[P]roponents of AI argue that as long as we are masters of ourselves, we needn’t worry that AI will master us. But as all the writers of the Romantic era knew, men are helpless when in the thrall of powers greater than themselves.

Elizabeth Stice offers a Romantic reading of AI

I wanted to capture a certain impression of everyday life, where thoughts arise and disappear, and many ideas blend together in a way that can be confusing and chaotic.

Donato Loia discusses his new book, 1095 Short Sentences

“I was right not to be afraid of any thief but myself, who will end by leaving me nothing.”

Ayman Hareez Muhammad Adib on the modern subject’s self-theft

On his journey home, Merrill adapts to the conventions of the upper-class in hopes of carving his own place within it.

Ayman Hareez Muhammad Adib on an eight-mile journey through backyard swimming pools

On Virginia Woolf’s thirty-third birthday, she and Leonard Woolf made three significant decisions over tea: they would purchase a house in Richmond, acquire a bulldog named John, and buy a printing press.

Reanna Brooks on The Hogarth Press

For all its parallels to Christ’s passion, The Old Man and the Sea is no allegory but something deeper, a tale which reveals how suffering may be spun into wisdom.

Daniel Fitzpatrick on Paschal elements in Hemingway

Though Beef does not end with a “born again” moment, it points us to the hunger for one.

Elizabeth Stice on two artistic windows into ourselves and our times

Beef draws attention to the hamster wheel of our America today.

Elizabeth Stice on two artistic windows into ourselves and our times

For more seasoned readers, these chapters also uncover the feline motifs that, like medieval marginalia, are everywhere on the edges of this history but have mostly escaped notice until now.

Caroline Hovanec reviews Marx for Cats

[Frost’s] theories of “sentence sounds” and “sound-posture” insisted that tone and spoken vocal inflection­–how words sound when we say them–should be the material of poetry, a poetic paradigm which was perfectly suited to performance.

Isabelle Stuart on the history of modern poetry recordings

There have been drastic changes in how poetry sounds to readers over the last hundred and fifty years, troubling the illusion that reading silently can offer us access to the poem as it sounded to the writer.

Isabelle Stuart on the history of modern poetry recordings

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

War, revenge, and obsession are driven by the perception of control and hopes for victory and utopia, but ultimately result in being drawn into one’s own destruction.

Sarah MacMillen delves into applications of the Golem myth

Ten years ago, when I was in college, it was fashionable to perform an ironic attitude toward the world. Millennials were dubbed the ironic generation.

Luke Foster responds to the Genealogies of Modernity podcast

If David Foster Wallace stands athwart postmodernity yelling slow down, so too does Samuel Johnson stand athwart modernity, yelling at least define your terms.

Katy Carl responds to the Genealogies of Modernity podcast

I surmise that Wallace knew that life could only be an infinite jest if it were either a divine comedy or a nihilist nightmare.

Daniel Zimmerman responds to the Genealogies of Modernity podcast

The final episode of the Genealogies of Modernity podcast is live!

Nevertheless, not all Christmas traditions are comfortable or joyful—sometimes they are painful.

Jacob Martin offers a holiday reading of Ibsen

Those in the past are not only metaphors for how we view the family as a structure today: they were people whose lives can provide some vision for our own.

LuElla D’Amico responds to the Genealogies of Modernity podcast

Carlos Bulosan’s humanist vision of freedom was articulated through his deep attention to the material conditions of Filipino life.

Colton Bernasol’s retrieval of a giant of American letters