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Modernism, Energy, and Environment
Introduction to “Letters from the Field”
Sep 10, 2025
I have been tasked with introducing “Letters from the Field”, a new series of blog correspondences on doing modernist studies while living through climate change and calamities. “Letters from the Field” grows out of conversations that have taken place at online and in-person events organized by the MSA’s Modernism and the Environment special interest group (SIG) over the past two years. We bring these conversations to forum on Modernism, Energy, and Environment in the hope of having the...
The Crossword and the Sword: Puzzling Modernism and War
Jul 23, 2025
The first crossword puzzle appeared December 21, 1913 in the FUN pages of The New York World, Pulitzer’s paper. It was the creation of Liverpool-born journalist, Arthur Wynne, originally called a word-cross but misprinted shortly after to its familiar form, an early victim to own imposition of anarchic plasticity onto language. With understated transatlantic modesty, Wynne claimed crosswords were as old as Pompei. Back home, old poet Housman would name these the “days when heaven...
Leveling the Playing Field: Liberal Infrastructures at the Olympics
Jun 6, 2025
In the weeks leading up to the 2024 Paris Olympics, coverage was dominated by a number of controversies stemming from the city’s efforts to stage the games: threats of strike from public and private sectors and an attack on rail lines grabbed headlines. But these preliminary and somewhat routine crises were eclipsed by furor over the opening ceremony, which included a runway show featuring drag performers and others staged in the style of a feast.
Notes from the Field of Arabic Literature in the Time of Genocide
May 28, 2025
It is the twentieth month of genocide, our planet’s second rotation around the sun, drenched in Palestinian blood, 600 days of Palestinian slaughter, and nothing is new except the finality of the massacre. The world has sacrificed the Palestinians with its complicity and silence, and it will soon start rehabilitating itself by erecting monuments of guilt, reciting land acknowledgements, mythologizing the Palestinian, and cannibalizing the myth.
Given the scale of this historic...