From the Editors Archives - Page 6 of 169

Announcements

Until We Meet Again

Public Seminar suspends publication until the conclusion of the part-time faculty strike at The New School

November 16, 2022 • by James Miller and Claire Potter

Public Seminar has suspended publication as of November 16, 2022, until The New School and the part-time faculty union have arrived at a new contract, allowing our part-time colleagues to return to work. We will not be accepting pitches, or answering queries, until further notice....

Capitalism

The Rat Race of Prestige and Boredom

W. David Marx on how status affects human behavior

November 9, 2022 • by Alla Anatsko and W. David Marx

The whole idea of cultural capital is knowing what objects to buy, how to arrange them, how to behave—all of these things go together. Just because you can purchase an object does not mean you can get into the group....

Interviews

The Moment I Knew I Could Not Be a Priest

John D’Emilio discusses his new memoir, Memories of a Gay Catholic Boyhood

November 8, 2022 • by John D’Emilio and Claire Potter

My three best friends in high school all went into the Jesuits after graduation. When I say they are my three best friends, the four of us ate at the same table every day for three years at school. So I had the sense that I wanted to apply to ...

The Moment I Knew I Could Not Be a Priest

Democracy

Can Art Reimagine Freedom of Speech?

Curators Carin Kuoni and Laura Raicovich discuss Studies into Darkness

November 1, 2022 • by Carin Kuoni, Laura Raicovich and Lindsey Scharold

Building up to the Trump presidency in the U.S. and, at the same time, coinciding with the rise of authoritarian regimes in democracies in Europe, Hungary, and Italy years prior to that, it seemed very important to look at the Right and its complete embrace of freedom of speech in ...

Gender

What Does It Mean to Be “Authentic”?

Skye C. Cleary chats with Luis Jaramillo about her new book on Simone de Beauvoir’s philosophy-from-life method

October 11, 2022 • by Skye C. Cleary and Luis Jaramillo

Finding your “authentic self” is often taken to mean: “Let’s turn inward and look for the blueprint that’s going to tell us what decisions we should make and that will make us happy.” But Beauvoir argued that we’re humans who are always growing, always changing....

Announcements

Live at Public Seminar: John D’Emilio

Public Seminar celebrates the publication of Memories of a Gay Catholic Boyhood

October 10, 2022 • by Public Seminar

John D’Emilio, a pioneering figure in the field of LGBTQIA+ history, will join Public Seminar Co-Executive Editor Claire Potter in a discussion of Memories of a Gay Catholic Boyhood....

Interviews

Documenting the City of Refugees

An interview with Susan Hartman on her new book about Utica’s transformation by refugees

October 4, 2022 • by Susan Hartman and Marisa Budlong

I wanted to put in perspective what these refugees had gone through, what the countries they left had gone through, what the refugee camp experience was like. So, there is this part where I talk about when they were each on the run: it is very traumatic material and this ...

Activism

Turning Art into a Political Weapon

Scholars Terri Gordon-Zolov and Eric Zolov discuss the aesthetics and significance of the Chilean estallido

September 21, 2022 • by Terri Gordon-Zolov, Eric Zolov and Jordi Mariné Jubany

Wearing protest iconography was also a way to support the movement. And it was potentially risky. You could wear a handkerchief to cover your eyes from tear gas or to make yourself more anonymous or you could wear a green scarf to support reproductive rights. ...

Interviews

Interpretations of the Past

Historian Michael D. Hattem discusses historical memory, reckoning with the creation of “American history”, and his recent book

July 25, 2022 • by Max Pierce and Michael D. Hattem

That put this question in my head: how, and when, did these British colonists, now Americans, stop thinking that the British past was their history? And how did they come to replace it with what we now call “American history”? That question then became the project’s overarching framework: reckoning with ...

Interviews

Making Poetry Fun and Daring

An interview with award-winning poet Victoria Chang

July 13, 2022 • by Victoria Chang and Nomaris García Rivera

Victoria Chang is a Chinese American poet whose writing explores themes of death and grief. In her new book The Trees Witness Everything (Copper Canyon Press, 2022) Chang explores how we experience grief over time, and how nature experiences it along with us. Informed by the pandemic, the theme of ...

Interviews

When We Tell Stories, We Know What Happened

Anthropologist Ruth Behar discusses writing across genres, making ideas accessible, and a new children’s book

July 6, 2022 • by Ruth Behar and Reeva Dani

Behar spoke with Public Seminar about writing for young readers, how people and their stories are intertwined in both fiction and anthropology, and the importance of telling stories with ethnographic accuracy....

When We Tell Stories, We Know What Happened

History

How to Become a Queer Historian

An interview with San Francisco State University scholar-activist Marc Stein

June 1, 2022 • by Claire Potter and Marc Stein

Marc Stein is Professor of History at San Francisco State University, where he teaches U.S. law, politics, sexuality, gender, race, and social movements. He’s also an old friend: we met when Marc was in graduate school and I was starting my career as a visiting professor at The University of ...