From the Editors Archives - Page 35 of 172

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Writing Life Under Pressure

An Interview with Anna Burns

May 1, 2019 • by Aubrey Moraif

In March, The New School hosted this year’s National Book Critics Circle awards, which honor literature published in the United States in the previous year. The awards are presented in six categories -- autobiography, biography, criticism, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry -- and are the only U.S. literary awards chosen by critics themselves. Milkman is ...

Feature

The One Who Writes Books

Eric Hoffer and the Perks of Being Self-taught

May 1, 2019 • by Marius Stan

We don’t know much about Hoffer’s first decades of life, up to his forties. The only available markers came through his voice only and they were full of inconsistencies. Many biographers have had difficulties with identifying the real pre-Longshoreman Philosopher Eric Hoffer (see Tom Bethell’s Eric Hoffer, Genius—And Enigma). He had ...

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Ancestry.com, Vigilante Border Patrol Groups, and Cargo Shorts

Past Present Episode 177

April 30, 2019 • by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, Nicole Hemmer and Neil J. Young

In this episode, Neil, Niki, and Natalia discuss outrage over an Ancestry.com ad, vigilante groups policing the U.S.-Mexico border, and the controversy over cargo shorts. Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: Ancestry.com released – and quickly pulled – an advertisement depicting a romantic relationship between an African-American woman ...

Ancestry.com, Vigilante Border Patrol Groups, and Cargo Shorts

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Permanent Mystifications

The Story of Post-Conceptual Art in Slovakia

April 30, 2019 • by Max L. Feldman

Prague City Gallery’s “Probe 1: The Story of Slovak (Post)Conceptual Art” (12th December 2018 - 24th March 2019) came and went unnoticed. This is hardly surprising, despite the prime location of the museum’s 13th-century Stone Bell House site: a corner of the Old Town Square beneath the piercing spires of the Church ...

Blue Monday

On Trump’s Dangerous Words

Why We Need to Use the Word “Impeachment” Now

April 29, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

We humans are many things. One is that we are beings who understand, construct, and change our world in and through language. In the beginning there were words. The late great writer and dissident-citizen-president, Vaclav Havel, said it well in his powerful 1989 acceptance speech to the German Booksellers Association, “Words ...

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Shout-out over Armenian Genocide on 104th Anniversary

Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day is a national holiday in Armenia

April 29, 2019 • by Jo Freeman

Between 1915 and 1923, the Ottoman empire exterminated 1.5 million Armenians. The starting date is conventionally held to be April 24, 1915. Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day is a national holiday in Armenia. On that day the Armenian Embassy in Washington, D.C. holds an annual memorial. This year’s was marked by a shouting ...

Shout-out over Armenian Genocide on 104th Anniversary

Education

Centering Human Relations in Learning

Human Relations Center at the New School: a place for women to come learn and to socialize

April 29, 2019 • by Julia Foulkes

In Spring 1973, the author and women’s rights leader Betty Friedan taught a course on “Women in New York” at The New School. The eight sessions focused on the problems females faced in the city, in work and beyond, and it drew a large crowd. Enrollment consisted of 97 women ...

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Looking Through the Lens of Weegee: An Interview with Christopher Bonanos

The NBCC biography award winner on Flash: The Making of Weegee the Famous

April 28, 2019 • by Liz Sheldon

In March, The New School hosted this year’s National Book Critics Circle awards, which honor literature published in the United States in the previous year. The awards are presented in six categories -- autobiography, biography, criticism, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry -- and are the only U.S. literary awards chosen by critics themselves. Liz ...

Looking Through the Lens of Weegee: An Interview with Christopher Bonanos

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Trump and the San Diego Synagogue Shooting

The President Plays with Fire, and The Rest of Us Get Burned

April 28, 2019 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

My mind was reeling. I was writing a column about Trump’s speech to the National Rifle Association in Indianapolis when I learned of yesterday’s (Saturday) synagogue shooting in California by a white supremacist. The connection between these two events was immediate and obvious to me, as I will briefly explain in ...

Trump and the San Diego Synagogue Shooting

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A Reverence for Stories: Interview with Tommy Orange

The NBCC John Leonard Prize winner on There There

April 27, 2019 • by Alex Vara

In March, The New School hosted this year’s National Book Critics Circle awards, which honor literature published in the United States in the previous year. The awards are presented in six categories -- autobiography, biography, criticism, fiction, nonfiction, and poetry -- and are the only U.S. literary awards chosen by critics themselves. Alex ...

A Reverence for Stories: Interview with Tommy Orange

Feature

Richard Rorty: The Dark Years

The philosopher’s vision of what is dangerous and yet possible

April 26, 2019 • by Richard J. Bernstein

The passages below are selections from “Richard Rorty: The Dark Years.” Introduction No one was more acute than American philosopher Richard Rorty in echoing and epitomizing the accusations and taunts of his critics. In “Trotsky and the Wild Orchids” he tells us that conservative culture warriors characterize him “one of the relativistic, ...

Feature

Braids: a Memoir

The lessons I missed out on as a mixed kid living in a mostly white town in Central Florida

April 25, 2019 • by Jasmine Respess

I never really learned to braid. I can do a simple three strand braid, but nothing more. This is one of the lessons I missed out on as a mixed kid living in a predominantly white town. Growing up, I spent most of my time outside. By the swamp, in the ...