What Could History Have Been?

Imagining new approaches to the humanities

“What could history have been?” The question asks how events might have turned out otherwise, if only X had happened instead of Y. What if JFK hadn’t been assassinated? What if Hitler had? The official term for this kind of what-if thinking is “counterfactual history,” and it covers anything from ...

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What Could History Have Been?

Remembering Jerome Bruner

Jerome Bruner, the George Herbert Meade Professor of Psychology at the New School for Social Research from 1981 until 1991, died June 5th at the age of 100. Jerry spent his century engaged in life fully. Not only was he one of the most influential figures in psychology, ...

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Remembering Jerome Bruner

Democracy Then and Now

Elzbieta Matynia's reflections on one of the great projects of The New School for Social Research, marking the twentieth five years of the Democracy and Diversity Institute in Poland. We worked together on this even before the Institute was established, working with independent intellectuals, academics and activists in the Democracy ...
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Democracy Then and Now

Gianni Vattimo Interview

Gianni Vattimo is considered to be among the most important living European philosophers, alongside Charles Taylor, and Jürgen Habermas.  Known for his interpretation of Nietzsche's and Heidegger's philosophies, he also developed a postmodern theory he calls "weak thought," meant to question the hard objectivity of claims in religion, politics, and ...

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Gianni Vattimo Interview

The Importance of Losing ‘Virginity’

I first questioned the concept of virginity’s validity when I was eighteen. I had just watched a Laci Green video entitled ‘Let’s Lose Virginity,’ and it depicted ‘virginity’ as a harmful myth created to oppress women. Reading Simone De Beauvoir’s ‘The Second Sex,’ a text that demonstrates why the myth ...
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The Importance of Losing ‘Virginity’

Toward A Feminism Beyond The Additive Model

This post is part of the Gender and Domination Course in OOPS. It’s no secret that feminism has undergone paradigmatic and (sometimes) unfortunate changes attributed to the gestures of the neoliberal turn. Nancy Fraser critiques the desaturated concern for social and gender justice that characterizes a new neoliberal feminism -- one ...
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Toward A Feminism Beyond The Additive Model