The Arts Archives - Page 19 of 36

Literature

Something New Under the Sun

Drought, Hollywood, and corporate corruption in the age of alternative facts

September 10, 2021 • by Alexandra Kleeman

_____ Excerpted from Something New Under the Sun by Alexandra Kleeman. Copyright © 2021 by Alexandra Kleeman. Published by Hogarth, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. Read an interview between Alexandra Kleeman and novelist Helen Schulman about Something New Under the Sun. _____ Alexandra Kleeman ...

Film & Performing Arts

Faculty TeeVee

In the Netflix series The Chair, Sandra Oh is charged with a Sisyphean task: an English department faculty in decline. Spoiler alerts!

August 20, 2021 • by Claire Potter

_____ It’s such a setup, and one of Dr. Ji-Yoon Kim’s colleagues knows it. As Dr. Kim settles into her office as the first woman—the first woman of color, no less—to chair the English department at the fictional Pembroke University, a package awaits her. It is a nameplate for her desk which ...

Art & Design

How Charlie Brown Remained A “Good Man”

Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz went to great lengths to avoid political controversy. But as culture became more political, he navigated that challenge with skill and grace

July 21, 2021 • by Blake Scott Ball

_____ Charlie Brown had a hard time choosing sides. This was always part of the humor of his character. It was also one of the many things he hated about himself. On New Year’s Eve 1965 Charlie Brown, the star of cartoonist Charles M. Schulz’s Peanuts, decided to change: he would be decisive, clear-cut, ...

Art & Design

What Can’t be Contained

A conversation between Alexandra Délano Alonso and Macushla Robinson

May 13, 2021 • by Alexandra Délano Alonso and Macushla Robinson

_____ In March of 2020, with the pandemic devastating New York and Queens being declared the “epicenter of the epicenter” it felt impossible to find words to describe the uncertainty, the losses, the distance. Over the coming months, Alexandra Délano Alonso gathered images and fragmentary language to hold what was (and still ...

Art & Design

Thinking Design through Literature

Identity: The cultural politics of things and places

May 5, 2021 • by Susan Yelavich

_____ Where design projects possibilities, literature activates their potential and shows their effects. Brought together in Thinking Design through Literature, they form a new and wider tributary in the thought of things and places. That said, in this excerpt from the chapter on culture, readers will note that the word ‘design’ ...

Feminism

More Misandry, Please!

France Needs More Man-Haters—but Pauline Harmange doesn’t seem to be one of them

April 28, 2021 • by Hannah Leffingwell

_____ The cover of French feminist Pauline Harmange’s recent book I Hate Men (Fourth Estate, 2021, translated by Natasha Lehrer) prepares the reader for a salacious world of feminist intrigue, and a no-holds barred misandrist rant for the ages. Arranged in bold block letters over a neon yellow background, the title ...

Activism

Teaching Through the Pandemic

In a course about memorializing HIV-AIDS, students learned about community by making one

April 21, 2021 • by Dan Royles

_____ Everyone involved in education has found the past year to be a special challenge for teaching, learning, and simply making it from one day to another. But how do you teach students about a pandemic during a pandemic? In December 2020, queer historian Dan Royles interviewed Theodore (Ted) Kerr and his ...

Literature

Beverly Cleary

Past Present Podcast, Episode 272

April 6, 2021 • by Nicole Hemmer, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela and Neil J. Young

Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: At the age of 104, children’s author Beverly Cleary has died. Natalia drew on this Bulwark article about Cleary’s apolitical appeal, and Niki referred to this Atlantic essay and this Vulture piece about her grasp of children’s emotional landscape. Neil ...

Literature

The Big Cats, Part XII

On Dreams and Dreamers

March 30, 2021 • by Val Vinokur

The platelets of love clog / the arteries of sense...

Fashion

Masking and Visibility

Performing the pandemic

March 10, 2021 • by Patricia Brien

_____ In his Autumn 2019 collection, Alessandro Michele, creative director of Gucci, sent his models out on the runway covered in clothing and layers of protective gear. He also used many different forms of face coverings and masks (not mouth coverings). He was inspired by Hannah Arendt’s writings on totalitarianism and ...

Art & Design

Broom Swept

Failure tells a tale about capitalism too

March 2, 2021 • by Mark Hage

_____ What closes and then darkness, what opens and then bright?Before the horn has risen,where hides the lord of light? —Tian Wen, A Chinese Book of Origins How you frame something is a moral decision. —Babette Mangolte On Mercer Street, on the island of Manhattan, and just before the city paused, walking in a southerly direction ...

Fashion

What We Really Wear

The connection between fashion and self

January 29, 2021 • by Manou Messman

I was only 5 years old the first time I wondered about why we wear what we wear. I used to sit in a corner of our living-room so I could observe my parents and their friends. Why did they wear what they wore, and how did their clothes connect ...