The Folly of Philanthropy: On the Demise of UArts
In the end, a long-term structural operating deficit killed UArts, not a capital fundraising shell game or evil provost.
The Native American Horror Story (video essay)
Blending a cultural story and creating something new with it can be good or bad, depending on who’s telling the story and who’s in charge of the narrative.
Rangi is my ancestor, your ancestor is money . . .
Failure doesn’t . . . mean we have lost or that we can’t live in a world where Palestine is free, where the Congo is free, where Hawai’i is free, where West Papua is free, and where Western Sahara is free. . . . Everything is broken, but it doesn’t mean that the horror our ancestors experienced or that we continue to bear witness to cannot be healed.
Your Favorite Writer’s Favorite Writer: On Natalia Ginzburg’s Valentino & Sagittarius
I remembered almost nothing of the narrators apart from their existence. They existed for me as wallpaper . . . Still, when a friend said the same to me, I became defensive. I was convinced that Ginzburg’s was neither an artless nor an arbitrary choice, but one of subtler and more complicated mechanics . . .
Rebirth in the Ash Heap of istoriya
Hoffman had to translate a Ukrainian particularity into an American one. This task shows the power at the core of the art of translation.
“This Generation’s Homer”: How Penguin Has Changed Marvel Comics
The word “classic” once had a very specific meaning, namely a text written in Greek and Latin during the era of antiquity.
Paul Gottfried’s Career Smuggling Fascist Politics into the Academic Canon
With a figure as important to the American far-right as Gottfried, what excuse is there to lend him the veneer of academic legitimacy and to suggest his views have merit in scholarship?
The Literary Life of Connie Converse
On her own, Converse created great and complex work, but what might the canon look like today if she found an audience in her lifetime? If she created in communion with other great art?
You Barely Even Work Here: On Higher Education and the Myths of Neutrality
Our complicity in capitalist transactions does not have to prevent us from learning together . . . We can let go of the increasingly stale idea that the classroom or campus is ever a pristinely objective or neutral space.
Ranging in scale from tiny projects by one-man development teams to titles with million-dollar production budgets, video games seem much more eager than the literary establishment to borrow and learn from other forms.