The United States originates in settler colonialism, slavery, empire, and a long history of giving refuge to some while refusing refuge to others.
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Borders Don’t Stop Violence—They Create It
The “border” is not a line on the ground, but a tool to enable violence and surveillance.
Abolish Migrant Prisons: A Manifesto
So long as the state can criminalize movement and eliminate groups deemed undesirable, no one is free.
From “Crisis” to Futurity
Introducing a new series to push forward our thinking and action about immigration and borders.
What Will Be Impossible?
Why excavate these Reformation characters—the preacher and the werewolf—now? What do they have to teach us?
B-Sides: Elinor Wylie’s “Atavism”
Caesuras do things to stories—and to readers, even readers too young to know the term.
“They Don’t See Their Work as Surveillance”: Jennifer Pan on Chinese Welfare and Society
“Winning Is Not Uncomplicated”: Louisa Thomas on Sports
Can Algorithmic Bias Teach Us about Race?
Machines learned racism from humans. Perhaps humans can now learn about that racism from the very machines they taught.
The Direction of Beginning
These poems undo the cultural invisibility of America’s Native Nations. They also, with unique abundance, secure the value of poetry itself.
Why Play at Orientalism?
Games like Crusader Kings III build feudalism into their code, and in so doing assert the supremacy of the modern global North.
Public Thinker: Ainissa Ramirez on Putting the Story Back in Science
Sex, Race, and Feminist Connection
History, Ann Stoler showed, is not just political action, disconnected from daily domestic acts. Intimate relations are worthy of serious study.
A Messy Utopia Is All We Might Get
Climate change didn’t just wreck the planet; it closed off and reshaped the future. Even utopia—if we reach it—will be a mess.
Getting Upsold by Real Estate
When prospective home buyers hire a real estate agent, they may end up getting more than they had pictured themselves bargaining for.
Four Ways to Ruin Dante—and One to Save Him
Why would Dante need help? Because if the poet’s only readers are Dante scholars, then we’ll all lose out. Dante deserves better, and so do we.
Public Thinker: Meghan O’Gieblyn on God, Machines, and Intelligence
Why Play to Regret?
Videogames that demand female protagonists commit—and receive—violence may be captivating, thoughtful, and moral. But they are not fun to play.
Episode 5: Data & Racial Capitalism
How have data-centric systems perpetuated racial capitalism, and how have different communities, particularly in the global South, resisted this datafication?
Long Live the Gay Bar
Many think the loss of discrete queer spaces is bad, even as the loss of the need for them is good. What is the nature of that loss?