Burning Cities

The Natural History of Destruction examines the European bombing campaigns of WWII with provocative disregard for convention

Part of the film’s thrill is its boldness in posing these ethical questions through sound and imagery. He makes them come alive through his fictionalizing interventions into the archival material, with the extensive foley work and the assemblage of disparate material. It is, dare I say it, entertaining. Destruction is ...
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Burning Cities

The Bloody Autumn of Butcher’s Crossing

The following is an excerpt from an essay first appeared in Social Research: An International Quarterly. It is part of the journal’s summer 2022 issue, Books That Matter II. The most famous environmental book ever written in America is Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, published in 1962. But just two years before, ...
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The Bloody Autumn of Butcher’s Crossing

My Life in Wonderland

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, Lewis Carroll

My mother seemed to me, when I was a child, a combination of the Queen of Hearts and the Red Queen. She was, like the Queen of Hearts, idiosyncratic and imperious, someone with whom you could never win an argument, even when you knew you were right and she was ...
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My Life in Wonderland

James Joyce’s Ulysses at 100

An exhibition at the Morgan Library

One hundred years ago, James Joyce’s Ulysses was first published in Paris. This year, the Morgan Library in New York is celebrating with a remarkable exhibition, “One Hundred Years of James Joyce’s Ulysses,” on display until October 2.  ...

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James Joyce’s Ulysses at 100

The Best Books I Read in 2021

And why I liked them

It’s the most wonderful time of the year—buying books for other people that you want to read yourself! And on that note, here are the best ones I read last year. All links are to IndieBound to gently nudge you to buy from independent bookstores. Fiction It’s a tie between Douglas Stuart’s ...
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The Best Books I Read in 2021

Titane: Transformative Gender and Intimacy

The winner of the 2021 Palme d’Or takes us through hell and out the other side

The following review contains spoilers. My friend has a phrase she likes to use about her new dog. “I look at him from across the room,” she says, after talking to me about all the piss pads littering her apartment floor, “and I can tell he’s having bad dog thoughts.” Something ...
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<em>Titane</em>: Transformative Gender and Intimacy

Faculty TeeVee

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

_____ 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 ...
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Faculty TeeVee

More Misandry, Please!

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

_____ 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 ...
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More Misandry, Please!

Cis Lit and the Trans Writer

On Torrey Peters and the possibilities for trans girl fiction

What would happen if we took seriously the perspectives of trans people, and allowed them to potentially transform how we see the whole of gender? Detransition, Baby is a book about what cis and trans women might have to say to each other. It does allow a certain amount of cis tourism ...
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Cis Lit and the Trans Writer

Elena Ferrante Returns to Naples

A new novel delights, but reveals decay

————— The four novels in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan saga were a literary sensation when they appeared between 2011 and 2015. Now she’s back with a new novel in seven parts, The Lying Life of Adults, with a translation by Ann Goldstein. Though no less compelling than her blockbuster series, the smaller ...
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Elena Ferrante Returns to Naples