Stephanie Bastek

Bogs exist in the liminal space between water and land, haunted by will-o'-the-wisps and home to carnivorous plants, equally ready to suck in unsuspecting wanderers or disgorge eerily preserved ancient artifacts—or bodies. Long relegated to the purview of... See more

Dawn of the Brain-Dead Carl Elliott on the ethical implications of going beyond organ transplantation Though the line between the living and the dead might seem at first obvious, the medical state of brain death invites complex moral questions, as bioethi... See more

For a country with one of the lowest crime rates in the world, Japan has an unusual cultural export: the yakuza, members of transnational crime syndicates that can trace their origins to the Tokugawa shogunate of the early 1600s. “At one time or another, ... See more

Susan Stryker’s new book, Changing Gender, is as chameleonic as the scholar herself, combining as it does trans history, cultural theory, memoir, linguistics, gossip, anthropology, art criticism, and even an unforgettable analysis of the children’s song “... See more

Summon an image of an American home: Odds are there’s a green grass lawn in front of it. Was this what Walt Whitman sang of in Leaves of Grass? Or was it the native grassland of the prairies, now disappearing under the onslaught of Poa pratensis, Kentucky... See more