Look, look, he’s a marrano, lower than dust. Juan de Lucena, De Vita Beata [1] I once said, perhaps rightly: The earlier culture will become a heap of rubble, and finally a heap of ashes, but spirit will hover over the ashes. Ludwig Wittgenstein [2] This book is the first monograph wholly devoted to the… Read More »
In 2014, prominent Québécois columnist Christian Rioux published a fearmongering opinion piece on the use of “Franglais” (or Frenglish) in one of Quebec’s most prominent newspapers, Le Devoir, and sparked a province-wide controversy. In his piece, Rioux deplores the degraded quality of the French language he supposedly observes in Quebec and, most importantly, points a… Read More »
Guest post by Dimitar Kambourov I embarked on the project of compiling and editing Bulgarian Literature as World Literature for various reasons. Some of them – like increasing the visibility of Bulgarian literature and provoking curiosity about it worldwide – were uninspiringly important. Others happened to be a continuation of my life-long endeavor to read… Read More »
The first thing to note about Sonita Sarker’s essay is that it offers a necessary challenge to and reorientation of the various definitions of responsible reading that appear throughout this volume. Responsible reading can and should take on any number of meanings, even contradictory meanings, in the chapters that appear here. But what responsible reading should never suggest is a “mandatory curriculum” that becomes a burden that the reader “does not ask to carry but becomes hers to bear.”
From government briefings to quirky “human interest” stories and double-blind Pub Med studies, narrative in all its multifarious forms is what we resort to, promising in various measure, consolation and comprehension. But we rarely ask why. Why we are addicted to narrative in the first place. Why our minds work this way.
Based on a novel by the same name, Lovecraft Country is a drama-horror series set to premiere on HBO this weekend. The story will take you back to the 1950s as you follow Atticus Black (Jonathan Majors), his friend Letitia (Jurnee Smollett-Bell), and his Uncle George (Courtney B. Vance) through Jim Crow America in search of Atticus’s missing father (Michael Kenneth Williams). But as the characters embark on an unexpected road trip, they encounter a… Read More »
We’re announcing a new series! Guest post by Anton Kirchhofer, Janine Rogers, and John Holmes In the twentieth century, a powerful myth arose that science and technology could solve humanity’s problems. New materials like plastics, new drugs, new computational and information technologies, would transform our world, creating a cleaner, brighter, healthier and more equal future. In some… Read More »
Guest post by Angelika Bammer My undergraduate students still regularly ask me if it’s ok to use “I” in their essays. When I assure them that it’s not just ok, but a way of acknowledging their own stakes in their argument or the questions they set out to explore, it’s like giving thirsty hikers water.… Read More »
