Most of what we do or make, for good or ill, originates in the imagination.

Samuel Hazo on the relevance of poetry for modern life

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

Much ink has been spilled on whether Amrita Sher-Gil’s work was “modernist” or “realist,” Eastern or Western, modern or traditional.

Vaishnavi Patil offers a fresh reading of Amrita Sher-Gil

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!

I’m fascinated by the grid’s role in casta paintings in part because grid systems are so closely identified with twentieth century art as to be the hallmark of the modern art movement.

Elise Lonich Ryan responds to the Genealogies of Modernity podcast

What was once an instrument of colonial dominance has become, centuries later, a source of identity for a racial diaspora throughout Latin America and even a source of familial identity.

Nayeli Riano responds to the Genealogies of Modernity podcast

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

Jacob Martin offers a holiday reading of Ibsen

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

[Bulosan] locates the “who” of America on its margins, expanding the nation’s definition of itself to include those who have been excised from its democratic institutions and practices.

Colton Bernasol’s retrieval of a giant of American letters

Through the guise of hypotheticals and future realities, authors of the genre can critique current conditions and disseminate their ideas to a broad, sometimes international, audience.

Andrew Latham and Erica Paley on Chinese science fiction

Official efforts to promote science fiction in support of national rejuvenation have the perverse effect of encouraging a genre that is shot through with powerful anti-totalitarian tropes.

Andrew Latham and Erica Paley on Chinese science fiction

Contentment requires that one appreciate the good things in life.... We should view reality with a loving, contemplative gaze, as if we were looking at the Rowan Tree.

Xavier Symons reviews the film Living as an antidote to modern malaise

This interplay of death and eros produces a flight of words in Ulysses which signals our fundamental need to give birth to beauty—not simply in the body of another, but in eternity.

Daniel Fitzpatrick on love and death in Joyce’s writing

Del Noce supplies a crucial element lacking in the filmmaker: a transcendental perspective from which to begin the work of restoring life to society and the political community.

Matthew Scarince on The Crisis of Modernity and Francesco Rosi’s Salvatore Giuliano

Manjot Kaur’s work creates new stories for a new world and to animate humans to interact with non-humans in ways we have never imagined.

Vaishnavi Patil on artistic genealogies of mythology in South Asia and new tales for the modern world

To feel the expression of ‘Mache dich’ is to be compelled to reflect—to think in time, and to listen in time. Bach creates patterns of expectation, weaving them together, and generating further shapes.

Stephane Crayton on "St Matthew’s Passion"

‘Tongue-in-cheek’ as it may be, but it conveys a Christian soteriology: through Christ’s sacrifice, death does not have the last word; and that mercy and love should extend to all.

Victoria Costa on Sir James MacMillan’s ‘St John Passion’