In her new book, Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting, she considers how those feelings help us form judgments about the aesthetic world, how we know to describe something as ...

Providing an in-depth overview of all things kawaii (cute), this book traces the cute aesthetic from its inception in the 1970s as a schoolgirl trend to its position as a leading cultural norm ...

The Industrial Revolution and the rise of mass production allowed cuteness to be unleashed on the world — toys, books and illustrations could, increasingly, be made easily and cheaply.

But cuteness has recently become a subject of serious inquiry, inspiring scientific research, academic literature—dubbed “Cute Studies”—and a recent book, “Irresistible: How Cuteness ...