegance that transforms borders,” a goal that has served him... Read More

Pioneering Painter: In the early and mid-twentieth century, amid depression, war, and the Holocaust, painters seeking transcendence developed the surrealist and cubist movements. A student of both, the sensitive Marc Chagall created... Read More

While writers since Hesiod have employed insect imagery to make their metaphors crawl, no writer in the entomological tradition has as much “street cred” as Franz Kafka, whose hero Gregor Samsa in The Metamorphosis awakens to find... Read More