“What if we identified the politics of municipal debt as circumscribing political horizons and futures?”
Interviews
Public Thinker: Chawne Kimber on Constructing Quilts and Speaking History
"You cannot talk about race without talking about cotton. The materials that I use are desperately important as a layer of meaning in the work that I make."
“Between the Experiment and the Essence”: Emma Ramadan Talks Translation
“For those of us who can feel unsettled in terms of identity, translation can feel like home.”
Public Thinker: Merve Emre Throws a Party for Different Readers
“One way to think about the act of annotating is that you are that meddlesome party gossip, telling the reader how to draw connections between the different parts of the text.”
Mapping Utopia in the Dark: Matt Tierney on Literature and Technology
“This is not lowered expectations. It’s a wish for a mass normalization of resistance to deadly ways of looking at the world.”
Imagination or Regulation? Challenging the Incorporation of Antiracism as a Response to Crisis
The way we talk about racial justice matters. In fact, corporation’s embrace of antiracist slogans can actually advance racism.
To Teach Shakespeare for Survival: Talking with David Sterling Brown and Arthur L. Little Jr.
“Nostalgia is not what Shakespeare represents for me; I don’t want to make Shakespeare great again. He doesn’t need that, and neither do we.”
How to See Silicon Valley: Talking with Mary Beth Meehan and Fred Turner
"The ways in which the community itself is breaking down felt like end game capitalism."
To Air Is Human
An aerodynamicist and an anthropologist discuss the world of “Dune,” finding it as aesthetically beautiful as it is functionally implausible.
“Streets Like Rivers”: Talking New York City with Joshua Jelly-Schapiro
"Often, the question of which place-names stick is about which ones hit our ears right."
Mae Ngai: “We’ve Always Had Activists in Our Communities”
“Americans—whether they believe they are not racist or whether they are stone-cold racists—still struggle to see the structures of racism.”
“Redlining Does Not End”: Talking with Rebecca Marchiel on Housing and Racism
“They all wanted to imagine a different possibility of an integrated neighborhood, where folks worked together.”
Democracy’s Horizons: Talking with Michael Hanchard
“The question becomes, What can we do to make democracy more economically, socially, and politically just?”
“Tell Real Stories”: Shawn Utsey on Racism and Psychotherapy
“Liberation begins in the mind… Black folks have never been given the opportunity to define our own reality.”
History Can Answer the Inexplicable: An Interview with Madeline Hsu
“The longer history of hostility toward foreigners remains latent. It has not gone away.”
“There’s No There There”: Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor on the Future of the Left
“We don't have a party. That doesn't mean we need one big organization. We may need a few big organizations. But we need organizations!”
Nikki Giovanni on Rest, Love, and Care
“There is nothing supreme about being white.”
Desire Can Pierce Politics: Amia Srinivasan on Sex, Consent, and Feminism
“Given the long, tainted history of sex under patriarchy, maybe we need reparative norms around sex.”
The Long Road to a New Ideology: Piketty on Trump, Democrats, and Inequality
“We need to have both the reparation and the universal perspective on economic justice.”
What Does Erotica Reveal about Society? Talking with Pernilla Myrne
"I really liked Cardi B’s 'WAP.' It reminded me of one of the earliest poems written in history."