After Caravaggio -- Elegies. Room 406; Mama's shroud; Four elegies; two elegies; A letter ot John Berger; A quartet for Edward Said -- Shadows. Gossamer world : on Santu Mofokeng; An incantation for Marie Cosindas; Pictures in the aftermath; Shattered glass; What does it mean to look at this?; A crime scene at the border; Shadow cabinet : on Kerry James Marshall; Nighted color : on Lorna Simpson; The blackness of the panther; Restoring the darkness -- Coming to our senses. Experience; Epiphany; Ethics -- In a dark time. A time for refusal; Resist, refuse; Through the door; Passages north; On carrying and being carried -- Epilogue. Black paper.
""Blue in Green"is a book that is equal parts subtle intelligence and generosity of heart. In it, Chiyuma Elliott creates a unique voice that returns again and again to the question of what we expect from one another, and how that question is transformed instead into a question of what we owe each other. This notion of reversal plays out in the construction of the poems where, unlike so many of her contemporaries who come to poetry through prose techniques, Elliott's voice emerges through a complex shifting of phrase and syntax between lines or in mid-phrase. We don't, for example, get a straight-forward story of what caused the trauma of, say, cancer or abuse; rather, we hear impressions, half-formed ideas that rise and fall in the speaker's voice as it moves through the nature of the trauma, and experience the effects of the disorder that is the center of our everyday relationships through speech. Put another way: when a crisis overshadows the ordinary, disrupting the collective labor that we pursue together in love, friendship, and work, the hardship itself, in a kind of role-reversal, becomes a collaborator, necessitating new conceptions of relationships and proposing new modes of engagement, different rules of exchange. The book's forms also reflect this transformed idea of reciprocity: ekphrastic poems, normally reserved for visual artworks, instead describe modern jazz songs (including the title poem); letters and letter fragments are written to no one in particular, to the planet, to the universe; and highly allusive free verse poems defy convention with troubled, wildly variable line lengths. The phrase "When I was a wave" recurs throughout the book in unpredictable places, sometimes as a title, sometimes in the middle of a poem, each time telling a different story about expectation, intimacy, and the risk inherent in any relationship. "Blue in Green" is a graceful, tough-minded, beautifully crafted collection, full of wit and elegance"--
"The biography recounts Rosenberg's full story for the first time. Art critic for The New Yorker from 1962 until 1978, Rosenberg, together with Clement Greenberg, radically reshaped the interpretation of art in the post-World-War-II period by promoting and examining abstract expression. But Rosenberg was also a social and literary critic-writing about art was just one aspect of his work. Harold Rosenberg: A Critic's Life weaves together Rosenberg's life and literary production, cast against the dynamic intellectual and social ferment of his time. Rosenberg's mid-century linking of the New York School with the art establishment, together with his observations on the commodification of the artwork and the evisceration of the "self" in favor of celebrity (especially in his often-cited essay "The Herd of Independent Minds") make this book especially topical"--
"Ellen Schrecker shows how universities shaped the 1960s, and how the 1960s shaped them. Teach-ins and walkouts-in institutions large and small, across both the country and the political spectrum-were only the first actions that came to redefine universities as hotbeds of unrest for some and handmaidens of oppression for others. The tensions among speech, education, and institutional funding came into focus as never before-and the reverberations remain palpable today"--
A heavily illustrated history of two centuries of male beauty in British culture. Spanning the decades from the rise of photography to the age of the selfie, this book traces the complex visual and consumer cultures that shaped masculine beauty in Britain, examining the realms of advertising, health, pornography, psychology, sport, and celebrity culture. Paul R. Deslandes chronicles the shifting standards of male beauty in British culture—from the rising cult of the athlete to changing views on hairlessness—while connecting discussions of youth, fitness, and beauty to growing concerns about race, empire, and degeneracy. From earlier beauty show contestants and youth-obsessed artists, the book moves through the decades into considerations of disfigured soldiers, physique models, body-conscious gay men, and celebrities such as David Beckham and David Gandy who populate the worlds of television and social media. Deslandes calls on historians to take beauty and gendered aesthetics seriously while recasting how we think about the place of physical appearance in historical study, the intersection of different forms of high and popular culture, and what has been at stake for men in “looking good.”
Universities and the social circuitry of finance -- Our new financial oligarchy -- Bankers to the rescue : the political turn to student debt -- The top : how universities became hedge funds -- The bottom : a Wall Street takeover of for-profit colleges -- The middle : a hidden squeeze on public universities -- Reimagining (higher education) finance from below -- Methodological appendix : a comparative, qualitative, and quantitative study of elites.
"There is no one quite like Lloyd Schwartz, whose unique combination of comedy and pathos is rare in contemporary American poetry. Over the years and books, Schwartz has developed a pitch-perfect ear for dialogue, producing poems that are hilarious in their depiction of unsettling social situations, while still managing to find the kernel of poignancy buried in everyday encounters. He is a master of the speech-driven style of verse, which is based on overheard, interrupted, or invented conversations that are by turns humorous and deeply unsettling, intimate yet decorous. In the new poems section, Schwartz brings his broad experience across the arts (including his many years as a music critic and commentator) to bear, with poems that recall the feeling of both performing and apprehending a piece of music, say, or a painting, a film, or a poem; he explores the figures depicted within these artworks, their fears and desires, revealing whole unexplored, interior worlds, a universe in a pack of tarot cards. This collection, which gathers the very best of Schwartz's work over his long, distinguished career, amply displays the tenderness and delicacy of feeling that we've come to rely on in his poetry. "Who's on First?" is a fitting capstone to a long life lived in the arts"--
A thought-provoking challenge to our ideas about philanthropy, marking it as a deeply political activity that allows the wealthy to dictate more than we think. Philanthropy plays a huge role in supporting the provision of many public goods in contemporary societies. As a result, decisions that affect public outcomes and people’s diverse interests are often dependent on the preferences and judgments of the rich. Political theorist Emma Saunders-Hastings argues that philanthropy is a deeply political activity. She asks readers to look at how the power wielded by philanthropy impacts democracy and deepens political inequality by enabling the wealthy to exercise outsize influence in public life and by putting in place paternalistic relationships between donors and their intended beneficiaries. If philanthropy is to be made compatible with a democratic society of equals, it must be judged not simply on the benefits it brings but on its wider political consequences. Timely and thought-provoking, Private Virtues, Public Vices will challenge readers’ thoughts on what philanthropy is and how it truly affects us.
The story of our ongoing fascination with Homer, the man and the myth. Homer, the great poet of the Iliad and the Odyssey, is revered as a cultural icon of antiquity and a figure of lasting influence. But his identity is shrouded in questions about who he was, when he lived, and whether he was an actual person, a myth, or merely a shared idea. Rather than attempting to solve the mystery of this character, James I. Porter explores the sources of Homer’s mystique and their impact since the first recorded mentions of Homer in ancient Greece. Homer: The Very Idea considers Homer not as a man, but as a cultural invention nearly as distinctive and important as the poems attributed to him, following the cultural history of an idea and of the obsession that is reborn every time Homer is imagined. Offering novel readings of texts and objects, the book follows the very idea of Homer from his earliest mentions to his most recent imaginings in literature, criticism, philosophy, visual art, and classical archaeology.
