This is volume 28 issue 1 of West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture. Focusing on the decorative arts, design history, and material culture, West 86th provides a forum for new research into all aspects of the content, meaning, and significance of material objects in history. West 86th publishes scholarly articles; review articles; primary source translations; critical book, catalogue, and exhibition reviews; research inquiries; letters to the editor; and supplementary digital material integral to articles.

This is volume 28 issue 2 of West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture. Focusing on the decorative arts, design history, and material culture, West 86th provides a forum for new research into all aspects of the content, meaning, and significance of material objects in history. West 86th publishes scholarly articles; review articles; primary source translations; critical book, catalogue, and exhibition reviews; research inquiries; letters to the editor; and supplementary digital material integral to articles.

This is volume 29 issue 1 of West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture. Focusing on the decorative arts, design history, and material culture, West 86th provides a forum for new research into all aspects of the content, meaning, and significance of material objects in history. West 86th publishes scholarly articles; review articles; primary source translations; critical book, catalogue, and exhibition reviews; research inquiries; letters to the editor; and supplementary digital material integral to articles.

This is volume 29 issue 2 of West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture. Focusing on the decorative arts, design history, and material culture, West 86th provides a forum for new research into all aspects of the content, meaning, and significance of material objects in history. West 86th publishes scholarly articles; review articles; primary source translations; critical book, catalogue, and exhibition reviews; research inquiries; letters to the editor; and supplementary digital material integral to articles.

This is volume 30 issue 1 of West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture. Focusing on the decorative arts, design history, and material culture, West 86th provides a forum for new research into all aspects of the content, meaning, and significance of material objects in history. West 86th publishes scholarly articles; review articles; primary source translations; critical book, catalogue, and exhibition reviews; research inquiries; letters to the editor; and supplementary digital material integral to articles.

Following the Attica prison uprising in September 1971, Celes Tisdale—a poet and then professor at Buffalo State College—began leading poetry workshops with those incarcerated at Attica. Tisdale’s workshop created a space of radical Black creativity and solidarity, in which poets who lived through the uprising were able to turn their experiences into poetry. The poems written by Tisdale’s students were published as Betcha Ain’t: Poems from Attica in 1974. When the Smoke Cleared contains the entirety of Betcha Ain’t, Tisdale’s own poems and journal entries from the three years he taught at Attica, a previously unpublished collection of poems by Attica poets, and a critical introduction by poet Mark Nowak. In addition to the poetry, Tisdale’s journal entries give readers a unique opportunity to experience what it was like to enter Attica as an educator and return week after week to discuss poetry. When the Smoke Cleared showcases these poets’ achievements, their desire for self-determination, and their historical role as storytellers of Black life in a prison monitored exclusively by white guards and administrators.

Frances E. Willard's powerful leadership of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) made her one of the most commanding figures in the reform movements of the nineteenth century. World renowned and a force to be reckoned with, Willard grappled publicly and private with difficult issues, including temperance, slavery, women's rights, and her own sexuality. These selections from her forty-nine-volume journal reveal the private and confidential side of Willard for the first time. She comes to life in these pages--a person of character, passion, and self-determination who came to represent the woman of the dawning era. 

Supplemented by an in-depth introduction and generous annotations, Writing Out My Heart sheds new light on an extraordinary individual and the lives of women in nineteenth-century America.