The Arts

Literature

Matters of Offense

A PEN America World Voices Festival conversation on free speech, appropriation, and what it takes to be an artist

September 5, 2023 • by and
In an intimate dialogue, the Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright, novelist, and President of PEN America Ayad Akhtar (Homeland Elegies) and Interfaith America Founder and President Eboo Patel (We Need to Build) explore the climate of self-censorship facing writers, question whether marginalization is a useful category in art, and discuss the dangers of ...
Read More
Matters of Offense
Reviews

Can American Liberalism Reinvent Itself?

How obscuring the public side of public-private partnerships from FDR to Clinton rendered the liberal state politically precarious

June 27, 2023 • by
The DLC, soon to anoint Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas as their chairman and presidential standard-bearer, were leaving the legacy of New Deal and postwar liberalism behind. They were, after all, “New Democrats.” Or were they? ...

Read More
Can American Liberalism Reinvent Itself?
Gender

Eau du Easy Mark

An excerpt from Lucky Dogs: A Novel

June 8, 2023 • by
My natural scent could be called “eau du easy mark,” an odor only vermin can detect, a spicy mélange of paralysis perfume with prior-history-of-abuse essence....

Read More
Eau du Easy Mark
Reviews

A World in Motion

A review of Sindya Bhanoo’s Seeking Fortune Elsewhere

May 17, 2023 • by
Bhanoo evokes not the spectacular scenes of people in motion that fill the news, but the ordinary and everyday events that make up lives in migration, and how the lives of Indian and Indian American women have changed over the years....

Read More
A World in Motion
Film & Performing Arts

Nihilism for the Whole Family!

How Evelyn misinterpreted Waymond’s rebellion in Everything Everywhere All At Once

April 18, 2023 • by
Evelyn’s response to the multiverse reflects an existentialist resolution that builds upon a particular version of nihilism: if the universe is inherently meaningless, then we are at liberty to create our own meanings within it....

Read More
Nihilism for the Whole Family!
Art & Design

Poetic Rage, Anti-colonial Avant-gardes

An excerpt of Interior Frontiers

March 7, 2023 • by
This essay distills what I see as a fugitive, peripatetic set of counter-colonial avant-gardes, innovative and mobile to different degrees, challenging both what avant-gardes do and who are included among them. I do not treat them as a movement but as convergent spaces of work and thought, of “counter-conducts,” of ...
Read More
Poetic Rage, Anti-colonial Avant-gardes
Subscribe

Join our global intellectual commons

Free to subscribe. No spam. Delivered by Substack.

Most Popular
1
Entertaining Propaganda: Hate-watching Fauda
March 20, 2023 by
Entertaining Propaganda: Hate-watching Fauda
2
JFK’s Queer White House
December 13, 2018 by
JFK’s Queer White House
3
Greg Abbott’s Wheelchair
June 10, 2025 by
Greg Abbott’s Wheelchair
4
Gender as Colonial Object
July 26, 2018 by
Gender as Colonial Object
5
NAZA Gives A Name to the Machinery of Killing
October 13, 2026 by
NAZA Gives A Name to the Machinery of Killing
The Latest
Art & Design
Before Social Media, There Were Postcards
October 15, 2026 by
Before Social Media, There Were Postcards
Genocide
NAZA Gives A Name to the Machinery of Killing
October 13, 2026 by
NAZA Gives A Name to the Machinery of Killing
Labor
Possible Futures?
October 8, 2026 by
Possible Futures?
Labor
Caring About Care
October 8, 2026 by and
Caring About Care
Habitats
The Last Phone Box in Sharrington
October 6, 2026 by
The Last Phone Box in Sharrington

Newsletter

Free to subscribe. No spam.
Delivered by Substack.

Connect With Us

Instagram
Bluesky
Facebook
Twitter
Copyright © 2014–2026 The Editorial Board of Public Seminar, All Rights Reserved.