The people of Rome have been leaving notes on the Pasquino statue for over 500 years. And this practice continued in the pandemic, fortunately.
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COVID: The Pandemic Without Honor?
“I don’t believe there was any conspiracy inside government to kill people off,” a health official explains. “From what I saw there was no plan.”
Putting French Literary History on Trial
Mohamed Mbougar Sarr’s Goncourt-winning novel confronts the racist history of France’s literary prizes.
“Cheerfully Monstrous”: Dodie Bellamy on Writing and Grieving
“I didn’t pay much attention to what was being put in the archives… there are letters that, if I had been paying attention, wouldn’t be there.”
The Romance of Recovery: Ben Bateman talks to Shola von Reinhold
“I don't really want to write about theory, but it just keeps coming up again and again. It's inescapable.”
Habits of Mind: John Warner on Teaching Writing
“You fall short and then you wonder, 'what could I do differently next time that gets us a little bit closer?' I love that process.”
Can We Repair the Past?
For the righting of historical wrongs, to simply transfer property continues to perpetuate violence. True reparations require far more work.
Toxic Masculinity, Spectral Homosexuality
The secret of the Western—as Jane Campion’s “Power of the Dog” shows—is that its mythology nurtures a queer fantasy, hiding in plain sight.
Queer Ever After?
If queer today often looks rather like heteronormativity’s “sick and boring life,” how can we cultivate queerer worlds, or other possibilities?
Apocalypse and Anticlimax: The Petrified Forest, Calistoga, CA
Unlike us today, the Victorians who discovered this stone forest were less afraid of the future than they were of forgetting the past.
Is “Regulation from Below” Possible?
A powerful grassroots movement campaigned in the ’70s and ’80s for banks to reinvest equitably in red-lined urban communities. It failed—but why?
The Work of Inhabiting a Role: Charles Yu speaks to Chris Fan
“I am paralyzed by the infinite degrees of freedom that you start out with, and so constraints can be freeing. To say, I can start here—I'm writing a story about time travel.”
The Healing Power of Virtual Cuteness
Violence underlies the whimsical colonizing of an island in “Animal Crossing.” But perhaps it holds promise for political repair, too.
Hiding in Plain Sight: Talking Aquifer Depletion with Lucas Bessire
“The everyday ways that people challenge environmental destruction can be quite powerful.”
How to Be a Prophet?
The US Religious Right wins elections, but advances nationalism and white supremacy. Why, then, should the Religious Left seek to emulate them?
The Stories Women Tell of Loneliness
“I have an appetite for silence,” Emily Dickinson wrote, for “silence is infinity.” But are women today relishing in their solitude?
Why Does the State Allow Environmental Inequalities to Persist? Talking with Jill Lindsey Harrison
“What state and federal environmental regulatory agencies in the US have not yet done is reform the way agency staff make decisions.”
Walking Among the University’s Ruins
Some wager that the end is not inevitable: that universities can reassert their centrality to the American liberal democratic project.
In the Editing Room with Ruth Ozeki and Rebecca Evans
“I'm aware, as I'm writing, that I'm changing camera angles.”
Ahmed’s Good Grief
Institutions separate complainers from one another and from their own support networks. But what if we complained as a collective?