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Gertrude Stein in Circles: An Exhibition Review of Stein’s Life and Fandom at the George Peabody Library
Mar 18, 2026
The George Peabody Library in Baltimore, Maryland is not accessible from the street; one must traverse two anterooms before entering into that magnificent, public library. It is in one of these anterooms—a very large open room with wooden floors and tall windows open to the street—that the Gertrude Stein in Circles: Spheres of Life and Writing exhibition was held from September 22, 2024 through March 2, 2025 at Johns Hopkins University. With material drawn from archives across...
A Prayer for Mimesis? Reframing Islam in Cinema
Feb 12, 2026
In 1896, mere months after revealing their revolutionary cinematograph in Lyon, the Lumière Brothers dispatched a team of operators around the globe to showcase the new device and capture moving images for international circulation. Among this cadre of pioneering cinematographers was Alexandre Promio, who traveled to Spain, England, and Italy, before embarking on a journey to Algeria in December that same year. This broader story is part of my forthcoming book,
Modernism, Energy, and Environment
Black Migrants and Climate Change Vulnerability Amid the Great Smog of London in Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners
Jan 28, 2026
What would it mean to reread Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners (1956) as a narrative about the representation of Black migrants during the smog? The smog, the 1950s’ concerning ecological and climate issue, results from the mix of coal-burning smoke with London fog. Upon combustion, coal emits visible black smoke into the lingering fog, causing various health and respiratory hazards. The Lonely Londoners depicts the 1950s, when the Windrush generation of...
Northeast Indian Literature in Planetary Time: Creation Myths, Zones of Extraction and Anthropocene Heterotemporality in Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih’s Poetics
Jan 14, 2026
Fig. 1. Cover of Kynpham Sing Nonkynrih, Around the Hearth: Khasi Legends.Anglophone Literature from the borderland region of Northeast India has a relatively short history with the major works comprising the oeuvre published in the last four decades or so. One of the most visible trajectories in Northeast Indian Anglophone Literature (NIAL) [1] is the reworking of myths and origin stories, especially by writers from...