Don’t Be an Art Historian
"Bolero reminds me of something—not something I have forgotten but rather something I have never thought." Why knowing nothing about a work of art can aid appreciation.
Student Work: Criticism
In the Moment
If I like a film enough after the first watch, I think about it nonstop for weeks on end. I ponder the moments that made me shudder and gasp.
The Single Woman: From Spinster to Self-Partnered
The term 'self-partnered’ doesn’t suggest that we have to be alone, rather it softly reminds us that there is a value in being with ourselves.
The Deception of The Bird Revelation
Chappelle's casual and conversational performance style in this special has a very specific function: It gets the audience on his side.
The Radical Comedy of Fleabag and Get On Your Knees
In their groundbreaking one-woman plays, Phoebe-Waller Bridge and Jacqueline Novak prove that uncensored comedy celebrating female sexuality can find mainstream success.
Music Streaming & Monopolizing “Taste”
How does the convenience of music streaming inform our respective music tastes? And why is this alarming for both artists and fans? A meditation on how streaming influences our tastes in music, featuring songs by Prince, Ryo Kawasaki, Erykah Badu & Portishead.
A Window onto Life’s Stage
Communication through language is an inescapable performance, Nietzsche tells us, and we’re all actors in it. The precarious question of how truth gets performed is loudly answered by the central characters of Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay in Virginia Woolf’s novel "To The Lighthouse."
The Institution as a Site of Its Own Critique
On the Work of Mierle Laderman Ukeles and Christopher D’Arcangelo
The Woman Constructed
Language in Martha Rosler's "Semiotics of the Kitchen" and Mary Kelly's "Post-Partum Document"
The Mother-Son and State-Citizen Complex
Mary Kelly’s "Post-Partum Document" in Conversation with Susan Silton’s "A Potentiality Long After Its Actuality Has Become a Thing of the Past"
Special Feature: On Conceptualism
Three papers written in the spring of 2019 for the seminar “What Was Conceptualism and Why Won’t It Go Away?”