Issues of Intimacy, Distance, and Disavowal in Writing About Deana Lawson’s Work

Art historian Steven Nelson received a commission for an essay about the work of photographer Deana Lawson. But what he produced was rejected by Lawson and editors of the piece. While considering the role of art historians and critics in the contemporary art world, Nelson tells a winding story of his essay’s eventual road to publication.

Source: Hyperallergic
Published: Jun 4, 2018
Length: 16 minutes (4,064 words)

The Bullshit-Job Boom

Existentialists with agita, rejoice. We now have an anthropologist’s new book confirming that what we do means nothing. David Greaber’s Bullshit Jobs examines the current work economy and how we attribute meaning to our lives with possibly (probably?) meaningless tasks.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Jun 7, 2018
Length: 10 minutes (2,555 words)

Why African-American Doctors are Choosing to Study Medicine in Cuba

Anakwa Dwamena explores the influence of the Latin American School of Medicine, or E.L.A.M, Cuba’s international medical school, which actively recruits talented undergraduates from the United States.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Jun 6, 2018
Length: 8 minutes (2,043 words)

Returning to Terabithia

To teach her son the rewards of reading, one mother reads him a book with a very sad ending. It’s the same book her own mother quit reading her as a child, before they reached that ending. As an parent she now realized that sparing our kids sadness doesn’t them protect them from it.

Source: Witness
Published: May 1, 2018
Length: 12 minutes (3,114 words)

Body Positivity Is A Scam

“How a movement intended to lift up women really just limits their acceptable emotions. Again.”

Source: Racked
Published: Jun 5, 2018
Length: 9 minutes (2,447 words)

Don’t Eat Before Reading This

A pre-Kitchen Confidential Anthony Bourdain starts spilling the secrets of restaurant chefs.

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Apr 19, 1999
Length: 10 minutes (2,624 words)

‘I Love What Human Voices Do Together’: An Interview with Neko Case

In an interview with rock critic Will Hermes, Neko Case talks about collaboration, women warriors, women inventors, men with excellent falsettos, losing her home to a fire, and feeling lucky in “a great sea of loss.”

Source: Longreads
Published: Jun 8, 2018
Length: 15 minutes (3,994 words)

Gentrification’s Empty Victory

Since the turn of the century, local artists have wanted to revive a once-thriving arts center in an abandoned schoolhouse in the East Village. A developer who purchased the building at an auction in 1998 wants to turn it into a dormitory for college students. An influential historic society has lobbied the city to landmark the building to limit the developer’s options. Even the Latin Kings once attended a Community Board meeting to try to stop its sale in the first place (the “board sided with the gang members, but the city was unmoved”). P.S. 64 has been languishing in this legal purgatory now for two full decades. Is its shell doomed to remain vacant forever, or will someone in a position of power finally make a decision to determine its fate?

Published: Jun 1, 2018
Length: 11 minutes (2,887 words)

A New Yorker, and a Sick Person

In an excerpt from her memoir, Sick, Porochista Khakpour recalls fashioning herself after her artist aunt’s example.

Source: Longreads
Published: Jun 7, 2018
Length: 9 minutes (2,300 words)

Wrestling in Paris

A pilgrimage to the 2017 World Championships makes Andrew Kay wonder: is wrestling a metaphor for current global politics, or have global politics become increasingly wrestling-like?

Author: Andrew Kay
Source: The Point
Published: Apr 20, 2018
Length: 43 minutes (10,997 words)