Can Students Be Traumatized By Art?

San Francisco’s “progressive” school board is embarrassing itself by choosing to destroy a WPA mural

As an article in the New York Times explained: “Arnautoff, who was born in Russia and taught at Stanford, was a Communist who embedded messages critical of the founding father in his murals. He depicted Washington, accurately, at a time when that was rarely acknowledged, as a slave owner and the leader of ...
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The Outcast State

Shakespeare’s Unlikely Connection to Black Subjectivity

Now that race is the hottest topic of discussion, Othello is everywhere, positioned as the Shakespeare on race. This past semester, while we were reading the play, there were no fewer than four different Othello adaptations nearby: Bill Rauch’s production at the American Reparatory Theater, Mehmet Ali Sanlıkol’s Othello in the Seraglio, Keith Hamilton Cobb’s American Moor, and a ...
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Learning to Hate Shakespeare

What are the implications of being engaged with Shakespeare at the expense of what could otherwise be regarded as a black or African authenticity?

Looking at Literature syllabi across former British colonies, Shakespeare has persisted to this day. The recent syllabus from the West African Examinations Council (including countries like Ghana, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone) has Othello as a compulsory text, with Shakespeare granted equal status as “Non-African Drama” and “African Drama.” Paper 3 of the ...
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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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Why Occidental College Revoked a 1929 Honorary Degree to White Supremacist Paul Popenoe

Confronting the legacy of eugenics in the United States and its ties to the founder of modern marriage counseling

In recent years, many colleges and universities have created task forces and programs to excavate their racist histories. These efforts explore their institutions’ financial ties to slavery; the racist views of some founders, faculty, and alumni; their admissions and hiring practices; and their evolving curriculum that, wittingly or unwittingly, reflected society’s white ...
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Women of Color Resisting Hegemony in the Academy

An interview with Manya C. Whitaker and Eric A. Grollman

Counternarratives from Women of Color Academics: Bravery, Vulnerability and Resistance demonstrates how to build collective co-created spaces for “speaking up, speaking against, calling out and calling in”, to make visible the experiences and voices of women of color in academia, and the struggle for infrastructures of inclusion and justice at the ...
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Women of Color Resisting Hegemony in the Academy

Undocumented in the Ivory Tower

An excerpt from “Counternarratives from Women of Color Academics”

Counternarratives from Women of Color Academics: Bravery, Vulnerability and Resistance documents the lived experiences of women of color academics who have leveraged their professional positions to challenge the status quo in their scholarship, teaching, service, activism, and leadership. By presenting reflexive work from various vantage points within and outside of the ...
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Undocumented in the Ivory Tower

No ‘Fringe’ About It: An Interview with Arte Público Press

The NBBC award-winning press on publishing Latino authors in the United States

In March 2019, The New School hosted the 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 ...
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No ‘Fringe’ About It: An Interview with Arte Público Press

Braids: a Memoir

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

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 ...
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Braids: a Memoir

Lorraine Hansberry and the Long Black Freedom Struggle

Imani Perry’s ‘Looking for Lorraine’ Review

The play A Raisin in the Sun is one of the most recognizable stage productions in the last 60 years of American history. Many Americans have encountered it -- whether on Broadway, at a local production, in film, or in a high school or college classroom. Yet, the person who wrote it, ...
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Lorraine Hansberry and the Long Black Freedom Struggle

The People’s Organizer

Mindy Thompson Fullilove on a new edition of Homeboy Came to Orange

Homeboy Came to Orange: A Story of People’s Power is Ernest’s tale of his life in organizing, written with his daughter, New School professor Mindy Thompson Fullilove. First published in 1976, a new edition of the Homeboy Came to Orange was released by New Village Press last year, and features a new foreword ...
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The People’s Organizer

The Globalization of White Supremacy

Countering the spread of South African apartheid rhetoric

In classrooms, apartheid is often depicted as the last gasp of old-school racism, a throwback to an earlier era of European imperialism that took too long to die. Sometimes it’s compared to other racist systems, such as Jim Crow in the United States or the racial hierarchy in Nazi Germany. ...
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The Globalization of White Supremacy