What Shakespeare Can Tell Us About School Shootings

In the film O, a 1999 adaptation of Othello, toxic masculinity is at the root of violence

In 1998, five shootings took place on school campuses in the United States. So far in 2018, there have been more than sixty-five. Over the last few decades, the frequency of violence in schools has increased exponentially. As a society, we have struggled to understand the nature of such violence and ...
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What Shakespeare Can Tell Us About School Shootings

The Feminine Revolution of Electronic Music

After years of male domination and overt sexism, DJs and producers grow in number and international impact

In 2015, the German artist Tujamo released the song Booty Bounce , which became one of the hits of the summer. The only sentence of the theme is Let me see that booty bounce (Let me see how that ass moves). The video clip, which is on its way to 18 million views, is three minutes of girls ...
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The Feminine Revolution of Electronic Music

Older Workers at Risk in Next Recession

November 2018 Unemployment Report for Workers Over 55

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) today reported an unemployment rate of 2.9% for November, an increase of 0.1 percentage points from October. Older workers are benefiting from a historically low unemployment rate. Now is the time to prepare for older workers' higher risks in recessions. Older workers least prepared for retirement are most likely ...
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Older Workers at Risk in Next Recession

Making Family Child Care Work For 3K

New York City is wise to invest in early education

Mayor Bill de Blasio campaigned for re-election in 2017 on a promise of instituting “3K-for-All” -- a logical extension of the popular citywide launch of universal pre-kindergarten (UPK) for 4-year-olds during his first term. At the time, neither he nor the voters may have envisioned parents dropping their 3-year-olds off ...
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Making Family Child Care Work For 3K

“Bread in those days was like gold!”

A survivor’s account of the Siege of Leningrad

The Blockade of Leningrad is a particularly dark period in modern history. Almost anyone who has family ties in the city will know someone directly affected by it. My great uncle was among those who survived the blockade – aged only six when it began. Hearing his account of events ...
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“Bread in those days was like gold!”

The Perils and Promise of Collective Memory

Reflections on Imagination and Forgetting

“We should remember with caution, even as we must proceed boldly.” This is the way I have already tried to succinctly summarize my approach to “gray memory” earlier this year. I know that memory holds great promise, as Milan Kundera once put it: “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of ...
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The Perils and Promise of Collective Memory

Roland Barthes Reports from the Sanatorium

A new collection examines how institutions infantilize society

Album: Unpublished Correspondence and Texts, recently published by Columbia University Press, provides an unparalleled look into Roland Barthes' life of letters. It presents a selection of correspondence, from his adolescence in the 1930s through the height of his career and up to the last years of his life, covering such topics as ...
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Roland Barthes Reports from the Sanatorium

Student Workers Ratify A Strong Contract

Worker organizing holds The New School to its foundational values

After more than fourteen months and 64 bargaining sessions, Student Employees at The New School -- United Automobile Workers (SENS-UAW), the union for academic student workers, has voted to ratify a contract with the New School administration. This hard-won agreement will provide substantial economic increases and important workplace protections and ...
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Student Workers Ratify A Strong Contract

What is Psychoanalysis?

An excerpt from Robert Boyers, The Fate of Ideas: Seductions, Betrayals, Appraisals

In The Fate of Ideas: Seductions, Betrayals, Appraisals, Robert Boyers reflects on his allegiances and disputes with some of the twentieth century's most transformative writers, artists, and thinkers. Centering his chapters around specific ideas, Boyers explores the process by which they fall in and out of fashion. Through encounters with authority, ...
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What is Psychoanalysis?

Racism, Thomas Farr, and the Legacies of George H. W. Bush

Bush was no Trump, but he helped pave the way for Trump

Late last week Republican Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina declared that he will vote against President Trump’s nomination of Thomas Farr to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals, effectively killing the nomination in the Senate. Scott is the first African-American from South Carolina to ever serve in the ...
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Racism, Thomas Farr, and the Legacies of George H. W. Bush

The New School’s Paradoxical Archive

How a school focused on the future has learned to love its past

If an archives is perceived to be a site of retrograde nostalgia whose purpose is to revive conservative, old ideas, then a shadow of suspicion is cast over a university archives, too. The very idea of an archives does not align, even outwardly conflicts, with The New School’s idea of itself. It’s not ...
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The New School’s Paradoxical Archive