Tag
@X
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J. M. Coetzee’s “Disgrace” @ 25: A Roundtable
What freshly nuanced perspectives might we bring to the violent late 20th-century history Coetzee describes?
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The Secluded Self: Sinclair Lewis’s “Main Street” @100
Why did Americans start distrusting small towns? The answer is one book, in which a woman moves from the city—and loses her freedom.[none-for-homepage]
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Babe Ruth’s New York @100
Ruth embodied a new and yet very old phenomenon—celebrity—in a technological era poised to capitalize on him.
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John Kennedy Toole @50
Thelma Toole, the mother of the novelist John Kennedy Toole—author of the extraordinary almost-unpublished novel A Confederacy of Dunces—delivered one of the most irresponsible accusations in …
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“Caste, Class, and Race” @70
As we pass the 70th anniversary of Trinidadian American sociologist Oliver Cromwell Cox’s Caste, Class, and Race: A Study in Social Dynamics, his message …
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Whither Agriculture?: The “Green Revolution” @50
Staid hotels, would-be insurrectionaries should note, make unpromising …
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“Wendy and Lucy” @10
Quick! Name an important fiction film of the Great Recession. The Big Short? Yes, surprisingly fun, considering the topic. Margin Call? Love it, except for the …
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Against Cuteness: “Bambi” @90
Felix Salten’s Bambi: A Life in the Woods—which first appeared in English 90 years ago this summer—is now better known as the inspiration for Disney’s charming …
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“Test-Tube Babies” @40
Forty years ago, on July 25, 1978, an English baby of ordinary working-class parentage was delivered by caesarian section. At 11:47 p.m., her mother, obstetrician Patrick Steptoe, Cambridge embryologist Robert Edwards, and a large medical team, together with a BBC film crew, had secretly gathered in the operating theater of Oldham Hospital in Manchester. Admitted…
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May 1968 @50
On April 27, 2018, a hundred people showed up at Columbia University to talk about the French student and worker revolts of May–June 1968. Many such conferences are taking place around the world to celebrate the 50th anniversary of that eventful and turbulent year. What made this meeting distinctive was that throughout the afternoon heady…
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“Rivers of Blood” @50
Imperial historians, and inhabitants of places colonized by Britain, know that much of England’s history happened beyond its borders. As decolonization whittled away imperial possessions …
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Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” @200
If you walk through the streets of central London, it won’t be long before you come across one of the city’s famous blue plaques. The markers are visually …
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Women’s Suffrage @100
The woman suffrage amendment passed in 1920, the culmination of what Juliet Mitchell called “the longest revolution, ” because it took 80 years of activism for American women to win the right to vote. What could better illustrate the depth of resistance to sex equality? But for two reasons, 1920 was not the decisive year. First,…
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William Bradford Huie’s “The Klansman” @50
The rise of Donald Trump has thrust the Ku Klux Klan into the national spotlight. To better understand the true threat of the Klan and its history of violence and …
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Walter Scott’s “Rob Roy” @200
What can Walter Scott’s sixth novel, Rob Roy, a phenomenal publishing success in 1817, tell us about the benefits and risks of a globalized economy today?
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@X: Making America White 200 Years Ago
In January 1817, more than three thousand African Americans gathered in Mother Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Philadelphia …
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Syria’s Wartime Famine @100: “Martyrs of the Grass”
In the days leading up to the Muslim holiday of the Feast of Sacrifice (Eid al-Adha) in October 2013, several Syrian clerics issued a fatwa …
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“The Sandman” @200
In 1816, only four years after the Brothers Grimm brought out a collection of fairy tales carefully selected and edited for the use of children, E. T. A. Hoffmann published his “Nutcracker and Mouse King.” To the extent that Hoffmann’s fairy tale introduced rather weird, even scary elements, his story departed significantly from what the…
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“The Passing of the Great Race” @100
2016 marks a century since the publication of The Passing of the Great Race, a book described by the late paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould as “the most influential tract of American scientific racism.” Its author, Madison Grant, a genteel dabbler with impeccable establishment ties, was a pure and unabashed bigot, a patrician who defended social…
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“Democracy and Education” @100
The rallies during Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign feature exuberant call-and-response exchanges. Denouncing immigrants from south of the border, Trump shouts, “We’re going to build a wall.” He pauses to let the crowd’s emotions storm up. Then he asks, “And, by the way, who’s going to pay for that wall?” The crowd roars back, “Mexico.”…
