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

Episode 2.5 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

Winthrop’s remarkable sermon outside the distorting lens of contemporary American exceptionalism might just help us see that a new way forward—a way of love—is perhaps just a really old way forward.

Douglas Sikkema responds to the Genealogies of Modernity podcast

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

The affectionate, individualized family in the context of expansion and polarization may have more purchase for twenty-first-century Americans than the Jamestown or 1950s models.

Kaitlin Pontzer responds to the Genealogies of Modernity podcast

Episode 2.4 of the Genealogies of Modernity podcast is live!

This inability to stop engaging in unhealthy, excessive behavior is not unique to the current age.

Helena Vaughan on smartphones as a marker of modernity

Kierkegaard is the thinker that overcomes the systemic optimism of Hegel with meaning and morality actualized by personal commitment to truth, goodness, and beauty.

Chris L. Firestone responds to the Genealogies of Modernity podcast

If the logos of self-giving love shapes all reality, the critical or creative struggle cannot possibly keep the central or even the last word.

Eduard Fiedler responds to the Genealogies of Modernity podcast

Viewed in this way, surely one of the paradigmatic examples of “modernity talk” is the distinction between BC and AD—particularly if we pair it with the notion of a New Testament and an Old Testament.

Thomas A. Lewis responds to the Genealogies of Modernity podcast

How is mathematics a liberal art? How can being good at math translate into virtue?

An interview with Francis Su

Each month we keep track of the different paths modern life is taking and how writers are keeping up. Here are some routes we found in November on our modern life.

Episode 2.3 of the Genealogies of Modernity podcast is live!

Disenchantment talk… has the benefit of raising an alternative way of viewing reality to what has become deeply ingrained and habitual in us all.

Travis DeCook responds to the Genealogies of Modernity podcast

Humility is key to understanding modernity.

Rokhaya Dieng responds to the Genealogies of Modernity podcast

The best way to show students how the term “modernity” is wielded in this way is to highlight the variety of lifestyles that exist parallel to each other in the same era…

Gina Elia responds to the Genealogies of Modernity podcast

Episode 2.2 of the Genealogies of Modernity podcast is live!

Is there anything inherent in mountains that make our relationship to them genuine markers of change in human history?

Jake Grefenstette responds to the Genealogies of Modernity podcast