Category Archives: print medium
Sudan: George Clooney, Dave Eggers, Valentino Achak Deng
March 21, 2012 Last Friday George Clooney was arrested protesting the new humanitarian violations in Sudan. The Satellite Sentinel Project, which he co-founded with John Prendergast in October 2010, collects digital images analyzed by the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and used … Continue reading
Edwidge Danticat: French, English, Creole
March 14, 2012 Her first languages were Creole and French. At 12, she spoke almost no English. At 26, her collection of short stories, Krik? Krak!, was nominated for the National Book Award. It’s mind-boggling to think of that trajectory … Continue reading
Langston Hughes, Jacob Lawrence
February 8, 2012 Langston Hughes never went to Black Mountain College, but maybe he didn’t need to. 1948-49 was emblematic. A no doubt incomplete list of what happened during those months: in June 1948, Langston Hughes moved into 20 East … Continue reading
Two-Way Street
January 18, 2012 Alex Steele never took a class from me. I don’t think I’d ever seen her around the department. But my colleague, Richard Deming, who was going to direct her senior essay, is away on a Fellowship … Continue reading
Frank Stella re-mediates Moby-Dick
December 28, 2011 The numbers speak for themselves. Begun in 1985, the Moby-Dick series is still ongoing, with one or more artworks corresponding to each of the 135 chapter titles, over 300 of them at this point. They are mostly … Continue reading
Collaboration with Chance
December 21 On our Facebook page, Edgar Garcia posted a link to Jackson Mac Low’s Words nd Ends from Ez. Ezra Pound, of course. The two poets used to be friends, but they were no longer close when Mac Low … Continue reading
Updating the Nineteenth Century
November 30, 2011 Michael Gilmore, my old colleague at Brandeis, used to teach a lecture course on nineteenth-century American literature, with 100 students every year. I used to teach one with 50 students. That seemed a very long time ago. … Continue reading