Universities have disinvested from their presses just as much as their humanities departments and libraries. Will working together stop it?
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“We Thought We Were Living in an Enlightened Age”: Talking with Artem Chapeye
“Many people who call themselves very patriotic, even nationalist, leave [Ukraine], while the people who are actually protecting it are the common people.”
Sublime Neutrality
In contemporary fiction, “literary evil” has been replaced by “neurotics, malingerers, failed imposters”—but what are the consequences of this indifference to evil and the assumed moral neutrality?
Five Books on Labor and Ecology
Our scorching planetary age results from the conjoined forces of colonial extractivism, fossil capitalism, and postcolonial developmentalism.
Reboot, Squared
TV can’t reboot its way out of its past errors, any more than an individual can fix their past trauma by reliving it, over and over again.
Weirding Out with Kate Marshall
In the intro to season 6 of Novel Dialogue, Kate Marshall gets weird: “I was looking at writers who were considering themselves part of a new weird, and I wanted to ask what the old weird was, and so I started looking.”
And Just Like That… the Viewer Cringes
The show’s white, middle-age, upper-class liberals clumsily realizing their privilege are an accurate mirror of some of its viewers.
Refreshing the Fresh Prince
The turn toward an aesthetic of Black excellence on TV reveals a mode of self-fashioning that celebrates neoliberal markers of merit and prestige.
Fixing Nostalgia: “Star Trek” Boldly Goes to Less Utopian Futures
“Picard” is perhaps the least utopian of any “Star Trek” media. But’s that because its political pragmatism shows how to build a better reality.
The Reboot Will Be Televised
“Star Trek: Picard,” “And Just Like That…,” “Bel-Air,” “Reboot”: even within our age of the reboot, old stories offer new insights.
“Gestures of Refusal”: A Conversation with Sarah Bernstein and Daisy Lafarge
“Why do we want our characters to be innocent, as if we are innocent ourselves?”
Who Picks the Next Kings of Tech?
“I’m looking for [companies] where, you know, at the end of it, there’s some big payoff… You know, would that excite me?”
“Succession” & Prestige TV’s Fascism Problem
Prestige TV, which has a presumptively liberal audience, churns out a steady diet of illiberal fare. Shows like “Succession” force the viewer to ask why.
“Dignity Matters as Much as Material Needs”: Michèle Lamont on Recognition Claims and Understanding American Politics
“To recognize the existence of injuries requires the recognition of others and their dignity.”
On Our Nightstands: September 2023
A behind-the-scenes look at what Public Books editors and staff have been reading this month.
Whose Homeland? Whose Security?
American overseas imperialism functions most powerfully through its infrastructures—debt, education, bureaucracy, mobility—filtered through DHS.
Borders Kill, but Not the Passport Privileged
In her new book, Belén Fernández is driven by an urge to expose empire’s death-making machine, even if it means exposing her own absurd participation in it.
Weaving a Feminist Cyberlaw
Women invented cyberspace. Yet today’s internet rewards misogyny with fame, wealth, and power. Could it be otherwise?
In the Age of Artpocalypse: Beauty and Damage on TV
Whether destroying the Mona Lisa or whole museums, why does contemporary film and TV want us to watch the art world burn?
Difficult Empathies
“What would a successful war novel look like? This question concealed a deeper question I had: What would a truthful Kashmir novel look like?”