Front Cover
Jessica Fuentes, detail of 2012 NYC, from the series my only homeland or la única tierra donde reside mi casa, 2018. Layered photographs on vinyl adhesive, 40 x 24 inches, Copyright © Jessica Fuentes. Courtesy of the artist.
Literary Lives
A Music of Hautboys: Plutarch, Shakespeare, Cavafy, Eliot
Plutarch’s “marvellous sweet harmony” (as North would have it) has travelled north, west and south again, over the centuries, and been transposed for ghostly oboe, then become “exquisite” music in Alexandria, “defunctive” music in Eliot’s Venice, and been heard throughout the Magna Grecia, from the Nile and then far beyond to the Avon and the Thames.
The Riddle of Why Literary Riddles Are Overlooked
William Langland included a riddle battle in the “Banquet of Conscience” section of Piers Plowman, a probable inspiration for Tolkien’s high-stakes riddle battle between Bilbo and Gollum in The Hobbit.
Resilience in the Absence of Hope
Despite Braun’s sense of hope- and aimlessness, he keeps on writing, and a new poetic role opens up in the process through the very act of writing: he becomes a seismograph of the aftershocks of the great earthquake.
“A Plot to Which There Isn’t More Than Meets the Eye, But Then There Is”
Moon is saying it’s really important for you to decide what kind of writing to pursue; there are entertainers and there are writers of literature.
Restoring Coherency to Byron
Peattie suggests that “Dieting for Byron represented a heroic endeavour, to free the spirit from the body, a battle for independence that paralleled (if it did not also reflect) his enthusiasm for other struggles for independence.”
Art Worlds
Kazuya Sakai in Texas
How did an Argentine artist, critic, translator, jazz expert, radio host, graphic designer, professor, and pioneer of geometric abstraction in Mexico come to retire in Richardson, Texas?
The Exchange of Image and Meaning: A Conversation
Marking the hours is an archetypal human occupation, and there are many religious and folkloric associations with the hour of daybreak, the threshold between darkness and light, between being in a dream and being awake.
Christian Dior and the Aesthetics of Femininity
In 1947, Christian Dior unwittingly prompted a transcontinental reappraisal of the relationships of femininity and culture: were women to be muses, icons, agents, or all three?
Reason and Follies, Majas and Bulls
Making appearances are flying dogs, people traveling in weird conveyances, all sorts of raging lunatics, defecating monks, acrobats, gluttons, murderers in the act, and phantoms dancing.
Folio
Works of art by Marilyn Waligore, Ciara Elle Bryant, Lauren Christlieb, Leslie Martinez, and Marcela Reyes.
Download a PDF copy of the folio.Note: Due to an editor’s error, the biography of Ciara Elle Bryant was omitted from the print edition of Issue 4. We apologize for the mistake.
Objects of History
Concerning Confederate Monuments
In the context of Oldenburg’s third place, these statues should not exist in the public realm specifically because of their lack of neutrality and inclusiveness.
The First Motto on United States Coins: “Liberty—Parent of Science and Industry”
Hamilton’s report of January 1791 proposed the silver dollar as the basic unit of money, the implementation of a decimal system, and placing the United States on a bimetallic standard using both gold and silver, with copper reserved for pennies and half-pennies.
Cabeza de Vaca Invents the Road Novel
From their arrival on the coast, the four surviving men of the Narváez expedition would venture deep into the North American continent itself, unequivocally the first non-Indians to do so, walking for the next eight years like the Israelites in the desert, until they’d once again reach New Spain’s capital in Mexico.
Retouching Lubitsch
The great French director Jean Renoir once said that Lubitsch was the man who invented Hollywood, and what he meant was that Lubitsch was chiefly responsible for inventing the classic Hollywood technique of “invisible” editing.
Maps of Meaning
Riding the Wave: Contemplative Studies Goes Mainstream
We see contemplative study and practice as offering students and teachers alike a set of tools to critically reflect upon and, even, to resist instrumentalism and commodification, while helping enhance the classroom environment.
The Best Books in Rastafari Studies
From Senegalese Muslim Rasta making pilgrimage to the Mouride holy city of Touba to Rasta-identifying Maori nationalists in Aotearoa, New Zealand, and from Israeli Dreads fostering philo-Zionism in Tel Aviv to Kyoto-based Zen Rastas looking to reclaim the Japanese environment, Rastas are everywhere.
The Fruits of Augustine’s Confessions
“Augustine,” Constantine explains, “is the first autobiographer to achieve a warm and intimate bond with his audience.”
Current Affairs
What Does Charlie Hebdo Have To Do With U.S. Campuses?
Charlie’s total emancipation from civilized society’s hang-ups, our complexes, the sheer and wanton self-expression of its cartoonists, had stood—briefly—as a universal banner uniting all “free” people, countered by cold and calculated murder with military-style weapons perpetrated in the name of a religion that the attackers claimed to be defending.
Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and The Uncertain Future of French Secularism
Bruckner comes to this debate with the same ideas he has always had—Enlightenment anti-religious, libertarian, liberationist.
