Reviews Archives - Public Seminar

Philosophy

What Is a Beagle?

In Lab Dog, Brad Bolman probes how the beagle became such a popular subject of American science and such a potent symbol of American patriotism

April 30, 2026 • by Aaron Neber

In recent months, activists against animal testing in scientific experiments have had a few moments of important success. In December, the National Defense Authorization Act included a provision that military funding will not be spent on projects that require painful research on dogs or cats (unless they are military service ...

Literature

Did You Raise Something Monstrous?

In Night Night Fawn, Jordy Rosenberg turns a mother’s opioid-fueled narration into a study of gender, nationalism, and ideological inheritance

April 21, 2026 • by Gil Bittner

Jordy Rosenberg’s new novel, Night Night Fawn (One World, 2026), is narrated by Barbara Rosenberg, a dying Manhattan mother delivering a torrent of OxyContin-fueled recollections about her life and her estranged trans child, who now goes by “J.” The names are not subtle. Rosenberg’s second novel is a radical form ...

Music

The Frivolous Mystique of Rosalía’s Lux

The critically acclaimed pop album, sung in 13 languages, uses classical compositions to its disadvantage

April 20, 2026 • by Megan Robinson

Rosalía released her fourth studio album, Lux, in November 2025. Inspired by “feminine mystique,” according to its press release, the album narrates the lives of several female mystics and saints. Rosalía worked with collaborators including Björk, Yves Tumor, and producer Noah Goldstein (from Kanye West’s Yeezus, another acclaimed God concept album), ...

Middle East & North Africa

The Political Perimeter

Francesca Albanese and the limits of international humanitarian law

April 15, 2026 • by Coleson Smith

In the wake of the Gaza War, a place in time that has become its own world-historical moment, the invocation of international law as a means of remedying Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians rings hollow. After all, did bombs not continue to fall on Gaza even after South Africa brought ...

Literature

Secrecy as a Form of Extremism

In Stephanie LaCava’s new spy novel, Nymph, the twenty-first-century flaneuse plays a high-stakes game

April 6, 2026 • by Iman Sultan

With her sharp, minimalistic prose and unsparing insights into the female psyche, author Stephanie LaCava is something of a Jean Rhys for the new millennium. In her novels I Fear My Pain Interests You and The Superrationals, LaCava examines complex antiheroines navigating the culture industry, living independently in urban settings, ...

Art & Design

The Gaza Biennale

A global exhibition shaped by Palestinian artists

March 3, 2026 • by Nate Masso

The walls of Recess, a quiet Brooklyn studio space, held more than art this winter—they held testimony. The Gaza Biennale is a global exhibition shaped by Palestinian artists working under a genocidal siege that places creative expression at the forefront of collective witnessing. Presented worldwide across decentralized partner sites, last ...

Climate & Ecology

Solar Express

In Here Comes the Sun, climate activist and author Bill McKibben experiments with the power of positive thinking

February 26, 2026 • by Shea Dean

What motivates people to work for social change—and work for it fast? In his most recent book, Here Comes the Sun (W. W. Norton & Company, 2025), the veteran climate reporter Bill McKibben tries to answer that question by presenting two truths. The first is that we are now in ...

Reviews

Untranslating Lemebel

A Last Supper of Queer Apostles refuses to domesticate the Chilean author’s queer vernacular

February 18, 2026 • by Mariana Giacobbe Goldberg

The cover of A Last Supper of Queer Apostles (Penguin Classics, 2024) features a collage centered around an edited photograph of a man dressed as a saint, crowned with a halo of syringes, each one filled with a watery red substance that looks like blood. This punk Virgin Mary impersonator ...

Literature

Brick by Brick: Richard Siken Rebuilds His Interior World

In I Do Know Some Things, the poet proposes an “encyclopedia of self”

February 13, 2026 • by Rayna Salam

“Who you are and who you think you are: They grind against each other, sand in the frosting,” poet and painter Richard Siken writes in his long-awaited third collection. I Do Know Some Things (Copper Canyon Press, 2025) continues his previous exploration of selfhood, but with a harrowing purpose. In ...

Brick by Brick: Richard Siken Rebuilds His Interior World

Literature

A Transdisciplinary Foray Into Classical Performance

Cloud Variations presents performers, chamber orchestra, and poetry in a prismatic exploration of language, translation, and mother tongue

December 18, 2025 • by Grace Dignazio

Poet and performer J. Mae Barizo’s monodrama Cloud Variations is a transdisciplinary foray interweaving poetry, chamber orchestra, visual art, and theater. The piece places Barizo’s “Cloud Pantoum,” a poem previously published in The Atlantic, in conversation with Philip Glass’s Symphony No. 3 to create a kaleidoscopic meditation on body, technology, ...

A Transdisciplinary Foray Into Classical Performance

Art & Design

Joanna Walsh’s E-Elegy

Amateurs! How We Built Internet Culture and Why It Matters offers a remembrance of posts past

December 10, 2025 • by Eva Szilardi-Tierney

Here’s a theory: The posts, tags, and profiles that constitute the internet are all works of art, produced by amateur artists. Whether or not these amateurs recognize their work’s “artiness” is irrelevant; participation on the internet requires acts of intentional creation and studied self-representation, with the express purpose of display, ...

Genocide

Palestinians in Their Own Words, Their Own Genres

A review of Gaza: The Story of a Genocide

November 14, 2025 • by Coleson Smith

With the release of Gaza: The Story of a Genocide (Verso, October 2025), editors Fatima Bhutto and Sonia Faleiro bring us a powerful addition to a lamentable literary genre: the genocide anthology. Comprising more than 20 works of poetry, art, essays, and reportage by 23 contributors—many of them Palestinian—this volume ...

Reviews

What Is a Beagle?

In Lab Dog, Brad Bolman probes how the beagle became such a popular subject of American science and such a potent symbol of American patriotism

Did You Raise Something Monstrous?

In Night Night Fawn, Jordy Rosenberg turns a mother’s opioid-fueled narration into a study of gender, nationalism, and ideological inheritance

The Frivolous Mystique of Rosalía’s Lux

The critically acclaimed pop album, sung in 13 languages, uses classical compositions to its disadvantage

The Political Perimeter

Francesca Albanese and the limits of international humanitarian law

Secrecy as a Form of Extremism

In Stephanie LaCava’s new spy novel, Nymph, the twenty-first-century flaneuse plays a high-stakes game

The Gaza Biennale

A global exhibition shaped by Palestinian artists

Solar Express

In Here Comes the Sun, climate activist and author Bill McKibben experiments with the power of positive thinking

Untranslating Lemebel

A Last Supper of Queer Apostles refuses to domesticate the Chilean author’s queer vernacular

Brick by Brick: Richard Siken Rebuilds His Interior World

In I Do Know Some Things, the poet proposes an “encyclopedia of self”

A Transdisciplinary Foray Into Classical Performance

Cloud Variations presents performers, chamber orchestra, and poetry in a prismatic exploration of language, translation, and mother tongue

Palestinians in Their Own Words, Their Own Genres

A review of Gaza: The Story of a Genocide

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