Essays Archive - Page 13 of 131

Three Thousand Years of Longing—And One Hour and Forty-Eight Minutes of Regret from This Humanities Professor

The new film from George Miller doesn’t do humanities scholars any favors

October 5, 2022 • by Hannah H. Kim

The problem of Three Thousand Years of Longing isn’t just that Alithea, our unfortunate representative, is unimaginative; the plot suggests the humanities have no natural home in the twenty-first century....

Three Thousand Years of Longing—And One Hour and Forty-Eight Minutes of Regret from This Humanities Professor

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 ...

Migration

A City on Fire

Arson and neglect in 1970s Utica, New York

October 4, 2022 • by Susan Hartman

Some residents still remember the bumper sticker: “Last one out of Utica, please turn out the lights.” Absentee landlords bought houses at auction—then hired people to burn them so they could collect the insurance money. And some owners torched their own homes. “Arson rates just skyrocketed,” Chief Ingersoll said. In ...

Politics

Nonviolence, Black Power, and “the Citizens of Pompeii”: James Baldwin’s 1968

The radicalization of an unparalleled figure in American literature and African American cultural politics

October 4, 2022 • by Ed Pavlić

On the third Sunday after the march, September 15, 1963, six Black children were killed in three separate incidents—one of which was the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church—in Birmingham. That day marked the end of Baldwin’s brief career as a literary celebrity and the beginning of his radicalization, ...

Nonviolence, Black Power, and “the Citizens of Pompeii”: James Baldwin’s 1968

Politics

Giorgia Meloni and the Far Right’s Transatlantic Turn

Italy’s formerly fascist party aligns itself with American Republicans, British Conservatives, and Likud in Israel

October 3, 2022 • by Lucas Dolan

Giorgia Meloni now represents a cadre of European far-right leaders whose views are fully legible to the American Far Right. ...

Giorgia Meloni and the Far Right’s Transatlantic Turn

Europe & Central Asia

Part 5: After Ukraine

Revelations of the War in Ukraine: An anti-war activist’s personal and political reckoning

October 3, 2022 • by James Carroll

The Ukraine war has revealed, that is, that the single stoutest pillar of the current strategic “balance” is off kilter—a dangerously leaning tower, as it were, of peace....

Europe & Central Asia

Is Putin Bluffing in Ukraine?

Though many Russians are anxious about Putin’s new mobilization of citizens to fight in Ukraine, some are also preparing to survive a nuclear conflict

September 28, 2022 • by Anastasia Shteinert

Putin’s nuclear threats provoked immediate reaction among leaders of Western countries, including Ukraine. The world community is concerned about Russian tactical nuclear weapons intended for use on a battlefield. ...

Middle East & North Africa

Iran’s First Feminist Uprising

Woman! Life! Freedom!

September 28, 2022 • by Kian Tajbakhsh

This is the stirring slogan of the protests that have erupted across Iran, triggered by the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year old Kurdish Iranian woman who was visiting Tehran with her family when Iran’s morality police detained her on September 16 for showing too much hair under her hijab ...

Economy

The Wall Street Journal Resurrects Mandeville

Do poor Americans have too much?

September 27, 2022 • by David Lay Williams

According to a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed by Phil Gramm and John Early, the problem is not that the wealthiest Americans have seen their fortunes dramatically explode. It is rather that the poorest Americans have too much! ...

The Wall Street Journal Resurrects Mandeville

Religion

Why Christianity and the Fate of American Democracy Are Intertwined

An interview with intellectual historian David Hollinger

September 26, 2022 • by Claire Potter and David A. Hollinger

We're now confronted with a remarkable paradox. Our increasingly secular society is saddled with increasingly religious politics. Religion is ever-more prominent in Supreme Court decisions and in the statements that candidates for political office make. Politics are not only more religious, they are more Christian. ...

Europe & Central Asia

Part 4: Moments of Moral Reckoning after Wars End

Revelations of the War in Ukraine: An anti-war activist’s personal and political reckoning

September 26, 2022 • by James Carroll

Efforts to immediately erect guardrails around nuclear weapons, given the sorry history that followed upon their falling short, deserve to be lifted up and celebrated as examples of what can follow in the chastened aftermath of a disastrous war....

Part 4: Moments of Moral Reckoning after Wars End

Higher Ed

The Best Student Debt Forgiveness? Discharge Loans Already Paid

But to do that, the Department of Education would have to release its data

September 21, 2022 • by Susan F. Feiner

Today, in some states you can even lose your driver’s license due to unpaid student debt. Senior citizens on Social Security can have their monthly checks garnished by student loan debt collectors without a court order, an authority that is unique. Other borrowers have had wages, alimony, or IRS tax ...

Essays

Three Thousand Years of Longing—And One Hour and Forty-Eight Minutes of Regret from This Humanities Professor

The new film from George Miller doesn’t do humanities scholars any favors

Documenting the City of Refugees

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

A City on Fire

Arson and neglect in 1970s Utica, New York

Nonviolence, Black Power, and “the Citizens of Pompeii”: James Baldwin’s 1968

The radicalization of an unparalleled figure in American literature and African American cultural politics

Giorgia Meloni and the Far Right’s Transatlantic Turn

Italy’s formerly fascist party aligns itself with American Republicans, British Conservatives, and Likud in Israel

Part 5: After Ukraine

Revelations of the War in Ukraine: An anti-war activist’s personal and political reckoning

Is Putin Bluffing in Ukraine?

Though many Russians are anxious about Putin’s new mobilization of citizens to fight in Ukraine, some are also preparing to survive a nuclear conflict

Iran’s First Feminist Uprising

Woman! Life! Freedom!

The Wall Street Journal Resurrects Mandeville

Do poor Americans have too much?

Why Christianity and the Fate of American Democracy Are Intertwined

An interview with intellectual historian David Hollinger

Part 4: Moments of Moral Reckoning after Wars End

Revelations of the War in Ukraine: An anti-war activist’s personal and political reckoning

The Best Student Debt Forgiveness? Discharge Loans Already Paid

But to do that, the Department of Education would have to release its data

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