Tag: Scholarly books

With NEA under threat, arguments across the aisle are united in surprising ways.

April 10, 2017

BY ADAIR ROUNTHWAITEAssistant professor of art history at the University of Washington in Seattle From an art historian’s perspective, one of the most fascinating elements of 2017’s American political landscape has been conservatives’ defense of the National Endowment for the Arts. These statements of defense have followed the Trump administration’s budget proposal, which as is … More With NEA under threat, arguments across the aisle are united in surprising ways.

Health care and the right to be responsible.

March 1, 2017

BY SHELLEY Z. REUTERAssociate professor of sociology at Concordia University “I really should be taking better care of myself.” Who hasn’t thought that at least once in the past year? (Month? Week?) In Canada, where I live, government surveys have found in 2014, for example, that 72% of those responding thought there was something they … More Health care and the right to be responsible.

The Art of Losing

February 15, 2017

BY CAITLIN DeSILVEYAssociate professor of cultural geography at the University of Exeter. She is currently a fellow at the Centre for Advanced Study in Olso, Norway. ‘The art of losing’s not too hard to master,’ wrote Elizabeth Bishop, ‘though it may look… like disaster’. Mastering the art of losing—now there’s a project for the 21st … More The Art of Losing

There’s strength in a politics of imperfection.

February 3, 2017

BY ALEXIS SHOTWELLAssociate professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and the Department of Philosophy at Carleton University A politics of imperfection, a politics of responsibility. Lately it seems like every day brings a new bad thing for anyone not invested in white supremacy and capitalism. As the tweet went: “First they came for … More There’s strength in a politics of imperfection.

Save Us.

January 5, 2017

BY REBEKAH SHELDONAuthor of The Child to Come “Maybe it would be better not to survive.” That’s my favorite line from The Child to Come though I didn’t write it. It is spoken by Camilla Del Ray, a military woman and computer specialist from Marion Zimmer Bradley’s accidental colonization novel Darkover Landfall (1972), after learning … More Save Us.

Enclosure-based rhetoric and fundamentals behind the school-to-prison pipeline

November 16, 2016

BY DAMIEN SOJOYNERAssistant professor of anthropology, University of California, Irvine At the July 2014 Compton Unified School District (CUSD) board meeting, an ordinance was passed that paved the way for CUSD police officers to carry AR-15 semi-automatic rifles on school campuses. For those unfamiliar with the AR-15, it is a military-grade assault weapon that produces … More Enclosure-based rhetoric and fundamentals behind the school-to-prison pipeline

Fuel vs. energy: A new narrative, from A to Z

November 4, 2016

Karen Pinkus is author of Fuel: A Speculative Dictionary, which is an idiosyncratic, speculative dictionary of fuels, real and imagined, historical and futuristic, hopeless and utopian. From “Air” to “Zyklon B,” entries in this unusual dictionary include Algae, Clathrates, Dilithium, Fleece, Goats, Theology, Whale Oil, and many, many more. This dictionary can help scramble our … More Fuel vs. energy: A new narrative, from A to Z

Climate change, carbon-heavy masculinity, and the politics of exposure

October 27, 2016

BY STACY ALAIMOUniversity of Texas at Arlington The final weeks of the 2016 U.S. presidential election have become a lewd circus. Complex, urgent issues such as climate change have been upstaged by rude outbursts—“you’re a puppet!,”“such a nasty woman.” It is difficult to imagine these scenes could have anything at all to do with climate … More Climate change, carbon-heavy masculinity, and the politics of exposure

Nostalgia for a lost nation in diasporic Iranian memoir.

September 22, 2016

BY NIMA NAGHIBIAssociate professor of English at Ryerson University, Toronto In this first decade and a half of the twenty-first century, diasporic Iranians, many of them women, are deploying the autobiographical form to narrate their personal experiences of life in post-revolutionary Iran and in the diaspora. The explosion of life writing in North America since … More Nostalgia for a lost nation in diasporic Iranian memoir.

Turning from political extremes to new forms of collective action

August 18, 2016

BY GERDA ROELVINKSenior lecturer in the School of Social Sciences and Psychology at Western Sydney University While those from the political extremes seem to be excited and increasingly agitated about their participation in democracies across the globe, with the US and Australia being good recent examples, a larger majority of perhaps more moderate people appear … More Turning from political extremes to new forms of collective action