The Arts Archives - Public Seminar

Interviews

What’s Fresh, White, and Read All Over?

Megan Milks covers everything milky in their new book, Mega Milk

May 14, 2026 • by Cleo Levin and Megan Milks

Megan Milks’s portrait-in-essays Mega Milk (Feminist Press, 2026) has a straightforward premise: It’s a book about milk. But beneath the surface, it’s a multi-dimensional look at American dairy and all its associations. This collection is about transness, queerness, whiteness, family, farming, and much more. It takes the staid category of ...

Literature

Some Random Person in Grand Rapids

In Natasha Stagg’s new novel, a woman reflects on the struggle of telling the truth about one particular teenage summer

May 13, 2026 • by Katie Pruden

The author Natasha Stagg has been described by Bookforum as a “cool person in downtown New York who writes about the same.” Her first novel, Surveys (2016), and her two essay collections, Sleeveless (2019) and Artless (2023), deal with a perception-obsessed internet culture. But her latest novel, Grand Rapids (Semiotexte, ...

Film & Performing Arts

The Defiant Spirit of Palestinian Parkour

A conversation with filmmaker Areeb Zuaiter on her documentary Yalla Parkour and making art amid genocide

May 12, 2026 • by Rida Chaudhry and Areeb Zuaiter

A decade ago, filmmaker Areeb Zuaiter was glued to her screen watching the 2014 Israeli offensive on Gaza when a different kind of video interrupted her feed: smiling young men laughing between backflips as bombs darkened the sky behind them. The Nablus-born documentarian was partly curious and partly enamored with ...

The Defiant Spirit of Palestinian Parkour

Film & Performing Arts

Think Happy Thoughts

An excerpt from The Extended Universe: How Disney Killed the Movies and Took Over the World

May 11, 2026 • by Vicky Osterweil

In the wake of the animator’s strike, Walt’s reflexive conservatism turned into a frothing anti-communism. But while his politics grew more unhinged and hateful, his creative output turned definitively toward the production of nostalgia. Song of the South’s reenvisioning of plantation childhood was one particularly egregious example, as was Peter ...

Film & Performing Arts

Choreographing the Handshake of Capitalism

In Making Movement Modern, Whitney E. Laemmli explores the dizzying story of Labanotation, a movement visualization system that promised the key to self-understanding

May 7, 2026 • by Madeleine Adams

Have you ever watched a video of yourself and wondered, “Why do my hands look so stiff when I gesture?” or “Geez, my walk is really galumphing!” And then, inevitably, “Would my life be different if I only knew how to move?” To this last question, the adherents of the ...

Choreographing the Handshake of Capitalism

Film & Performing Arts

Everyone Loves the Straight-Passing Gay Man

What Heated Rivalry tells us about queer acceptability

May 5, 2026 • by Tanmay Pandya

Over a phone call a few weeks ago, a childhood friend told me she had found among her possessions a long-forgotten, black-and-gold diary that had once belonged to me—that had now, so many years later, mysteriously appeared in her custody. Curious to hear its contents, I asked her to recite ...

Everyone Loves the Straight-Passing Gay Man

Art & Design

The Avant-Garde Intersection of Léon-Paul Fargue and Marie Monnier

Translating the “great nocturnal butterflies in broad daylight” of one modernist recognizing another

May 4, 2026 • by Chris Holdaway

Translator’s Note In May 1927, an exhibition of images embroidered in silk thread opened at La Maison des Amis des Livres in the Sixth Arrondissement, the bookshop and salon that Breton once called “the most attractive hub of ideas of the time.” The artworks were the creations of Marie Monnier (1894–1976) ...

The Avant-Garde Intersection of Léon-Paul Fargue and Marie Monnier

Disability

What Does Disabled Dance Look Like?

Choreographers like Brian Golden wrestle with the NEA’s attempt to define and delimit disability aesthetics

April 30, 2026 • by Liana Zhen-ai

Early last year, I brought a friend along to a Trisha Brown performance at Sadler’s Wells in London. The friend, new to postmodern dance, listened patiently as I droned on about its principles: “It’s a lot of holding strange shapes and multi-tasking with different parts of the body,” I summarized. ...

Philosophy

What Is a Beagle?

In Lab Dog, Brad Bolman probes how the beagle became such a popular subject of American science and such a potent symbol of American patriotism

April 30, 2026 • by Aaron Neber

In recent months, activists against animal testing in scientific experiments have had a few moments of important success. In December, the National Defense Authorization Act included a provision that military funding will not be spent on projects that require painful research on dogs or cats (unless they are military service ...

Literature

Did You Raise Something Monstrous?

In Night Night Fawn, Jordy Rosenberg turns a mother’s opioid-fueled narration into a study of gender, nationalism, and ideological inheritance

April 21, 2026 • by Gil Bittner

Jordy Rosenberg’s new novel, Night Night Fawn (One World, 2026), is narrated by Barbara Rosenberg, a dying Manhattan mother delivering a torrent of OxyContin-fueled recollections about her life and her estranged trans child, who now goes by “J.” The names are not subtle. Rosenberg’s second novel is a radical form ...

Music

The Frivolous Mystique of Rosalía’s Lux

The critically acclaimed pop album, sung in 13 languages, uses classical compositions to its disadvantage

April 20, 2026 • by Megan Robinson

Rosalía released her fourth studio album, Lux, in November 2025. Inspired by “feminine mystique,” according to its press release, the album narrates the lives of several female mystics and saints. Rosalía worked with collaborators including Björk, Yves Tumor, and producer Noah Goldstein (from Kanye West’s Yeezus, another acclaimed God concept album), ...

Middle East & North Africa

The Political Perimeter

Francesca Albanese and the limits of international humanitarian law

April 15, 2026 • by Coleson Smith

In the wake of the Gaza War, a place in time that has become its own world-historical moment, the invocation of international law as a means of remedying Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians rings hollow. After all, did bombs not continue to fall on Gaza even after South Africa brought ...

The Arts

What’s Fresh, White, and Read All Over?

Megan Milks covers everything milky in their new book, Mega Milk

Some Random Person in Grand Rapids

In Natasha Stagg’s new novel, a woman reflects on the struggle of telling the truth about one particular teenage summer

The Defiant Spirit of Palestinian Parkour

A conversation with filmmaker Areeb Zuaiter on her documentary Yalla Parkour and making art amid genocide

Think Happy Thoughts

An excerpt from The Extended Universe: How Disney Killed the Movies and Took Over the World

Choreographing the Handshake of Capitalism

In Making Movement Modern, Whitney E. Laemmli explores the dizzying story of Labanotation, a movement visualization system that promised the key to self-understanding

Everyone Loves the Straight-Passing Gay Man

What Heated Rivalry tells us about queer acceptability

The Avant-Garde Intersection of Léon-Paul Fargue and Marie Monnier

Translating the “great nocturnal butterflies in broad daylight” of one modernist recognizing another

What Does Disabled Dance Look Like?

Choreographers like Brian Golden wrestle with the NEA’s attempt to define and delimit disability aesthetics

What Is a Beagle?

In Lab Dog, Brad Bolman probes how the beagle became such a popular subject of American science and such a potent symbol of American patriotism

Did You Raise Something Monstrous?

In Night Night Fawn, Jordy Rosenberg turns a mother’s opioid-fueled narration into a study of gender, nationalism, and ideological inheritance

The Frivolous Mystique of Rosalía’s Lux

The critically acclaimed pop album, sung in 13 languages, uses classical compositions to its disadvantage

The Political Perimeter

Francesca Albanese and the limits of international humanitarian law

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