Bruno Schulz’s Poetics of Golus

On the Polish language as a medium for diasporic modernism

For many readers, Bruno Schulz‘s interwar short story collections evoke the memory of Jewish life in Poland before the Holocaust. To Karen Underhill, Schulz’s stylistically innovative writing is also a movement through transient forms—the Polish language and childhood experiences in interwar Poland—into the exegetical “margins” of Jewish tradition." Recently, Underhill ...
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Bruno Schulz’s Poetics of Golus

The Monster Became My Companion

A conversation on Cyborg Fever, the cold stream of data, and why entropy wins out

Any book worth reading will refuse to be paraphrased. So it goes with Laurie Sheck’s new hybrid novel, Cyborg Fever (Tupelo Press, 2025). Even the truncated plot summary, rich as it is—a young orphan falls into a coma when his beloved nun suddenly stops speaking to him, and in the ...
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The Monster Became My Companion

Great Engineers, Terrible Philosophers

A conversation on the rapid evolution of AI technology, the nature of intelligence, and the importance of the European project

Sam Altman has claimed that by the end of this year, OpenAI will be capable of “truly astonishing cognitive tasks.” But what exactly does “cognition” mean in the context of artificial intelligence? As the sophistication of such technologies, our dependence on them, and the rhetoric used to sell them escalates, ...
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Great Engineers, Terrible Philosophers

Can Poetry Still Unite Us?

An interview with Sarah V. Schweig on her new poetry collection The Ocean in the Next Room

For Sarah V. Schweig, writing poetry has always been a question of looking for the most truthful way to record things that had seemed otherwise inscrutable or difficult to understand. Her new collection, The Ocean in the Next Room (Milkweed Editions, 2025), peels back the noise of daily life to ...
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Can Poetry Still Unite Us?

Mining Memories for Fiction

Author Gina Chung finds herself interrogating real life through fiction—so much so that she curated a collection before realizing the stories were obsessed with the same things. She’s the author of Sea Change (Vintage Books, 2023) and most recently Green Frog (Vintage Books, 2024), the winner of the 2025 O. ...
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Mining Memories for Fiction

The Administrative State, Its Democratic Deficits, and How to Fix Them in Comparative Historical Perspective

Or, why should ordinary citizens trust unelected experts anymore?

Good evening, my name is Jim Miller. I am a professor of politics and liberal studies at the New School for Social Research, and I have organized, and will be moderating tonight’s panel with the ungainly title, on bureaucracy and its discontents. To discuss the tensions created by professing democracy as ...
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The Administrative State, Its Democratic Deficits, and How to Fix Them in Comparative Historical Perspective

Yes, Some of Our Enemies Are Feminists

A conversation with Sophie Lewis on her new book Enemy Feminisms: TERFs, Policewomen, and Girlbosses against Liberation

Sophie Lewis, feminist scholar and author of Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation (Verso, 2022), reckons with Western feminism’s problematic history in her new book Enemy Feminisms: TERFs, Policewomen, and Girlbosses Against Liberation (Haymarket Books, 2025). In a conversation with Natasha Lennard, Associate Director of the Creative ...
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Yes, Some of Our Enemies Are Feminists

If Eviction Is Personal for Us, It Should Be Personal for Our Landlords Too

A conversation on Abolish Rent

How do we remake our cities for the people who actually live in them? Tracy Rosenthal and Leonardo Vilchis, two cofounders of the largest tenants' union in the country, propose an answer in their new book, Abolish Rent: How Tenants Can End the Housing Crisis (Haymarket, 2024). In November 2024, the authors and ...
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If Eviction Is Personal for Us, It Should Be Personal for Our Landlords Too

Why Progressive “Myths” Distort Solutions to the Housing Shortage

A big deal that’s not nearly big enough: what the “city of yes” will (and won’t) do

In January 2025, Urban Matters, Center of New York City Affairs's weekly journal of ideas and opinion, wrapped up a wide-ranging two-part interview with noted urban policy expert Richard McGahey on the likely impact of New York City’s newly adopted "City of Yes" zoning package intended to jumpstart housing production. ...
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Why Progressive “Myths” Distort Solutions to the Housing Shortage

Israel’s American History

On Israel’s ambivalent relationship with the United States and OZ Frankel’s latest book, Coca-Cola, Black Panthers, and Phantom Jets: Israel in the American Orbit, 1967–1973

Historian Oz Frankel's new book, Coca-Cola, Black Panthers, and Phantom Jets: Israel in the American Orbit, 1967–1973 (Stanford University Press, 2024), examines the multifaceted and contradictory presence of the United States in Israel during a short but significant period of history. In a conversation with Claire Potter, Frankel shares the ...
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Israel’s American History

The Powerful Convergence of Past, Present, and Future in Catherine Texier’s Latest Novel

An interview about After David

An older woman and a younger man—a trope that operates on elements of fantasy and plays with conventional expectations. The dynamic between an older woman and a younger man is complex; it's looked down upon, and it never gets tiresome. In After David (ITNA Press, 2024), Catherine Texier explores these themes ...
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The Powerful Convergence of Past, Present, and Future in Catherine Texier’s Latest Novel