Artist Simone Leigh curated a series of intellectual sermons directed by Black women who grieved, strategized, loved, and yearned for community.
Essays
Public Picks 2022
What were the books of 2022 that dazzled, challenged, and inspired us?
Homeland Security Theater
These new DHS-funded graphic novels want to train citizens to be critical readers of all kinds of information, except their own propaganda.
How To Scuttle A Public Broadcaster
On the 100th anniversary of the founding of the BBC, national public broadcasters across the world are still subject to constant spurious attacks.
Student-Centered Pedagogy’s Activist Roots
For at least 150 years, Black and feminist educators understood that how one is taught effects how one participates in society.
When Panama Came to Brooklyn
“For those Afro-Caribbean Panamanian who had lived through Panama’s Canal Zone apartheid, Brooklyn segregation probably came as no surprise.”
Jewish Havens: Amsterdam, The Netherlands
For centuries, the city’s Sephardim adhered to Jewish law within the community, but also had secular lives in the relatively lax Dutch state.
Reading after the University
If you want to support readers, the best hope will always be helping do away with economic compulsion and the division of labor.
“The Last Samurai,” Unread
“In a world where the imagined purpose of the novel is to entertain—not to teach or spark further inquiry—The Last Samurai dissents.”
“The Breath of Life”: Sheila Heti on Art, Loss, and Immortality
“Let it become the thing that leads you through your days for years on end—just allowing that problem to live in front of you and to guide you.”
“Work More, Consume Less”: How Austerity Coerces
The true purpose of austerity is to permanently and structurally extract resources from the many to the few.
Into the Woods with Yiyun Li
Fairy tales—like Li’s Book of Goose—are so scary because there is no cushion between you and the will of the world, no room for mistakes.
Can Solarpunk Save the World?
Today, solar power merely fuels capitalism and imperialism. But drawing power from the sun is so radical it might transform that status quo.
B-Sides: Fran Ross’s Oreo
“Oreo” is not the easiest read, but it is a book that is, in many ways, written against ease.
Failure’s Gifts
Even the most successful authors—like Phillis Wheatley and W. E. B. Du Bois—fail to publish all they’d like. What can that reveal about literature?
How to Profit from Climate Change
How did capitalism waste the crucial decades when climate change could have been halted? By fixating on—and downplaying—“risk.”
What Future for Health Activism?
A more critical consciousness of the connections between family, health, race, and gender was brewing among food allergy advocates in the exceptionally catastrophic summer of 2020.
Reading “Lote”
Shola von Reinhold’s novel is central to any reckoning with the politics of the archive, not to mention contemporary literature itself.
Futures of Postimperial Glasgow
Britain’s “Second City” profited from shipbuilding and the slave trade, but has slowly declined for decades. What should Glasgow’s future hold?
Quizzical: Which Academic Organization Are You?
If your life was a conference, what would be its theme?