The university has been changing, to be sure. But has the proportion of students who want to devote themselves to acts of humanistic creativity?
Tag: Academia
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.”
Rereading the Revolt
In May 1381, rebels burned documents at Cambridge, then scattered the ashes to the wind. But why were universities targeted by the rebels?
Humanities: Let the Hypothesis Testing Begin
The humanities have a replication crisis of monumental proportions: so many theories have never been adequately tested or validated.
“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!”
How College Teaching Can Have a Future
Do we want a university built around managers and cops, or around students and their teachers?
Art and Culture in Schorske’s Century
With decades of creativity—that ended with World War I—Vienna jolted Western art and culture forward into high modernity. But how?
The Netanya-who?s: Gossip and Other Kinds of History
Benzion Netanyahu—father of the former prime minister—is not the protagonist; rather, it is his scholarship and the practice of history itself.
Public Thinker: Ainissa Ramirez on Putting the Story Back in Science
“We teach science as separate from the rest of the world. I want people who live in the world to see how they’re actually doing science.”
Academia Trained You—but the World Needs You
Does leaving the academy mean someone failed? Or does it mean, instead, that their scholarly strengths can now be made useful to the public?
B-Sides: Helen DeWitt’s “The Last Samurai”
Impossible to summarize, The Last Samurai is deeply political—anti-capitalist and thoroughly feminist—without ever becoming preachy or moralizing.
Meritocracy Is a Dystopia
Netflix Brazil’s 3% presents a desperate future city that nevertheless proclaims its citizens all have an equal shot at success. Sound familiar?
Quizzical: Which Academic Press Are You?
We don’t judge books by their covers, but we do sort people based on which academic presses match their personality types.
Poor Queer Use: Repurposing the Ivory Tower
Outside elite institutions, queer studies has the potential to go hand in hand with broader struggles of racial and economic justice.
Shoptalk: Overheard at the Virtual Conference
In this parodic installment of Shoptalk, we salute the year of conferences that have tried to be.
Merit Must Fall
What does “merit” mean in a context—like India—where caste pervades public life?
Public Thinker: B. R. Cohen on How Food Became “Pure”
“There were so many new laws, I had to make a map showing the spread and intensity of antimargarine laws in states over a quarter century.”
Public Thinker: Marcia Chatelain on Feminism, Fast Food, and First Gens
“Being in community with people and teaching and learning outside of the confines of our classroom: I still actually really believe in that.”
The Crumbling Tower
Academics are scrambling to fulfill the increasingly bureaucratic research measures of the neoliberal university.