The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton, tells the story of Lily Bart, a 29-year-old beauty living among New York's upper class. Lily's primary goal in life is to find a husband who can relieve the financial hardship she has endured since her childhood years as an orphan. Though unlike the women who ...

Over history various methods have been used to justify discrimination. Although religion and race were both successful in instituting social hierarchies, the implications of their characterizations were quite different. Though similar in their origins, the transition from religion to race as the bas...

In many urban centers with a significant immigrant population, networks of community membership tend to follow ethnic lines. This phenomenon is sometimes explained as a failure of integration on the part of immigrants. This perceived failure is then viewed as evidence of the inherently problematic n...