Tag Archives: Paris

James Baldwin’s friends

July 31, 2013 Well, at least they went to high school together, that accounts for it: DeWitt Clinton High School, in the north Bronx.   By the time James Baldwin and Richard Avedon brought out Nothing Personal (1964), they’d known … Continue reading

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Hemingway’s Four Wives

June 27, 2012 Hadley Richardson, Pauline Pfeiffer, Matha Gellhorn, Mary Welsh — I sometimes think of them as punctuation marks to the writing.  And yet a good chunk of world history seems written into these marriages. Hadley was in Paris … Continue reading

Posted in Americas, Caribbean literature, Cities, Cuba, Global South, Latin America, museums, Nobel Prize, Spanish, Twentieth century literature, world literature | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 12 Comments

Gertrude Stein: Pittsburgh to Paris

May 9, 2012 850 Beech Avenue, Allegheny West.   A two-story house, 5 windows on its front facade, 3 on the second floor, 2 on the first.  A modest house, middle-class, no more. I remember this, of course, from The Autobiography … Continue reading

Posted in Africa, Arts communities, Modern art, museums, Paris, twentieth century art, Twentieth century literature, Visual arts | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Black Pittsburgh

May 2, 2012 I’ve been here before, but it hit me again this time, coming into the city at night.  This has got to be one of the most beautiful cities in the world.   The river and the bridges all lit up — there are … Continue reading

Posted in Africa, African-American literature, Arabic, Arts communities, collaboration, Contemporary Art, Educational institutions, Ethnicity, Islam, jazz, Media, Music, peripheral networks, Theater, twentieth century art, Twentieth century literature, Visual arts, world literature, World religions | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 21 Comments

Question of scale

November 9, 2011 A great conference at the University of Maryland.  “Rethinking World Literature/ Other World Literatures” — this is what a lot of us claim to be doing, but probably not with the same panache, conviction, and embarrassment about … Continue reading Continue reading

Posted in Japanese poetry, Paris, scale, world literature | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 26 Comments

The Photo Collage

October 19, 2011 Chemical warfare in World War I.  FMLN of El Salvador.  The London Underground.  Kenti cloth from Ghana.  Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas in Paris. These are the images that loosely define the boundaries of the project, … Continue reading

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