The Arts Archives - Page 21 of 37

Literature

James Baldwin and the Fire This Time

Good trouble and the courage to hope

September 9, 2020 • by Justin A. Joyce and Dwight A. McBride

History, despite its wrenching pain, Cannot be unlived, but if faced With courage, need not be lived again. Maya Angelou, “On the Pulse of Morning” (1993) As a guide, as a seer, as a prophet – James Baldwin is a writer we need. As Baldwin said about Beauford Delaney, the Black painter who rose to prominence in the ...

Literature

How to Keep Your Soul Intact

A poetry series documents ten weeks under COVID-19

August 25, 2020 • by Val Vinokur

Over ten weeks spanning June, July, and August 2020, Val Vinokur composed a cycle of poems documenting life during the COVID-19 pandemic and published weekly at Public Seminar. Titled "The Big Cats,” the resulting series serves as a poetic diary, a kind of "Waste Land” with hyperlinks, responding to the ...

Literature

The Big Cats, Part X

On melting ice, online shopping, and dads with leaf-blowers

August 4, 2020 • by Val Vinokur

Behind the thick blue smudge there is a wall / of feds in camouflage. ...

Literature

Re-reading C. P. Snow

What the mid-century novelist and man of letters understood about being human in an uncertain world

July 30, 2020 • by Anthony Grafton

Rather like the legendary couple of whom someone, struggling to understand their mutual attraction, cracked, “Well, they are both carbon-based life forms,” these books seem pretty disparate. But all of them help me find calm at night, particularly now, when the shadows gather and the future looks even darker than ...

Film & Performing Arts

When Filming “On-Location” Is Filming “At-Home”

The pandemic has interrupted business as usual — but that might be good for your creativity

July 30, 2020 • by Dawnja Burris

But the pandemic changed that. Making a short film without being able to be on location, without a crew, and being physically distanced from subjects is exactly what many film students experienced this past spring semester when their classes were moved online because of COVID-19. Films that had been carefully ...

When Filming “On-Location” Is Filming “At-Home”

Literature

The Big Cats, Part IX

On the heat and halitosis of the State

July 28, 2020 • by Val Vinokur

This palpative uncommonwealth, a thing held / or pulled apart like a tightrope or meat off the bone....

Literature

Fifteen Years

July 23, 2020 • by Ariel Vidal

You haven’t tried.To know me.Only try to control me.You think it’s my job to cater to you? I was seven,Or around that age,When you two finally separated.I was relieved. You never deserved her.And she may not be thereAs much as I need her,But even then you haven’t earned her love.So why would ...

Fashion

Communities of Cloth and Style

Fashion, women, and collective consciousness during COVID-19

July 23, 2020 • by Hazel Clark

As fashion retail sales decrease in the United States during the recession triggered by pandemic lockdowns, “brick and mortar” stores have closed and some longstanding department stores have declared bankruptcy. We might be forgiven for wondering: Is this the end of fashion as we knew it? But such a question ...

Literature

The Big Cats, Part VIII

On the sharp edge of fragility

July 21, 2020 • by Val Vinokur

Follow your own feet uphill, fix / your gaze on the undeliverable missives / flying back to their return address...

Literature

The Big Cats, Part VII

On the elements of crisis: oxygen, hydrogen, chlorine

July 14, 2020 • by Val Vinokur

The tigers sing: We never ate your parents. So what if we ate your parents. They were no angels and neither are you....

Fashion

Psychology and Fashion

July 9, 2020 • by Carolyn Mair

Psychology is the scientific study of behavior. It is applicable, and valuable, in every context in which people are involved. Psychologists are analysts, trained to synthesize information and conduct analyses to provide deeper understanding of behavior in order to be able to predict it—and where desirable, to change it for ...