Reviews Archives - Public Seminar

Politics

Against “Peace and Love”

A review of Hate: The Uses of a Powerful Emotion

July 6, 2026 • by L. Zhang

Following the assassination of Charlie Kirk, New York Times columnist Ezra Klein rushed to praise the far-right activist for, he wrote, “practicing politics in exactly the right way.” Klein lauded the Turning Points USA founder’s approach to civil political debate on college campuses. The column brushed over the fact that ...

Body & Mind

Gut Feeling

In Strange Biology, Charlotte Strange digs into the microbiome and lets it spill out on the page

June 29, 2026 • by Colette Estelle

“For me, the curiosity of the microbe rests on the ambivalent outcomes of its extreme connectedness,” says writer Charlotte Strange: “Its capacity to spoil, sour, and upset, and the slipperiness with which it moves through medical and colloquial speech.” In their chapbook Strange Biology (Wendy’s Subway, 2025), a collection of essays, ...

Psyche

Read a Book, Knit a Sweater, Feel Good

Attensity! A Manifesto of the Attention Liberation Movement exalts spending time offline, but is its dogma persuasive?

June 17, 2026 • by Rachel Potter

Amateurs, crafters, operators, gatherers, counter-coders, monkey-wrenchers, gamers and players, parents, epimeletes, bards and reciters, spectators and fandoms, and puzzlers: These are the 11 categories that the Friends of Attention collective use to describe the types of people reclaiming powers of concentration offline. All perform what the Friends call “attention activism,” ...

Art & Design

The Good Word According to Sister Corita Kent

On how a Catholic school teacher became a radical proponent of activist art

June 15, 2026 • by Julie Allan

Someday Is Now: The Art of Corita Kent, a monograph first published by DelMonico Books in 2013 and now reissued, after a decade out of print, provides a look back at a Catholic school art teacher’s journey to become one of the most visible activist artists of the 1960s and ...

The Good Word According to Sister Corita Kent

Politics

Capital’s Long War on Civic Society

In Hyperpolitics, Anton Jäger documents neoliberalism’s erosion of the public sphere

June 2, 2026 • by Austin Tannenbaum

I have a friend, let’s call him SJ, who is passionate about social justice. He majored in political science and keeps apace with all the latest goings on domestically and abroad. He parlays this knowledge into a dozen or so savvy Instagram stories per day on topics ranging from, to ...

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

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

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 ...

Literature

Secrecy as a Form of Extremism

In Stephanie LaCava’s new spy novel, Nymph, the twenty-first-century flaneuse plays a high-stakes game

April 6, 2026 • by Iman Sultan

With her sharp, minimalistic prose and unsparing insights into the female psyche, author Stephanie LaCava is something of a Jean Rhys for the new millennium. In her novels I Fear My Pain Interests You and The Superrationals, LaCava examines complex antiheroines navigating the culture industry, living independently in urban settings, ...

Reviews

Against “Peace and Love”

A review of Hate: The Uses of a Powerful Emotion

Gut Feeling

In Strange Biology, Charlotte Strange digs into the microbiome and lets it spill out on the page

Read a Book, Knit a Sweater, Feel Good

Attensity! A Manifesto of the Attention Liberation Movement exalts spending time offline, but is its dogma persuasive?

The Good Word According to Sister Corita Kent

On how a Catholic school teacher became a radical proponent of activist art

Capital’s Long War on Civic Society

In Hyperpolitics, Anton Jäger documents neoliberalism’s erosion of the public sphere

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

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

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

Secrecy as a Form of Extremism

In Stephanie LaCava’s new spy novel, Nymph, the twenty-first-century flaneuse plays a high-stakes game

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