The End of the Beginning by Douglas Penick
This essay marks the ending of the lavish storehouse of riches known as Berfrois...
Read MoreEd Simon: A Struggle in Edom
About a hundred years after that fateful day when the Augustinian monk Martin Luther apocryphally affixed his remonstrance to the door of Wittenberg Cathedral, and thus supposedly initiated the Reformation...
Read MoreOn the Perpetual Virginity of the Blessed Virgin Mary
In January the Franciscan University of Steubenville, Ohio, suffered a minor scandal concerning the virtue of the Mother of God.
Read MoreM. Munro: Ethics and Andrea Long Chu
Andrea Long Chu’s Females is—already—many things to many people, including, as Bryony White notes, “an exercise in logic, not what they were expecting.”..
Read MoreGriselda, Top Girls and Rethinking Feminist Subjectivity
Throughout much of my academic life as a feminist medievalist, I regarded Chaucer's Griselda as “patriarchal history’s doormat.”
Read MoreEd Simon: Still Nervous about Harold Bloom
We come to bury Harold Bloom, not to praise him. The misinterpretations, reactionary poses, and grandiose sentiments too often live after our seemingly once-omnipotent critics pass...
Read MoreM. Munro: Making It Explicit
One of Kafka’s posthumously published fragments concerns a philosopher whose sole activity, as a philosopher, consists in giving chase to a child’s toy.
Read MoreEd Simon: Breaking the Third Commandment
What exactly does it mean that the Bible has a story where the omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient Creator of the universe gets into a wrestling match...
Read MoreWondering Emma Goldman
Clare Hemmings is one of the most innovative and original voices in contemporary feminist theory. Her work cuts across disciplinary boundaries and is largely concerned with an ongoing and wide-ranging critical reflection on the production of ‘feminist theory’ as a field.
Read MoreHow to Party Like an Existentialist
Existentialism has a reputation for being angst-ridden and gloomy mostly because of its emphasis on pondering the meaninglessness of existence, but two of the best-known existentialists knew how to have fun in the face of absurdity.
Read MoreExhausting Concepts
Despite its philosophical underpinnings, Pascal Chabot’s treatise Global Burnout broadly overlaps with Petersen’s article: ‘Burnout is a disease of civilization’...
Read MoreEd Simon: On Death and Not Dying
At the eastern edge of the city of Pittsburgh, where neighborhoods lined with red and pin oak, birch and elm start to merge into the forested thicket...
Read MoreKeith Doubt: Is Ratko Mladić miserable?
When, according to Socrates, was Mladić more miserable? When he committed genocide and over a long period of time was not arrested, convicted, or punished..
Read MoreArt, documentary and the essay film
The moment when Siegfried Kracauer knew that he wanted to write of film as what he terms the ‘Discover of the Marvels of Everyday Life’...
Read MoreFor the Sake of Dreams
If existentialism did have an influence on popular social movements, how would we know? An even bigger question looms. What counts as an idea?
Read MoreEd Simon: D-Day 75 Years Later
Seventy-five years ago, and more than 150,000 men would land on the Normandy coast, arriving on very French beaches assigned the very American names of Utah and Omaha
Read MoreSans Edits
Trying to get a point across in public writing, whether established or clickbait media, with just the nuance, force, and connotations you intend, is like trying to perform a violin solo underwater...
Read MoreThe tea should be strong. For a pot holding a quart, if you are going to fill it nearly to the brim, six heaped teaspoons would be about right...
Read MoreThe thing about new blooms is that they tend to bleed— / Those petals birthed / hugging close / that come warmer weather are tricked into jumping away...
Read MoreI spent a good part of my childhood at home staring outside my bedroom window, following the trail of planes approaching the nearby Paris airport in the sky from my banlieue. I envied the passengers...
Read MoreThe tea should be strong. For a pot holding a quart, if you are going to fill it nearly to the brim, six heaped teaspoons would be about right...
Read MoreThe thing about new blooms is that they tend to bleed— / Those petals birthed / hugging close / that come warmer weather are tricked into jumping away...
Read MoreI spent a good part of my childhood at home staring outside my bedroom window, following the trail of planes approaching the nearby Paris airport in the sky from my banlieue. I envied the passengers...
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