Might a stand-up comedian discuss slavery in America with considerable doses of humor? Happens all the time. A contemporary novelist? Not so much. It is the rare writer who is willing to approach the ...
Stephen Best
Stephen Best is an associate professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of The Fugitive’s Properties: Law and the Poetics of Possession (2004). He is currently working on a book about slavery and the limits of historicist critique. 
Virtual Roundtable on “Empire”
After it debuted last January on Fox, Empire quickly became one of the most talked-about shows on television. Its Shakespearean portrayal of family life, its stylized window onto the hip-hop ...