Blogs
Whither Politics? Photography and Protest in the “Provoke Era”
Jul 20, 2017
When the photography exhibit Provoke: Photography in Japan between Protest and Performance, 1960-1975 began its tour of Europe and the United States in January of 2016, its relevance to the contemporary moment was unclear.
The Limits of Resistance
Jul 4, 2017
No single word has signaled a repulsion toward Donald Trump—and the impulse to respond to him—like “resistance.” The term emerged immediately after the election, as soon as November 11th (The Advocate: “Count us as part of ‘the resistance’”), 10th (Charles Blow: “Count me among the resistance”), and 9th (Ben Jealous: “The resistance begins today”). One Facebook page, for a group called “Portland’s Resistance,” was launched on the 8th. This last one, presumably created to rechannel a late-...
My Brilliant, Scolding Friend: Willa Cather and Zoë Akins’s Epistolary Feedback
Jun 8, 2017
An early letter from Willa Cather to Zoë Akins in 1914 consists almost entirely of blunt feedback to the aspiring writer. Some representative lines, "This story, my dear Zoe is written to be smart. . . . There’s either got to be real feeling in a story, or an intellectual interest of the highest order. . . .
How to Do Things with Poetry Criticism, or Scholarship and Justice, Part II
May 24, 2017
Some writing changes worlds, for better and for worse. The second executive order signed by President Trump, for example, speeds up environmental reviews “For High Priority Infrastructure Projects” such as the Dakota Access Pipeline. The effects of this order on the natural universe and on human culture may be profound.