Books & the Arts

Jack Conroy

Jack Conroy and the Lost Era of Proletarian Literature Jack Conroy and the Lost Era of Proletarian Literature

In the midst of the Depression, Conroy helped encourage a new generation of working-class writers.

Apr 30, 2024 / Books & the Arts / Devin Thomas O’Shea

The Cook County Jail in Chicago, Illinois, 2020.

Want to Fight Mass Incarceration? Start With Your Local Jail Want to Fight Mass Incarceration? Start With Your Local Jail

A new collection of essays from academics and activists devoted to prison abolition focuses on the quiet but rapid expansion of the carceral system in small towns and municipaliti...

Apr 25, 2024 / Books & the Arts / Jarrod Shanahan

The New York location of the Laugh Factory, 2004.

Is Comedy Really an Art? Is Comedy Really an Art?

A history of comedy’s last three decades of pop culture dominance argues that it is among the consequential American art forms.

Apr 24, 2024 / Books & the Arts / Ginny Hogan

Talking “Solidarity” With Astra Taylor and Leah Hunt-Hendrix

Talking “Solidarity” With Astra Taylor and Leah Hunt-Hendrix Talking “Solidarity” With Astra Taylor and Leah Hunt-Hendrix

A conversation with the activists and writers about their wide-ranging history of the politics of the common good and togetherness.

Apr 23, 2024 / Books & the Arts / Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins

The Milton S. Eisenhower Library at Johns Hopkins University, 1965.

The Education Factory The Education Factory

By looking at the labor history of academia, you can see the roots of a crisis in higher education that has been decades in the making.

Apr 22, 2024 / Books & the Arts / Erik Baker

Pacita Abad Wove the Women of the World Together

Pacita Abad Wove the Women of the World Together Pacita Abad Wove the Women of the World Together

Her art integrated painting, quilting, and the assemblage of Indigenous practices from around the globe to forge solidarity.

Apr 18, 2024 / Books & the Arts / Jasmine Liu

Kid Cudi in Las Vegas, 2024.

The Many Evolutions of Kid Cudi The Many Evolutions of Kid Cudi

In Insano, the rapper and hip-hop artist comes back down to earth.

Apr 17, 2024 / Books & the Arts / Bijan Stephen

Dr. Juan Romagoza at La Clinica del Pueblo in 1998.

The Brutal Cycle of US Immigration Policy The Brutal Cycle of US Immigration Policy

In Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here, Jonathan Blitzer examines how North and Central American migration moves in two directions.

Apr 16, 2024 / Books & the Arts / Gaby Del Valle

From “Aspects of Negro Life: From Slavery to Reconstruction,” Aaron Douglas (1934).

The Cosmopolitan Modernism of the Harlem Renaissance The Cosmopolitan Modernism of the Harlem Renaissance

A new exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art explores the world-spanning art of the Harlem Renaissance.

Apr 15, 2024 / Books & the Arts / Rachel Hunter Himes

Katy O’Brian and Kristen Stewart.

Blood, Guts, and Queer Bodybuilders Blood, Guts, and Queer Bodybuilders

The Kristen Stewart–helmed erotic thriller Love Lies Bleeding filters a study of sex, violence, and the limits of human will through a romance that begins in a New Mexico gym.

Apr 11, 2024 / Books & the Arts / Beatrice Loayza

x