LIVE! The Stonewall Uprising, Jazzercise, and C-SPAN

Past Present Episode 183

Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: Fifty years ago this month, the Stonewall Uprising took place.Neil discussed the issues historians have raised with the treatment of Stonewall in popular culture.Jazzercise turns 50 this year.C-SPAN is 40, and beloved by many. Natalia cited Niki’s article at NBC about the virtues of the channel, while ...
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Letter Two to Germany: Visiting Boston Under Trump

In March 2019, Berlin-based author Esther Dischereit observes the Academy Awards from Boston

This article was originally published in German in Deutschlandfunk Kultur on March 20, 2019. It is reprinted with the kind permission of Deutschlandfunk Kultur. --- Today I was awakened by the sound of a snow shovel. A path had been cleared below on Harvard Street, which goes past the famous Harvard Campus. Whoever ...
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A Different Way of Reading

Samuel Beckett, Melanie Klein, and the Voices of Intuition

It's not that I'd never tried before. But something had to have happened, it seems, to make it possible to read the novel -- and that something appears to have been a period of depression. The reasons were complex -- to repeat someone else's phrase, a cocktail of circumstances -- and I’m not ...
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The People’s Vote That Ended Communism

Lessons from Poland on the role of elections

On June 4th, 1989, Polish voters went to the polls to elect new members to the national legislature. The election was designed to produce a managed, incremental modification of the Communist regime’s four-decade-long rule. Only a third of seats in the lower house (the Sejm) were contested, and the newly ...
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We Broke Fallujah In Irreversible Ways

Ross Caputi on The Sacking of Fallujah

In this interview, we talk to Ross Caputi, the principal author of the book and a former Marine who participated in the second siege of Fallujah to explain the timing of the book, the military significance of the city and how it became a primary site of contemporary warfare. --- Public Seminar: ...
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A Case of Contesting Visions

Academic freedom at The New School

According to a report by Vice President Al Landa, who was called to the scene, the disruptors continued “to hoot and holler accusations and epithets” at Gideonse and were “on the verge of doing something physical.” The grad students’ account of the incident does not indicate an intention to do anything physical, but otherwise ...
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An interview with Michael J Feldman

On Ghosts in Contemporary Psychoanalysis

Ghosts in the Consulting Room: Echoes of Trauma in Psychoanalysis dives into the overwhelming and often unprocessed feelings related to mourning. The book uses clinical examples of people living in a state of marginality or ongoing melancholia. Bringing together a collection of clinical and theoretical papers, Ghosts in the Consulting ...
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An interview with Michael J Feldman

Letter One to Germany: Visiting New York City Under Trump

In February 2019, Berlin-based author Esther Dischereit observes the State of the Union from NYC

This article was originally published in German in Deutschlandfunk Kultur on February 20, 2019 and has been slightly revised. It is reprinted with the kind permission of Deutschlandfunk Kultur. --- A man on West 14th Street in Manhattan is handing out free phone cards. A small line has formed of those in ...
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Ghosts, Trauma and Travel Fever in Psychoanalysis 2

A reflection on working with the transgenerational transmission of trauma

Aaron didn’t connect hunger or continuous travel with the flight of his father’s family during the Second World War. He didn’t relate a director ordering him around now with a domineering father bossing him around as a boy without protection from a depressed mother. Cutting ties to any childhood past, ...
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Ghosts, Trauma and Travel Fever in Psychoanalysis 2

Trump, Impeachment, and the Question of Democratic Legitimacy

To allow Trump to continue to act as if he has legitimacy is simply to continue to legitimate him and his party

Trump declares boldly and angrily that he is President because he won the election; that as President he is entitled to disparage long-standing governmental norms, break the law, declare national emergencies on a whim, assault the civil rights and liberties of immigrants, minorities, and women, and treat his critics, in ...
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Ghosts, Trauma and Travel Fever in Psychoanalysis

A reflection on working with the transgenerational transmission of trauma

Ghosts in the Consulting Room: Echoes of Trauma in Psychoanalysis, published by the Relational Perspectives Book Series, delves into the overwhelming feelings related to mourning. Bringing together a collection of clinical and theoretical papers, it features accounts of the unpredictable effects of trauma that emerge within clinical work, often unexpectedly, in ways ...
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Ghosts, Trauma and Travel Fever in Psychoanalysis

When Child Welfare Intrusion Makes Reproductive Freedom an Illusion

Mothers entangled in the ACS do not fully enjoy this freedom

Among the most fundamental liberties owed to all women is reproductive freedom -- the right to plan a family and parent children without government intrusion. Mothers entangled in the child protective system do not fully enjoy this right. Every aspect of their mothering is infantilized by people claiming to serve ...
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When Child Welfare Intrusion Makes Reproductive Freedom an Illusion