According to Warren Belasco, what defines a family holiday meal is its planning, its timing, its timelessness, and most importantly – its meaning. My family’s annual Thanksgiving is planned by my grandmother on my father’s side of the family at least weeks in advance. This is when she starts making her homemade cranberry bread. Sometimes […]
The transatlantic slave trade was the largest forced migration in history. It involved an intercontinental transfer of wealth, goods, and most importantly, millions of people over the course of four centuries. Great Britain was one of the chief participants in the traffic. According to estimates available through Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database (2013), Britain […]
MONTEVERDE, Costa Rica — Women in Costa Rica are rising out of the ashes and learning how to spread their own wings. For a long time, and some would argue still today, women in Costa Rica were considered second-class citizens, mostly due to machismo, or masculine culture, where men believe they hold dominant roles over […]
Introduction and General History Music history in North America begins long before Europeans came ashore; however, because classically trained musicians view music history through the lens of European practices and experiences, it becomes difficult to document an authentic musical experience of the indigenous populations without first understanding the history of the people being studied. To […]
An obituary in The Southeast Missourian lists Elaine “Tommie” Davis as the business partner of Mary Jane “Miss Jane” Barnett for over forty years (Elaine Davis Obituary). However, the family albums of the two tell a richer story, they were life partners as well as business partners, a radical act in mid-century America, and perhaps […]
In “Chapter Six: The Monster” of Netflix’s Stranger Things, there’s the big reveal: Eleven, the daughter of Terry, a former subject in the Central Intelligence Agency’s Project MK-Ultra, was stolen—abducted—by “the big bad Man” to be used as a psychic weapon against the Soviet Union. Everything’s there: child abduction, brainwashing, the Man, an irrational fear […]
In 1971, a homosexual student organization known as Gay Liberation or Gay Lib requested and was denied recognition at the University of Missouri-Columbia. For the next seven years, Gay Lib members would work their way through a system of appeals and court cases until they were finally awarded recognition in April 1978. This was not […]
I grew up wanting a dog. In fact, since I learned to talk up until the age of 7 all I talked about were dogs. It didn’t help that my neighbor had a real-life Air Bud Golden Retriever who would fetch the newspaper every morning, which was a constant motivator to keep persuading my parents […]
The flute girl wandered into the kitchen with the contented air of someone who has already been paid for the night’s work, however light it might be. “They may not need that,” she told a serving girl who was watering a second jug of wine. “They say they’re not drinking very much tonight.” The cook, […]
Thomas Malory’s book, Le Morte Darthur, illustrates for its readers the rise and decline in power of the principle character, King Arthur. Beginning as a man chosen to become the King of Camelot and surrounding lands, King Arthur seemed to have befit perfectly as everything the kingdom needed in a ruler. However, once he becomes […]
Artifacts is a refereed journal of undergraduate work in writing at The University of Missouri. The journal celebrates writing in all its forms by inviting student authors to submit projects composed across different genres and media.
Artifacts is sponsored by The Campus Writing Program.