Literary Hub

100 open access books on JSTOR

Wed, 17 Jun 2026 11:17:54 -0400

jstor:
African American Studies
An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans, Revised and Updated Edition
Disrupting Colonial Pedagogies: Theories and Transgressions
J. A. Rogers: Selected Writings
The Race for America: Black Internationalism in the Age of Manifest Destiny
African Studies
Ethnicity, Identity, and Conceptualizing Community in Indian Ocean East Africa
Lagos Never Spoils: Nollywood and Nigerian City Life
American Indian Studies
Book Anatomy: Body Politics and the Materiality of Indigenous Book History
The Urgency of Indigenous Values
Anthropology
Graceful Resistance: How Capoeiristas Use Their Art for Activism and Community Engagement
Lacandón Maya in the Twenty-First Century: Indigenous Knowledge and Conservation in Mexico’s Tropical Rainforest
Maya-British Conflict at the Edge of the Yucatecan Caste War
Neobugarrón: Heteroflexibility, Neoliberalism, and Latin/o American Sexual Practice
Our Hidden Landscapes: Indigenous Stone Ceremonial Sites in Eastern North America
Power and Place: Preservation, Progress, and the Culture War over Land
Voices of Indigenuity
Archaeology
Living Ceramics, Storied Ground: A History of African American Archaeology
New Deal Archaeology in the West
The Cretan Collection in the University of Pennsylvania Museum, volume III: Metal Objects from Gournia
Violence and Inequality: An Archaeological History
Architecture
Waterhouses: Landscapes, Housing, and the Making of Modern Lagos
Asian Studies
Hong Kong Public and Squatter Housing: Geopolitics and Informality, 1963–1985
Communication Studies
Covid and…: How to Do Rhetoric in a Pandemic
Hillary Clinton’s Career in Speeches: The Promises and Perils of Women’s Rhetorical Adaptivity
Influential Machines: The Rhetoric of Computational Performance
Migrant World Making
Nuclear Decolonization: Indigenous Resistance to High-Level Nuclear Waste Siting
Serial Mexico: Storytelling across Media, from Nationhood to Now
Stories of Our Living Ephemera: Storytelling Methodologies in the Archives of the Cherokee National Seminaries, 1846-1907
Unsettling Archival Research: Engaging Critical, Communal, and Digital Archives
Cultural Studies
Cultural History of British Alternative Cabaret (1979-1991)
Middlebrow 2.0 and the Digital Affect: Online Reading Communities of the New Nigerian Novel
Reconstructive Memory Work: Trauma, Witnessing and the Imagination in Writing by Female Descendants of Harkis
Toward a Gameic World
Development Studies
Hottest of the Hotspots: The Rise of Eco-precarious Conservation Labor in Madagascar
Urban Indigeneities: Being Indigenous in the Twenty-First Century
Education
Limiting Privilege: Upward Mobility Within Higher Education in Socialist Poland
The Vulnerability of Public Higher Education
Environmental Studies
Ecologies of Imperialism
Unsettling Agribusiness: Indigenous Protests and Land Conflict in Brazil
Feminist & Women’s Studies
Reclaiming Time: The Transformative Politics of Feminist Temporalities
Recovering Women’s Past: New Epistemologies, New Ventures
Film Studies
Han Heroes and Yamato Warriors: Competing Masculinities in Chinese and Japanese War Cinema
Monsters on Maple Street: The Twilight Zone and the Postwar American Dream
The Rise of Central American Film in the Twenty-First Century
Mapping the Stars: Celebrity, Metonymy, and the Networked Politics of Identity
Food Studies
The Visible Hands That Feed: Responsibility and Growth in the Food Sector
Gender Studies
Masculine Pregnancies: Modernist Conceptions of Creativity and Legitimacy, 1918-1939
Surgery and Salvation: The Roots of Reproductive Injustice in Mexico, 1770–1940
Women, Nationalism, and Social Networks in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1848-1918
History
Captivity’s Collections: Natural History and the British Transatlantic Slave Trade
Our People Are Warlike: Civil War Pittsburgh and Home-Front Mobilization
Reimagining the Educated Citizen: Creole Pedagogies in the Transatlantic World: 1685-1896
Southern Enclosure: Settler Colonialism and the Postwar Transformation of Mississippi
Language & Literature
Abraham Lincoln and the Bible: A Complete Compendium
Blood and Ink: The Barbary Archive in Early American Literary History
Ethical Crossroads in Literary Modernism
Faking It: Victorian Documentary Novels
Genre Networks and Empire: Rhetoric in Early Imperial China
The Lost Texts of Confucius’ Grandson: Guodian, Zisi, and Beyond
Understanding Agatha Christie
Latin American Studies
Awakening the Ashes: An Intellectual History of the Haitian Revolution
Law
Creating a More Perfect Slaveholders’ Union: Slavery, the Constitution, and Secession in Antebellum America
Linguistics
Cantonese Since the Nineteenth Century
Publishing Contemporary Foreign Poetry: Transnational Exchange in the Italian Publishing Field
Middle East Studies
Outcasting Armenians: Tanzimat of the Provinces
Music
Fantasies of Music in Nostalgic Medievalism
Imagining Musical Pasts: The Queer Literary Musicology of Vernon Lee, Rosa Newmarch, and Edward Prime-Stevenson
Lieder in America: On Stages and In Parlors
On Music Theory and Making Music More Welcoming for Everyone
Peace & Conflict Studies
Remaking the World: Decolonization and the Cold War
The Coup and the Palm Trees: Agrarian Conflict and Political Power in Honduras
The End of the Future: Trauma, Memory, and Reconciliation in Peruvian Amazonia
Uniting Against the Reich: The American Air War in Europe
Unwilling to Quit: The Long Unwinding of American Involvement in Vietnam
Performing Arts
Sonic Strategies: Performing Mexico’s War on Drugs, Mourning, and Feminicide
Staging Existence: Chekhov’s Tetralogy
Philosophy
Phenomenology in an African Context: Contributions and Challenges
Violence and the Mimetic Unconscious: Vol. 2 The Affective Hypothesis
Violence and the Oedipal Unconscious: vol. 1, The Catharsis Hypothesis
Political Science
Beyond Othering: A Gandhian Approach to Conflict Resolution in India and Pakistan
Local government and democracy in the United Kingdom
Paradoxes of Emancipation: Radical Imagination and Space in Neoliberal Greece
The Cost of Voting in the American States
The New Star Chamber and Other Essays: Annotated Edition
Population Studies
Central American Migrations in the Twenty-First Century
Psychology
Ferenczi Dialogues: On Trauma and Catastrophe
Public Health
Irish Fever: An Archaeology of Illness, Injury, and Healing in New York City, 1845–1870
Tuberculosis Control and Institutional Change in Shanghai, 1911–2011
Religion
Christan Colleges and Universities: An Empirical Guide
From Jesus to J-Setting: Religious and Sexual Fluidity among Young Black People
The Hispanic Faculty Experience: Opportunities for Growth and Retention in Christian Colleges and Universities
Science & Technology Studies
Composting Utopia: Experimental Infrastructures for Organics Recycling in New York City
Sociology
Apartheid’s Leviathan: Electricity and the Power of Technological Ambivalence
As Legend Has It: History, Heritage, and the Construction of Swedish American Identity
Continuous Pasts: Frictions of Memory in Postcolonial Africa
Prison Capital: Mass Incarceration and Struggles for Abolition Democracy in Louisiana
Research as More Than Extraction: Knowledge Production and Gender-Based Violence in African Societies
The Souls of Jewish Folk: W. E. B. Du Bois, Anti-Semitism, and the Color Line
Technology
Transnational Families in Africa: Migrants and the role of Information Communication Technologies
Urban Studies
Living Politics in the City: Architecture as Catalyst for Public Space
FYI, all of these books were made open access as part of our Path to Open program, where included books are set to become open access three years after their publication date.
Many of the above books can be downloaded as PDFs in full!

Under apartheid, publishing radical books was an act of resistance. Ravan Press, (founded in 1972 by…

Tue, 12 May 2026 12:23:28 -0400

jstor:

ALT
Under apartheid, publishing radical books was an act of resistance. Ravan Press, (founded in 1972 by Peter Randall and others) amplified banned voices, Black Consciousness writers, and critical texts that commercial publishers wouldn’t touch.
Ravan published the first novels by authors like J.M. Coetzee and Miriam Tlali, often risking raids and censorship to do so. Its work was one part of a broader liberation struggle across Southern Africa, building political awareness from the grassroots up.
See more primary sources in the Struggles for Freedom: Southern Africa collection on JSTOR, with an emphasis on materials from Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.
Image: Books for Workers from Ravan Press. January 1, 1984. Digital Innovation South Africa.

[when faces called flowers float out of the ground] by e.e. cummings

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 11:52:47 -0400

havingapoemwithyou:

ALT
[when faces called flowers float out of the ground] by e.e. cummings

“Even repulsive fiction must be protected, because the alternative - letting the government dictate…

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 11:52:39 -0400

unspeakablearchives:

Because we know you definitely need more titles on your TBR. Read the lists here.

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 13:47:18 -0400

Because we know you definitely need more titles on your TBR. Read the lists here.

Everything All at Once by Oliver Baez Bendorf

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 11:03:00 -0400

havingapoemwithyou:

ALT
Everything All at Once by Oliver Baez Bendorf

Everyone has their process

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 10:31:49 -0400

celtadri:

Everyone has their process

Mashing up Jane Austen’s fiction with zombies, erotica, or extraterrestrials has become so common in…

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 11:31:21 -0400

Blood On the Page: On Jane Austen’s Period Drama

Mashing up Jane Austen’s fiction with zombies, erotica, or extraterrestrials has become so common in pop culture that such stuff may no longer raise an eyebrow. Pride & Prejudice & Zombies was, and feels, so very ten years ago. But who could have known then that the most fresh, funny, and moving mash-up was yet to come—and that it would take menstruation as its most unlikely subject?
Jane Austen’s Period Drama, Julia Aks and Steven Pinder’s Oscar-nominated (and brilliant) short live action film, turns on a clever pun on the word “period.” The 13-minute film—recently made available to viewers on YouTube—also captured headlines when Emma Thompson signed on as its “Executive Menstrual Adviser.” Jane Austen’s Period Drama has emerged as a serious contender for the Academy Award.

Devoney Looser explores 19th-century attitudes about menstruation through Jane Austen’s Period Drama, the Oscar-nominated short.

“Imagine a wealthy Oxbridge don giving their teenager a blank check for their Brontë birthday bash…

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 10:52:07 -0500

Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights is a Deranged, Half-Assed Bodice-Ripper That Entirely Misses the Point

“Imagine a wealthy Oxbridge don giving their teenager a blank check for their Brontë birthday bash and you might begin to grasp the vision.” Emily Van Duyne reviews Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights.

Brittany Allen chronicles the literary history of The Muppets, from A Christmas Carol to Treasure…

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 11:16:03 -0500

A brief literary history of The Muppet Show.

Brittany Allen chronicles the literary history of The Muppets, from A Christmas Carol to Treasure Island and beyond.

In our Letters from Minnesota series, writers, organizers, and activists on the ground in Minnesota…

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 11:12:10 -0500

lithub:

In our Letters from Minnesota series, writers, organizers, and activists on the ground in Minnesota bear witness to ICE and American authoritarianism. Today, read dispatches from Kao Kalia Yang on preparing for the worst with her children, Jim Moore on echoes of protests past, and Katherine Packert Burke on “why we will win.”
Letter From Minnesota: We Are Going to Win

In our Letters from Minnesota series, writers, organizers, and activists on the ground in Minnesota…

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 11:03:58 -0500

In our Letters from Minnesota series, writers, organizers, and activists on the ground in Minnesota bear witness to ICE and American authoritarianism. Today, read dispatches from Kao Kalia Yang on preparing for the worst with her children, Jim Moore on echoes of protests past, and Katherine Packert Burke on “why we will win.”

Letter From Minnesota: We Are Going to Win

James Folta talks to Minneapolis bookseller Angela Schwesnedl:

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 11:12:36 -0500

“Everything We Do Matters.” Minneapolis’s Moon Palace Books is a Hub For Anti-ICE Resistance

James Folta talks to Minneapolis bookseller Angela Schwesnedl:

“Angela Schwesnedl from Moon Palace Books in Minneapolis picked up my phone call on Saturday almost two hours to the minute after Alex Pretti was murdered in the street by ICE officers.

‘If you haven’t seen the video, don’t,’ she told me. ‘It’s an execution.’

We had made a plan the day before to talk about Friday’s huge ICE Out protest, march, and general strike against the federal occupation, but Alex Pretti was dead, and we began in somber sadness. The early reports of the murder would continue to filter out to us, to me hunched in a friend’s small office in New York while taking notes, and to her in the back of a Minneapolis store while managing diaper distribution.”

Dobby Gibson writes a letter from Minnesota:

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 10:30:45 -0500

Letter From Minnesota: Can You Hear Us, America?

Dobby Gibson writes a letter from Minnesota:

“We wear whistles now. Mine is bright yellow and plastic and weighs barely enough to dangle from its string. I carry it in my pocket. Others wear theirs like an amulet. Under any other circumstance, my whistle would be mistaken for a Christmas-tree ornament, a birthday-party favor, or a second-hand Fisher-Price toy. It looks amateur, but the noise it makes is contractor grade.

The neighbors all carry one. Some whistles are clearly brand-new—an overnight Amazon Prime purchase—others a leftover from a long-ago summer lifeguard job. In blaze-orange safety vests and down puffers, we line the streets around our schools each morning and afternoon, standing watch for ICE caravans, little plumes of frozen breath rising from beneath our hoods.”

Anne Margaret Castro explains why Heated Rivalry is the perfect romance novel adaptation.

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 10:43:09 -0500

Why Heated Rivalry is the Perfect Adaptation of the Romance Novel’s Strict Conventions

Anne Margaret Castro explains why Heated Rivalry is the perfect romance novel adaptation.

Ode to Mitski by William Fargason

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 10:50:13 -0500

havingapoemwithyou:

ALT
Ode to Mitski by William Fargason

This year at Literary Hub, we published the tenth iteration of a fan favorite end of year list: the…

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 10:49:40 -0500

This year at Literary Hub, we published the tenth iteration of a fan favorite end of year list: the best book covers of the year, as chosen by some of our favorite book cover designers. When we realized we had a decade of data about the best book covers, we knew what we needed to do. These are the 75 best ranked book covers of the decade, because we know you live for the aesthetic.

“‘Can you be a good writer and a good person?’ he muses into his Zoom camera, vaping every few…

Wed, 14 Jan 2026 10:54:27 -0500

Is Artistic Ego a Faustian Bargain? Karl Ove Knausgaard on Plot, Narcissism, and His New Novel

“‘Can you be a good writer and a good person?’ he muses into his Zoom camera, vaping every few seconds. ‘Is that possible to combine? Can you be a good writer and a good father?’”

Eric Olson profiles Karl Ove Knausgaard, author of The School of Night.

William Butler Yeats is often taught through a handful of familiar poems, but beneath that canon was…

Wed, 14 Jan 2026 10:53:33 -0500

jstor:

ALT
William Butler Yeats is often taught through a handful of familiar poems, but beneath that canon was a lifelong engagement with mysticism, divination, symbolism, and systems of belief that shaped how he understood history and the creative imagination. A new JSTOR Daily article by Gus Mitchell traces how these ideas informed his poetry as central ways of thinking and learning about the world.
If you’re looking to start the year by reading something a little unexpected, this one’s worth your time! And if pieces like this are your kind of reading, the JSTOR Daily newsletter delivers stories grounded in scholarship straight to your inbox.
Read the article and sign up for the newsletter.
Image: William Rothenstein, William Butler Yeats, 1898. Lithograph. The Cleveland Museum of Art.

The chariot by Ruth Awad

Wed, 14 Jan 2026 10:53:19 -0500

havingapoemwithyou:

The chariot by Ruth Awad