Under Attila’s Gaze
In the ninth instalment of ‘The So-Called Dark Ages,’ Herbert Bushman describes a Roman diplomat’s famous fifth-century journey into the heart of Hunnic territory.
Herbert Bushman
· 28 min read
Art and Culture
A collection of 716 posts
Against Agency
Attending to Shakespeare on his own terms may allow us to reclaim the erotic warmth that is latent in our human condition.
Marilyn Simon
· 8 min read
Sex and Smashed Steel
A look back at J.G. Ballard's ‘Crash’—one of the the 20th century’s greatest and most disturbingly prophetic novels.
Benjamin Kerstein
· 25 min read
Narcissism for All
Forty-five years ago, Christopher Lasch identified what has become a defining feature of modern activism—“the ever-present, neurotic need to be recognized and affirmed.”
Julia Friedman
· 10 min read
Mystic Without a Church
Werner Herzog’s new memoir provides a look back on the magisterial and occasionally maddening career of a cinematic visionary.
Jaspreet Singh Boparai
· 17 min read
Where Do Works of Art Belong?
An Artist's Response to James Kierstead’s “The Elgin Marbles: Playing for Keeps"
Megan Gafford
· 12 min read
93 Years of Shatner
A tribute to an irrepressible TV star’s ability to live long and prosper.
Kevin Mims
· 21 min read
Is G Flip A Woman?
If we siphon off all female diversity into categories like 'non-binary' we narrow the idea of what it means to be a woman.
Holly Lawford-Smith
· 7 min read
The Metamodern Shift in the Culture Wars
Metamodernism conveys the experience of living in a world in which we feel comfortable oscillating between different perspectives.
Peter Clarke
· 6 min read
An Unlikely Cinematic Triumph
Efforts to produce a worthy film adaptation of Frank Herbert’s ‘Dune’ seemed doomed to failure—until Denis Villeneuve gave us his two-part blockbuster.
Allan Stratton
· 14 min read
China, the West, and The Three-Body Problem
The themes of Liu Cixin’s trilogy undermine his protestations of loyalty to the People’s Republic.
Jason Garshfield
· 17 min read
Katie Herzog’s Plan B
In a new book, Katherine Brodsky explains how members of the ‘silenced majority’ find new audiences after enduring episodes of public mobbing.
Katherine Brodsky
· 9 min read
A Love Letter to the Theatre
An interview with Sean Mathias, the director of a daring and original new film adaptation of ‘Hamlet.’
Hannah Gal
· 12 min read
Attila Invictus
In the eighth instalment of ‘The So-Called Dark Ages,’ Herbert Bushman describes the Huns’ increasingly violent incursions into the Eastern half of the Roman Empire.
Herbert Bushman
· 19 min read
Raymond Aron and the Art of Politics
For Aron, politics is the art of living together, the art of the possible, and requires an “acute awareness” of the limitations of our power to influence reality.
Alan S. Rome
· 13 min read