Summer 2023

Photo caption

Portrait of Johnny Cash taken by Joel Baldwin in 1968 for Look magazine. Read more on Johnny Cash and his humble Arkansas roots in this issue.

—Joel Baldwin, Look Collection, Library of Congress

Summer 2023

Volume 44, Issue 3

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HUMANITIES: The Magazine of the National Endowment for the Humanities

In This Issue

A map showing the congressional districts of the United States coded by color: red for Democratic, blue for Republican.

Red Map, Blue Map

In the 1970s and ’80s, geographer Ken Martis mapped every congressional district and color-coded them by political party, going all the way back to the first Congress.

David Skinner

Photograph of Michael Crow, president of ASU, in a navy blue suit and light blue shirt

Ever Higher Education

A conversation with Michael Crow, president of Arizona State University

Shelly C. Lowe

A young thalidomide victim plays in her toy kitchen.

Sixty Years Ago, a Rash of Mysterious Birth Defects Spurred a Doctor’s Search for Answers

Jennifer Vanderbes

Also in this issue

Hell’s Searing Gaze

A traveling exhibition explores the underworld

Angelica Aboulhosn

Students Record the Lives of Veterans

West Virginia

Eric Waggoner

Making Public Art

Kansas

Tim O’Bryhim

Nashid Madyun of Florida Humanities

Dalia Colón

Hayden Carruth’s North Winter Helped Transform American Poetry’s Landscape

Shaun T. Griffin

Where Johnny Cash Came From

The Man in Black grew up in Dyess, Arkansas, in a community of poor farmers working government land.

William R. Ferris

Underwater at the Aquacade

Hannah Stamler

Andy Warhol’s New York

The birth of Pop Art in the city that never sleeps

Kembrew McLeod

Ex Libris 2023

Books published recently with NEH support

NEH Staff

The Art of the Adirondacks

A new exhibition opens in upstate New York

Norah Machia