Hunter Dukes is the managing editor of the Public Domain Review and Cabinet Magazine.
More about this author
Hunter Dukes is a writer and editor focused on cultural history. He is managing editor of the Public Domain Review and Cabinet Magazine, and founding editor of the print magazine GLOTTA in Hydra, Greece. Previously, he was university lecturer in English Literature at Tampere University, Finland, and a junior research fellow at Peterhouse, Cambridge.
His essays and reviews have appeared in the Telegraph, New Left Review, the Economist, Times Literary Supplement, History Today, ArtReview, and Los Angeles Review of Books. He has written on topics ranging from nightingale conservation to the erotic history of rocking chairs, and his first book explores the history and significance of signatures.
Dukes completed a PhD in English literature at the University of Cambridge, with research on figures including Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, Marcel Proust, and Deleuze and Guattari. In 2025–26, he is the inaugural resident of the Hydra Book Club + Library Residency.External
A Treatise on the All-Healing Qualities of Earth Bathing (1790)
Public Domain Review
In the late 1700s, James Graham promoted “earth-bathing,” a health practice where people buried their naked bodies in fresh soil for hours. He claimed it cured many illnesses by reconnecting the body with the Earth, which he viewed as a living organism that could restore balance to human “microclimates.” Graham said he had buried himself nearly 100 times and always felt renewed afterward. He preferred clean, reddish, sandy soil and believed singing or talking while buried helped the body release sickness and absorb health.
Painting the Origins of Art (ca. 1625–1850)
Public Domain Review
Pliny the Elder tells a story about Kora, a young woman who traced her lover’s shadow before he left on a trip. Her father then shaped a clay face from the outline, which became an early example of sculpture and drawing. Later artists reimagined this tale, exploring themes of love, memory, and the power of images. These artworks show how Kora’s desire to preserve her lover creates both connection and loss, as the shadow image takes on a life of its own.
Public Domain Review
In the 1980s, archivists discovered a suitcase of private photos taken by Norwegian photographers Bolette Berg and Marie Høeg. Unlike their formal studio work, these hidden images show playful, bold experiments with gender and identity. Høeg often dressed in masculine or exaggerated outfits, while friends joined in cross-dressing and humorous scenes that challenged strict social norms of the early 1900s. Outside photography, the pair supported women’s rights, helping organize for women’s voting rights long before such ideas were widely accepted.
Publications by this author
Co-authors: Christopher Schaberg and Ian Bogost | Bloomsbury | November | 2020
Signature is a book in the Object Lessons series, which explores the secret lives of everyday things. It asks why we sign our names and how a simple mark can both control and free us. The author travels from a meeting on a Greek island to handwriting tests in an English pub, a Moscow wedding where guests sign the bride, and a San Francisco tattoo shop. The book traces signatures from ancient cave handprints to slave branding, poetry, lawsuits, music, forgeries, and even ice cores, showing how signatures express identity and imagination.
Media by this author
Feature | July | 2021
Miguel Tamen’s book Closeness explores what it means to be an “artistic” person by looking at how we experience art. Using examples like the city of Naples and Hitchcock’s Rear Window, he explains big ideas in a clear, thoughtful way. He draws on thinkers such as Russell, Moretti, Wittgenstein, and Horace to argue for paying closer attention to art. Tamen, a professor in Lisbon, speaks with Hunter Dukes, a literature scholar whose first book, Signature, was published in 2020.
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