Take a Whiff of ‘Perfume’ and Enter the World of Queer Culture
How did Calvin Klein’s gender-neutral CK One, with its scent like “a vodka tonic with lemon twist”, help inspire gender revolution?Perfume follows the fragrant path into queer culture.
object lessons
Hashtags: Can’t Live with ’em, Can’t Live without ’em
How are humans regulating the internet through hashtags? What kind of algorithms are generating the content in your feeds? Best read Elizabeth Losh's Hashtag.
Object Lessons’ ‘Email’ May Already Be Obsolete – That May Be the Point
Before there were dashed-off emails, there were dashed-off postcards. Randy Malamud laments the loss of a romanticized notion of letter writing that few actually practiced in his installment of Bloomsbury's Object Lessons, Email.
Object Lessons’ ‘Magnet’ Attracts and Repels
Rules of attraction and magnetism in our universe, the stars, and our selves in this latest volume from Object Lessons, Magnet.
Behold the Humble but Mighty Potato
By its very modest and humble nature, the potato has served as both an indicator of low-class status and a threat to the ruling class, Rebecca Earle argues in Object Lessons’ Potato.
Capsule by Capsule: On Robert Bennett’s ‘Pill’
Robert Bennett provides a clear-headed and concise history of the introduction of mood stabilizers in American culture and the complications that have followed in this excellent installment of Bloomsbury's Object Lessons, Pill.
Summer Brennan’s ‘High Heel’ Combines Memoir and Epic Poetry
The lovely cadences in Summer Brennan's High Heel stack up like so many sand castles that sift iconic examples of high heels into a finely grained pile of pros and cons that each reader will sift through quite differently.
‘Doctor’ and the Business End of Things
Andrew Bomback explores ways in which "the healing art" and the connection between doctor and patient is understood in contemporary western culture.
‘Blanket’ Virtually Covers It All
Kara Thompson's Blanket provides an excellent, warm, and informed history in the Bloomsbury Academic Object Lessons series.
‘Burger’ (Object Lessons) Speaks Volumes About American Consumption
As Bill Clinton and Donald Trump have illustrated, how you absorb burgers says everything about how you can, or should, lead a nation.
On ‘Luggage’ and the Baggage We Carry
From Alfred Hitchock and Seinfeld to airport baggage claims, our luggage sure carries a lot of cultural and personal baggage.
On the Hidden Lives of Souvenirs in ‘Souvenir (Object Lessons)’
Rolf Potts explores why and how we collect souvenirs, what they have represented to us through the ages, and how we use them to narrate our lives.