The Genealogies of Modernity Journal
Petrarch's Augustinian View from Mont Ventoux
Petrarch was a founder of an alternative modernity, which emphasizes the compatibility between the ancients and medievals by adhering to the traditional prioritizing of the contemplative over the active.
Michael Krom on spiritual ascents
Titian's Icons for a Modern World
Christopher Nygren’s aim is to recast Titian’s oeuvre by focusing on a series of deeply religious paintings and to make the reader consider the artist’s career and legacy anew.
Catherine Powell-Warren reviews Titian’s Icons
On Background: From the Renaissance to Zoom
Like 15th Century portrait painters, we find ourselves amid an experimental period. It is unclear what the future will hold, whether it is standardized virtual bookshelves or targeted ads that suggest lipstick shades based on wall color.
Chloé Pelletier on the background to our Zoom backgrounds
The Housing Crisis in the Humanities
When modernity lost its modularity, it became an asset to be fought over, a territory to be controlled. Modernity became the cool neighborhood that scholars jockeyed to buy into.
Daniel Zimmerman critiques the excess of periodization
A Lawless Man
Montaigne was charting new, and uniquely modern, territory. We embrace ourselves, as ourselves, and try to learn to be ourselves, rather than striving to become something other.
Erik Dempsey reviews Pierre Manent’s Montaigne: Life Without Law
Eating Elizabethan
Food can have a transportive quality that can transcend where or when you are and take you somewhere and sometime else. However, food’s histories and transcendent qualities are never only personal.
Krystal Marsh eats her way across history