academia
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The Rumpus Interview with Karen Salyer McElmurray
Karen Salyer McElmurray talks about academia, the relationship between flaws and perfection, writing memoir, and the “tapestry” of writers who inspire her.
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Intellectual Sadism
Lisa Ruddick, at The Point, gives a state of the union address on critical theory, arguing that current trends are leading us down a dangerous, anti-empathetic, anti-individualistic road towards “cool criticism”: Academic cool is a cast of mind that disdains interpersonal…
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The Keeper of Weirdness
Our love of libraries is nothing new, but there are a particular breed of libraries less discussed—the college library. Book Riot has written a love letter to collegiate libraries and all the weirdness that lives there.
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Learning the Hard, Creative Way
In my father’s world, which still bore the markings of the class system he had fled seventeen years before, thinking that you were better than the life you had, which had actually allowed him to escape, was also a betrayal…
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Valuation Methods
In some of my fantasies, I make a pitch for art or for truth, defend them like commodities.
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The Role of the Critical Writer
For The Awl, Maria Bustillos sits down for lunch with writer Teju Cole in Bali, where Cole recently spoke at the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival. The two discuss art, colonialism, and the role of the critical writer. Regarding the latter, Cole…
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Do You Eat Pork?: Identity Politics in the Borderlands
The ethnic conflict wears me down. I am tired of being put in boxes, tired of explaining why I don’t fit. I sleep less and less.
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Taking Comfort in Futurama
I’m a comfort watcher… I retreat into the worlds I know well, with characters that are friends, with outcomes I already understand.
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Alain Bourget: A Rumpus Roundup
Associate professor Alain Bourget refused to assign his students the $180 textbook recommended by the department at the University of California at Fullerton because he found an alternative that cost half as much. Unfortunately, unlike the more expensive book, the…
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The Rumpus Interview with Sean Bernard
Sean Bernard talks about the placid, annoying heaven of his debut novel, Studies in the Hereafter, why he’s both optimistic and cynical about human nature, and the difference between writing short stories and a novel.
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The Rumpus Interview with Alice Dreger
Alice Dreger discusses her latest book, Galileo’s Middle Finger, the relationship between science and social justice, and the state of modern academia.
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The Rumpus Interview with Etgar Keret
Writer Etgar Keret talks about his new memoir The Seven Good Years, the early criticism he faced as a writer, and the surreal that is always waiting.