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But I think of greater importance than a sense of commonality is one of understood difference. Fiction that respects us says, “I know you because I have not had your life.” For Lit Hub, Michael Helm writes on translation, examining Spanish-language literary fiction for moments of defamiliarization achieved through translation.
...moreFor Pictorial at Jezebel, Andrew Heisel presents a feature on Velva Darling, the “modern girl philosopher,” whose writing career sparked in the late 1920s and early 30s before she completely disappeared from the public eye.
...moreAt Ploughshares, Bryan Washington explores the lack of racial diversity in the “campus novel” genre, where the students rebelling against their educational establishments are still overwhelmingly white.
...moreFor JSTOR Daily, Chi Luu examines the long-conflicting ideas of whether writing is a form of technology or a separate dialect of its spoken form. Luu references the upcoming film Arrival and the sci-fi novella it’s based on, Ted Chiang’s The Story of Your Life, which takes a linguist’s point of view in telling its […]
...moreAt ComicsAlliance, Jon Erik Christianson interviews creator Phil Jimenez on queer representation in comics and Jimenez’s work in changing what radical queer representation means to comics audiences.
...moreAt Aeon, Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore writes on the language of “mothering” and the trans parents and activists seeking to define the work of mothering for themselves.
...moreFor The Hairpin, Ella Riley-Adams delves into the phenomenon of the wedding hashtag, and the ways we control and shape the narrative around crucial life milestones.
...moreAt Open Letters Monthly, Rohan Maitzen questions the measurement of scholarly value in academia, and suggests scholars should reevaluate the book as the be-all, end-all when it comes to informing others in their field of new developments.
...moreAt Hyperallergic, Gretta Louw reviews a new exhibit in Berlin, Contesting/Contexting SPORT. The transdisciplinary exhibit seeks to address the gross fallacy that professional sports can be removed from the politics of race, gender, and policed bodies.
...moreAt The Awl, Jo Livingstone discusses the divide between academic and popular writing. In this first installment of a two-part series, she is joined by David Wolf, the commissioning editor of the Guardian’s Long Read section, who offers the editor’s perspective on the aims of each style.
...moreI wonder about this in terms of genre. Just as I don’t want to identify as non-binary, regardless of the potential room for accuracy, I don’t want to identify as a “writer of neither genres.” But how much does want matter when perception is what labels us in the mainstream? Rachel Charlene Lewis writes for […]
...moreFor JSTOR Daily, Matt Langione reviews the current state of artificial intelligence, and the strides AI technology must make to fully complement human thought and experience. The latest step, Langione notes, is the news that Google began improving its “natural language algorithms” with the text of romance novels, which opens the question of what kind […]
...moreJessica Miller writes for Catapult on hair during World War II, using the practical reality of people’s hair to glimpse into war’s ordinary life and extraordinary horrors.
...moreAt Book Riot, Kelly Jensen discusses the scarcity of quitters in YA novels, and quitters’ importance in showing readers the accomplishment of self-preservation.
...moreIs it because rather than keeping us almost entirely out of the empty room, as Lee did, Ocean chose to let us in through hints and ephemera? And more broadly, what are we owed by an artist whom we profess to love? For the Atlantic, Eve L. Ewing examines the careers and output of Harper Lee […]
...moreJohn McWhorter writes for Aeon about the evolution of euphemisms, one of the functions in a language that evolves quicker than any other.
...moreTim Falconer writes for Hazlitt on the psychological importance of failure: When you do what you’re good at exclusively, avoiding what you are bad at, you live in an evaluative world, one that’s full of judgement…. The danger is this becomes an inauthentic world, one that you don’t engage in for its own sake and […]
...moreAt Lit Hub, Christina Farella examines the exchange of cultural ideas that comes with translation, using Helen DeWitt’s novel The Last Samurai as an example of books enriched by engaging with other languages in the English text itself.
...moreGabrielle Emanuel writes for NPR’s Education section on the history of math education. Emanuel explores how basic mathematics were kept from becoming the common knowledge they are today, due to the influence of centuries-old taboos around money and commerce.
...moreIn the first of a two-part series at the Public Domain Review, Lily Ford uses 18th century illustrations and drawings from balloonists to capture the changes in science and society brought by the first people to see the world from the sky.
...moreFor Hyperallergic, Allison Meier covers design ideas for nuclear waste warning signs, with scientists and artists around the world attempting to design warning signs that would deter humans 10,000 (or even 100,000) years in the future from digging up our buried nuclear waste.
...moreFor JSTOR Daily, linguist Chi Luu looks at the “my next band name” meme to identify not just trends in pairing interesting words, but also the social phenomenon of how we understand what words mean.
...moreFor Notches, Kristy L. Slominski writes about the Reverend Anna Garlin Spencer, an early 20th century Unitarian minister who worked with scientists to educate the public on sexual health. Spencer’s efforts greatly influenced the modern connection between sexuality, sexual behavior, and the family structure.
...moreIn an excerpt from the introduction to their new book The Big Book of Science Fiction, Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer explore what they identify as the three strains of science fiction (via the works of Mary Shelley, Jules Verne, and H. G. Wells) and what these categorizations say about our understanding of writing on the future.
...moreAllison Meier writes for Hyperallergic on the hand-drawn, recently digitized data visualizations produced by W. E. B. DuBois (in collaboration with others) to demonstrate the size and scope of black life in America at the turn of the 20th century. These sociological charts cover population percentages, property ownership, chosen fields of study and professions by […]
...moreAt Lit Hub, Adrian Van Young examines the quiet re-emergence in literature of Spiritualism, a mid-19th century industry that saw mourners and mediums attempt to transcend (or dupe) the boundaries between the living and the dead.
...morewhen I worked for him I understood what kind of architect I wanted to be. He’s a very humane and generous person, and I understood that I didn’t want to do commercial architecture. I wanted to do projects that have a soul and a history, and even if they are new, they have an innovative […]
...moreJ. Courtney Sullivan revisits The Baby-Sitters Club for Lenny Letter to discover its long-lasting popularity, as well as the Stoneybrook girls’ adaptation into the 21st century.
...moreFor Pacific Standard, Ed Cara explores the malleability of memory and the very real and frequent occurrence of false memories, via new work by criminal psychologist and memory scientist Dr. Julia Shaw.
...moreRufi Thorpe writes for Vela on the responsibilities of writing and motherhood, and the transformation of a woman writer into an “art monster”: But any soldier will tell you that much of the Army is similarly boring and routine. Yet we do not ask a war poet, Do you ever worry your work will become […]
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