Essays Archive - Page 75 of 131

Realizing The New School

A downloadable collection of essays documents lessons from the past as a university looks to its future

September 10, 2020 • by Julia Foulkes and Mark Larrimore

A century later, the experiment has become an institution, one different in almost every way from the one originally proposed. Psychology and the arts quickly redefined what “social research” could be. The Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences and the rise of fascism inspired The New School’s president to establish a ...

Education

Can We Talk About Sex? Please?

A review of Jennifer Hirsch’s and Shamus Khan’s Sexual Citizens: A Landmark Study of Sex, Power, and Assault on Campus

September 10, 2020 • by Emily Rutherford

------------- A decade ago, I was a resident adviser in a residential college at a highly selective university. My colleagues and I used to roll our eyes at the highly legalistic "affirmative consent" model of sexual education that we were asked to teach first-year students. Focused on the idea that sexual ...

Democracy

White Liberals Must Face the Truth: Donald Trump Represents all Republicans

The GOP isn’t a deranged cult. It’s a party of dangerous politics

September 10, 2020 • by John Stoehr

----------------- Ezra Klein, a prominent white liberal, is the top editor at Vox. During August’s Republican National Convention, he tweeted something I think we should address head-on. “This isn’t a political party,” Klein said. “It’s a personality cult.” There are good reasons for making such a claim. The president’s most ardent supporters exhibit traits ...

White Liberals Must Face the Truth: Donald Trump Represents all Republicans

History

When Empires Implode

Does the collapse of the Inca empire teach a lesson about the contemporary United States?

September 10, 2020 • by Stefania de Kenessey

The Inca empire has long fascinated me: young, brash and stunningly successful, this mighty South American kingdom vanished virtually overnight. Recent developments make me wonder whether the United States empire faces a similar implosion. Some of the parallels — admittedly far from perfect — are nonetheless remarkable. The Inca empire rose up ...

Capitalism

What the “Gender Reveal” Reveals

And what the party that caused California’s El Dorado fire was really all about

September 10, 2020 • by Benjamin Bernard

The El Dorado fire, one of the many currently burning on the west coast, is getting attention for its somewhat unusual cause: an explosive pyrotechnic device set off at a gender reveal party, something that might more accurately be termed a “genital and chromosome disclosure ritual.” The news reports in ...

History

Who Owns the Evidence of Slavery’s Violence?

A lawsuit against Harvard University demands the return of an ancestor’s stolen image

September 10, 2020 • by Thomas A. Foster

Imagine that a man takes photos of your loved one, without their consent, and those images are then circulated to others. Now imagine that your loved one is naked in the photos. The man is a famous scholar and the images are given to a library. The library then allows ...

Who Owns the Evidence of Slavery’s Violence?

Race

The Danger of Race Reductionism

Two prominent Black leftists warn that simplistic views about “white supremacy” will undermine the fight for social justice

September 10, 2020 • by Rogers Brubaker

At the end of May, prominent leftist political scientist Adolph Reed Jr. was slated to give an online talk cosponsored by the Philadelphia and New York City chapters of the Democratic Socialists of America. But even though Reed was a strong Bernie Sanders supporter, and happens to be Black, some ...

Literature

James Baldwin and the Fire This Time

Good trouble and the courage to hope

September 9, 2020 • by Justin A. Joyce and Dwight A. McBride

History, despite its wrenching pain, Cannot be unlived, but if faced With courage, need not be lived again. Maya Angelou, “On the Pulse of Morning” (1993) As a guide, as a seer, as a prophet – James Baldwin is a writer we need. As Baldwin said about Beauford Delaney, the Black painter who rose to prominence in the ...

Past Present

Ron Jeremy and the Adult Film Industry’s #MeToo Problem

Past Present, Episode 245

September 8, 2020 • by Nicole Hemmer, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela and Neil J. Young

Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: More than a dozen women have come forward to accuse porn actor Ron Jeremy of sexual assault.Natalia referred to historian Estelle B. Freedman’s book, Redefining Rape: Sexual Violence in the Era of Suffrage and Segregationand to Lorelei Lee’s personal essay ...

Psyche

Sex with Robots

Digisexuality and the disavowal of the human

September 3, 2020 • by Cassandra Seltman and Danielle Knafo

---------------------- How do we feel free in a body with limits? How do we withstand psychical states of excruciating ambivalence? How can we depend on others, when what we depend on is disappointing, desirous, and unpredictable? These are the questions brought into the consulting room of a psychoanalyst. Often these questions are ...

Democracy

Scotland Is Stuck

The Scottish National Party is more popular and powerful than ever – but also boxed in to a constitutional stalemate with the UK

September 3, 2020 • by Simon Jones

------------- “Stick with it Scotland,” say the billboards in Glasgow. It’s a slogan applying both to the continued need to keep wearing masks and to practice social distancing, as the country enters a phase of localised measures to restrict movement in the ongoing Covid-19 crisis after a comprehensive lockdown in spring and ...

Higher Ed

What Does a Virtual Conference Look Like?

Scholars have been grousing about the expense of annual meetings for years. The pandemic is our opportunity to imagine change

September 3, 2020 • by Sara Georgini

----------- Why do we conference? Scholarship, dialogue, and community are all good answers to that question. But as the Covid-19 pandemic remapped our lives and shuttered American institutions last spring, the Society of United States Intellectual History (S-USIH) took stock of our annual meeting plans. Suddenly, answering that question became urgent. We had set ...

Essays

Realizing The New School

A downloadable collection of essays documents lessons from the past as a university looks to its future

Can We Talk About Sex? Please?

A review of Jennifer Hirsch’s and Shamus Khan’s Sexual Citizens: A Landmark Study of Sex, Power, and Assault on Campus

White Liberals Must Face the Truth: Donald Trump Represents all Republicans

The GOP isn’t a deranged cult. It’s a party of dangerous politics

When Empires Implode

Does the collapse of the Inca empire teach a lesson about the contemporary United States?

What the “Gender Reveal” Reveals

And what the party that caused California’s El Dorado fire was really all about

Who Owns the Evidence of Slavery’s Violence?

A lawsuit against Harvard University demands the return of an ancestor’s stolen image

James Baldwin and the Fire This Time

Good trouble and the courage to hope

Ron Jeremy and the Adult Film Industry’s #MeToo Problem

Past Present, Episode 245

Sex with Robots

Digisexuality and the disavowal of the human

Scotland Is Stuck

The Scottish National Party is more popular and powerful than ever – but also boxed in to a constitutional stalemate with the UK

What Does a Virtual Conference Look Like?

Scholars have been grousing about the expense of annual meetings for years. The pandemic is our opportunity to imagine change

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