Arts & Humanities

Domestic violence. Drug smuggling. Priests hauled into court for scandalous behavior. Welcome to Spain in the 17th century.

Animals feel grief; they mourn. And there are enough documented examples of the phenomenon to fill a book.

If you were to stand at the edge of the Grand Canyon, or observe the Mona Lisa in real life at the Louvre, you might be lucky enough to experience what Timothy Costelloe calls the Sublime—but only if the experience is literally awesome.

The writing is cramped, and ink bleeds through the 400-year-old manuscript. There are letters missing or substituted, strange abbreviations and various words that seem to make no sense.

Archaeologists working in the university's Brafferton Yard have uncovered evidence of a time a century and a half ago in which the normally placid Historic Campus was a Civil War battleground.

It’s a safe bet that more Americans are able to name the nine reindeer of Santa than the twelve apostles of Jesus.

When a young doctor’s wife wrote in her diary back in 1902, she couldn’t have known that over a century later, scholars at William & Mary would be reading it—let alone trying to determine her identity.

A visitor walks into a museum gallery. Everything seems perfect: the paintings are grouped; the labels are carefully placed; the texts announce the significant themes; and the lighting entices. All of these aesthetics boast ‘here is something very special, come a little closer.’

There are the arts, and then there are the sciences. There is literature, language and film, and then there is calculus, physics and experiments.

The 30 students in a high school classroom may all speak English, but a mix of factors in each student’s background shapes how he or she speaks it. The same is true for the teacher.