Language Matters

How do we teach classic literature if we cannot discuss offensive words?

Since the spring of 2016, I have taught a seminar in the New School’s MFA program on writing and literature as radical questioning. As I put the syllabus together, I sought out texts that would challenge our most basic assumptions (for instance, that a novel has a plot; an author’s work must ...
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True to the Paradox

An exhibition for the centennial of a contradiction

This essay was originally published on August 21 2019. To mark the centennial, The New School approached Anna Harsanyi and myself (we are both alumni of The New School) to curate an exhibition in the Sheila Johnson Design Center. For me, the task raised many questions, bringing me back to the ...
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The Reviews Are In

Will Durant’s The Life of Greece

Will Durant’s The Life of Greece, the second volume in the “Story of Civilization” series, was published in 1939, a grim year for “Western Civilization.” Despite -- or perhaps because -- the book was such a popular success, it was reviewed in a handful of academic journals. Two reviews of this volume ...
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Sex for Fun: Reflections From Ann Snitow’s Przegorzały Classroom 

Ann Snitow helped change the discussion around sexuality in Poland, and she also changed my life.

In 2017, I published a book about the history of sex education in Poland. To See a Moose describes how Polish sex education textbooks under state socialism and after dealt with sexuality related issues. Although in many ways progressive, these books treated sex elliptically. Instead of talking about sex, they were full ...
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The Scholarly Reach of Popular History

Will and Ariel Durant’s Story of Civilization

The full eleven volumes of The Story of Civilization, Will and Ariel Durant’s popular history of (mostly) the “Western world,” take up exactly 22” of shelf space, fitting perfectly on the top shelf of one of a couple of unfinished pine bookcases I recently bought to accommodate the spillover from my ...
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Racism, Disavowed History and White Fragility

Notes from A Public Seminar at the New School

On February 1st, 2019, a powerful daylong seminar was jointly organized by the Sandor Ferenczi Center at the New School, the Austin Riggs Center in Stockbridge, Mass., and the Psychology and the Other Conference. It was the latest gathering in an ongoing seminar (to which we would invite interested participants: ...
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Horace Kallen and the Jewish Roots of The New School

The longest-serving member of the faculty was instrumental in helping Alvin Johnson to organize the University in Exile in 1933

Kallen's name, it seemed, was indelibly connected to the New School. And yet, it was only an accident of circumstance that this was so. Horace Kallen was among the first lecturers at the New School in Spring of 1919. Probably no one was more surprised at this than he. Beginning in ...
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Horace Kallen and the Jewish Roots of The New School

Shakespeare on Helicopter Parenting

‘And so shall starve with feeding’

Minor disagreements have been overshadowed by common findings; first, helicopter parenting is hyper-present, characterized by abundant parental support but only to craft a child's behavior and public image. And second, helicopter parenting hinders the child's ability to develop an autonomous character -- the ability to make critical, life-changing decisions, more ...
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How Shakespeare Helps Us Challenge the Far-Right in Europe

His works prove that migration has always been central to European society

Shakespeare’s England was also full of migrants, many refugees from the European wars of religion. He lived near and worked with people of many different backgrounds, and maybe this is why he asked his audience to “imagine that you see the wretched strangers, their babies at their backs and their ...
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Public Shakespeare in Public Seminar

Public writing is framed as an alternative to both academic writing and creative projects

The assignment, which you’re welcome to use or adapt as you like, starts with students selecting two essays from our Public Shakespeare page. Based on their research topics, they identify three possible venues for their Public Shakespeare essays, reading some recent (non-Shakespearean) essays from these venues to get a feel for public writing. In ...
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‘Our Readers Feel We Are on Their Side’

A Q&A with InsideSchools founder Clara Hemphill

Urban Matters: Let’s start with InsideSchools. It’s immensely popular; it's web site gets more than 1.5 million annual visitors. Its individual school profiles have made it the first place many parents go for information about schools as well as about school policies and procedures. What makes InsideSchools work? Hemphill: People trust us. ...
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Accumulation by Education

White Property and Racialized Debt

A key loophole that perpetuates both legal and illegal corruption is the outsized role that varsity sports play in the admissions process, widening the path to acceptance for predominantly white athletes in lacrosse, sailing, tennis, crew, water polo, and other “white sports.” Despite the perception that Black students are the face of ...
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