Books & the Arts

Isaac Julien at the Tate Britain, 2023.

Isaac Julien’s Truth Isaac Julien’s Truth

Dealing with time, race, and utopias, his work challenges conventional notions of where film belongs and should be consumed.

Dec 18, 2023 / Books & the Arts / Barry Schwabsky

Joan Baez at the Newport Folk Festival, 1964.

Joan Baez Looks Back Joan Baez Looks Back

I Am a Noise, a career-spanning documentary, makes it clear that the folk singer was one of the most important political musicians of her generation.

Dec 14, 2023 / Books & the Arts / Sarah M. Seltzer

The author’s mother, 1927.

Christina Sharpe and the Art of Everyday Black Life Christina Sharpe and the Art of Everyday Black Life

In Ordinary Notes, Sharpe considers Black culture “in all of its shade and depth and glow.”

Dec 13, 2023 / Books & the Arts / Omari Weekes

The Dubious Feminism of the Natural Childbirth Movement

The Dubious Feminism of the Natural Childbirth Movement The Dubious Feminism of the Natural Childbirth Movement

Culture / Books & the Arts / December 12, 2023 More Than a Natural Function The politics of birth. The Dubious Feminism of the Natural Childbirth Movement Though it res…

Dec 12, 2023 / Books & the Arts / Moira Donegan

How Did Marxism Become Marxism?

How Did Marxism Become Marxism? How Did Marxism Become Marxism?

A new book examines a set of thinkers and activists who helped transform a set of radical ideas into a political tradition.

Dec 11, 2023 / Books & the Arts / Peter E. Gordon

The Work of Black Life: A Conversation With Christina Sharpe

The Work of Black Life: A Conversation With Christina Sharpe The Work of Black Life: A Conversation With Christina Sharpe

In Ordinary Notes, a extraordinary work of memoir, poetry, and criticism, she writes a love letter to Black art.

Dec 8, 2023 / Books & the Arts / Rhoda Feng

Families walking in a New York park, 1952.

A New York Cult That Promised the End of the Nuclear Family A New York Cult That Promised the End of the Nuclear Family

Alexander Stille’s The Sullivanians documents the sordid history and fascinating intellectual roots of a psychotherapy group that proposed a utopian alternative to conventional fa...

Dec 7, 2023 / Books & the Arts / Callie Hitchcock

Hélène Cixous, 2019.

Hélène Cixous, a Poet Among Theorists Hélène Cixous, a Poet Among Theorists

In Well-Kept Ruins, a key example of her late style, a hybrid and dreamlike form of social theory comes into focus.

Dec 6, 2023 / Books & the Arts / Rebecca Ariel Porte

Siddhartha Deb, “The Light at the End of the World”

Siddhartha Deb and the Politics of Fiction Siddhartha Deb and the Politics of Fiction

A conversation with the novelist and journalist about India, colonialism, the Union Carbide catastrophe, solidarity, history in literature, and his novel, The Light at the End of ...

Dec 6, 2023 / Books & the Arts / Feroz Rather

Joaquin Phoenix in “Napoleon.”

History According to Ridley Scott History According to Ridley Scott

Ultimately what we learn in Napoleon says far more about the director than it does about Napoleon.

Dec 4, 2023 / Books & the Arts / Mike Duncan

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