What I suggest is we have attributed intellectual deficiencies to Pollyanna as a character that she does not possess in Porter’s books because they align with our changing cultural paradigms about optimism.

LuElla D’Amico revisits an icon of childhood literature

Rosenberg reminds us that we can't assume modernity means a sundered sacrality. Rather, our discovery that we can produce the sacred means there is potentially more of it than ever before.

Lyle Enright reviews The Rise of Mass Advertising

If you give your soul to the enterprise, for the sake of your desire to live a meaningful life beyond its reach, you might be rewarded with the blessing of forgetting that such a life was ever possible.

Daniel Cunningham on the neoliberal wager

Both films concede that technology shapes the future, but the determining factor in the life of heroes and of nations still seems to be not the gun or the plane, but the person behind the trigger.

Lauren Spohn on heroes and technological determinism

Both Maverick and Skyfall encourage us to read the life of the nation in the life of the hero... When we talk about the course of the hero’s life, we’re also talking about history.

Lauren Spohn reflects on similarities between James Bond and Maverick

Our life is fuller and lovelier for variety. At one moment we might need Lizzo, at another Liszt, but ultimately both, or their like, should find their ways into our lives and into our playlists.

Jacob Martin on Richard Straus’s opera and diverse cultural experiences

Using these recipes privileges cultural memory and tradition over efficiency and precision. Thus, we participate in the ritual of cooking not as a means of scientific inquiry or perfection, but to strengthen the community ties that bring us together at the table.

Alexandrea Pérez Allison on cookbooks and modernity.