The academic study of literature is no longer on the verge of field collapse. It’s in the midst of it. Preliminary data suggest that hiring is at an all-time low. Entire subfields (modernism, Victorian poetry) have essentially ceased to exist. In some years, top-tier departments are failing to place a single student in a tenure-track job. Aspirants to the field have almost no professorial prospects; practitioners, especially those who advise graduate students, must face the uneasy possibility that their professional function has evaporated. – Chronicle of Higher Education
Which Version Of Equal Are We Talking About?
One goal, “equality of resources,” might be achieved by dividing the inheritance evenly, but it has the downside of failing to recognize important differences among the parties involved. Another goal, “equality of welfare,” tries to take account of those differences by means of twisty calculations. Take the first path, and you willfully ignore meaningful facts about your children. Take the second, and you risk dividing the inheritance both unevenly and incorrectly. – The New Yorker
The Problems With Translating Shakespeare Into Modern English, And How The Playwrights Who Did It Dealt With Them
Writer and dramaturg Loren Noveck was skeptical of the Play On Shakespeare project, and not because she’s a purist: “The Bard,” perhaps the paradigmatic Dead White Male, takes up so much space on stages, in season schedules, and in the minds of theatre folk that there’s not nearly enough room for newer voices dealing with contemporary issues. (Not to mention the now-abhorrent 17th-century attitudes in some of the plays.) But the playwrights tell Noveck that they were well aware of these questions, and they talk to her about their answers. – HowlRound
Paris Project Helps Refugee Artists Resume Their Practices
As reporter Jeffrey Brown visited the headquarters of the Agency of Artists in Exile, “an Ethiopian man belted out a traditional song with accompaniment from this phone. Across the hall, a Yemeni woman used her vast trail of official asylum-seeking papers, accumulated over two years of navigating France’s legal process, to create an art installation. … And a Kurdish actor who fled Turkey practiced a monologue about his first days in Paris.” (video) – PBS NewsHour
Where Is Dance Headed In The 2020s? Here Are Seven Predictions
Some of these developments are already underway (dealing with ballet’s ethnic stereotypes, more varied colors in ostensibly skin-tone dancewear, more women running companies, the tap revival), some are always to be hoped for (concentrating on health), but a couple might not be so obvious. – Dance Magazine
‘Byzantine Pompeii’ Will Be Moved To Make Room For Thessaloniki’s Subway
In 2013, construction of the new metro system for Greece’s second city uncovered, in an unusually well-preserved state, the major commercial crossroads of the town during the Byzantine era. Ever since, arguments have raged over whether to remove the ancient structures and return them after construction is complete, relocate them entirely, try to build around and through them and incorporate them into a subway station, or (expensively) re-route the entire metro line. Last month, Greece’s Central Archaeological Council made its decision, though opponents aren’t giving up just yet. – Global Voices
The Times Of London Appoints New Chief Theatre Critic
“[Clive] Davis has more than thirty years of journalism experience, and was a regular freelance writer for The Times and The Sunday Times covering music, radio, theatre, comedy, and contributing op-ed columns. His other work has appeared in The Independent, Daily Express, New Statesman and Weekly Standard.” – News UK
Four Dancers of Color Share Their Experiences at the Intersection of Dance and Identity
“Reconciling one’s dance and racial identities can be a complicated, emotional process, especially since the dance world is so slow to embrace change. But as the overdue push for diversity in dance becomes stronger, many dancers are embracing their racial and ethnic backgrounds in ways that were previously frowned upon — from wearing tights that match their skin color to rocking natural hair onstage. Dance Spirit spoke with four dancers of color about their experiences.” – Dance Spirit
How Science Fiction Is Changing How It Thinks About Environmental Change
At least from small-press publishers, we’re getting more work that looks at, not so much how do we survive the apocalypse as how do we live with nature? How do we live in this world? – Washington Post
How The Newton Brothers Got To Be Masters Of Horror Music
When they started collaborating in 2011, they didn’t plan on their composing careers revolving around the stuff of nightmares. And the work, they’ll freely admit, can exert a psychological toll. “Being in a dark room staring at dark imagery for a long time, it does get to you. Sometimes you need to step aside and go watch ‘Finding Nemo’ with your niece.” – The New York Times
Writing To Learn Versus Writing To Prove
Writing to learn, as I am imagining it, is a divergent social practice fueled by a lovely cocktail of curiosity, imagination, experience, and ignorance. For my purposes, there are two kinds of ignorance that most matter. The first kind of ignorance can be characterized as a refusal to learn. When reason, experience, scientific research, rigorous theory, and historical knowledge are not enough to educate a person to the wrongness or limitations of her ideas then this is a refusal to learn; it is a form of ignorance dependent on willful power, tribalism, and arrogance. The second kind of ignorance, by contrast, describes a state of “not knowing.” – 3 Quarks Daily
At Least There’s One Subgenre Of Climate-Change Fiction That’s Not Utterly Depressing
“This genre is called solarpunk. It attempts to radically reimagine the future, with technological solutions to environmental problems — think green cities, solar planes, recycle artists, biodegradable fashion wear. It’s a very global movement and it’s, well, hopeful!” – The Washington Post
This Actor Finally Landed The Role He’d Been Waiting His Career For — But It Was In A Language He Didn’t Speak
What’s more, he triumphed, and in a production that ran for at least a year longer than anyone expected. The actor is Steven Skybell, who talks with Laura Collins-Hughes about playing Tevye in Joel Grey’s Yiddish staging of Fiddler on the Roof. – The New York Times
All Songs Are The Product Of Other Songs (Cue The Copyright Trolls)
The idea that this might be actionable is the new twist. Every song benefits from what preceded it, whether it’s a melodic idea, a lyrical motif, a sung rhythm, a drum texture. A forensic analysis of any song would find all sorts of pre-existing DNA. A copyright troll exploits that, turning inevitable influence into ungenerous and often highly frivolous litigation. – The New York Times
National Gallery Of Australia Closes Because Of Fires
The National Gallery of Australia in Canberra closed its doors today due to worsening air quality caused by the bushfires burning across the country. The gallery’s director, Nick Mitzevich, said the decision to close was taken to help protect public, staff and the gallery collection. – The Art Newspaper
Was “Cats” Really So Bad? Guardian Critics Take A Second Look
“One tweet claimed Cats was so bad it must have been made by the dog lobby. As a lifelong cat lover, I don’t regard this film as an insult to cats. Yes, the production is over-CGI’d, but there is Rebel Wilson’s earthiness and James Corden’s comedy; both succeed in playing it for laughs.” – The Guardian
What’s At Stake If Trump Destroys Cultural Sites
Does Trump know what would be lost? Probably not – but he’s hardly the only one. The fact that the country is rarely visited by western tourists is not due to a lack of attractions. With a civilisation dating back 5,000 years, and over 20 Unesco world heritage sites, Iran’s cultural heritage is rich and unique, especially its religious architecture, which displays a mastery of geometry, abstract design and pre-industrial engineering practically unparalleled in civilisation. This is is not just Iran’s cultural heritage, it is humanity’s. – The Guardian
Proposal To Cut EU Culture Spending Goes Against Plan To Double It
The European Parliament, which shares legislative and budgetary authority with the European Council, last year agreed a €400m increase already proposed by the European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, and a doubling of Creative Europe funding to €2.8bn. – Arts Professional
A Chess Grandmaster Explains Concentration
“We ask too much of attention and not enough of concentration. The recent cultural emphasis on attention risks subsuming too many variables of human experience, as if they could ever be held constant. We have to pay attention with the body, the will, the place, the mood, the memory, the moment, the relationships, the affordances, not the least the smartphone. All these variables are implicated in our capacity to attend, but they have their own kinds of agency, too, and they play with each other in unpredictable ways.” – Aeon
‘The Four Horsemen Of Asian-American Literature’
That was Ishmael Reed’s nickname for Frank Chin, Jeffery Paul Chan, Shawn Wong, and Lawson Fusao Inada, who (on top of their own writing) put together the first major anthology of Asian-American fiction (titled Aiiieeeee!) and thereby began a canon. “The Four Horsemen had no interest in being loved,” writes Hua Hsu in this essay, “especially by white people. … When an editor asked [Chin] to tidy some grammatical errors, he called her the ‘great white bitch goddess priestess of the sacred white mouth.'” – The New Yorker