Why are Anglophone novels more worthy of attention than Ottoman shadow puppetry or the art of knot-tying? Just what are the humanities for?
Tag: University of Chicago Press
Public Thinker: Destin Jenkins on Breaking Bonds
“What if we identified the politics of municipal debt as circumscribing political horizons and futures?”
Mission Impossible
The university has been changing, to be sure. But has the proportion of students who want to devote themselves to acts of humanistic creativity?
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."
“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.”
The World Latinx Athletes Make
Latinx athletes have forged new identities, cultivated community, and anchored themselves in spaces that were not created for them.
You Are Never Alone at the Museum
What do we see when looking at art from the perspective of the infrastructures that sustain it?
Harvard–Riverside, Round Trip
In the contemporary United States, higher education does more to exaggerate than relieve class and cultural divisions.
What Will Be Impossible?
Why excavate these Reformation characters—the preacher and the werewolf—now? What do they have to teach us?
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.
What Happens When a Metaphor Becomes Real?
The humanities can reveal the truth of the world’s crises, everything from contagions like the pandemic to apocalypses like right-wing violence.
No Cure
Tech promises to cure any ailment, whether an unwelcome feeling or a global pandemic. But what if tech itself is ill? And what is a cure, anyway?
Public Picks 2021
Each May we send our readers into summer with a curated list of the titles that dazzled, challenged, and inspired us most over the past year (or so).
What Was the Classroom?
As many COVID-era courses have moved from seminar rooms to Zoom meetings, the haptic nature of teaching has changed. Is anything lost?
How to Build a World
Storytelling like that of Ursula K. Le Guin or Hayao Miyazaki reveals how real-world politics is similarly an act of collective “world building.”
Stop Reading like a Critic
Think about your favorite book. Now ask yourself: Would you admit this to others? Most would share—but literature professors are not most people.
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.”
Listen to the Birds
Avian flu came from environmental devastation, an increasingly interconnected world, and a growing population—just like COVID-19.
The Myth of the “Sixties”
When we mythologize the ’60s, we lose sight of what’s truly ahead of us.
The House That Form Built
Across the slatted border between the United States and Mexico, near Ciudad Juárez, the artists Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello recently installed several ...