January 15, 2010

"Susan Sontag, my prose's prime mover, ate the world." — Wayne Koestenbaum

The quote from Wayne Koestenbaum comes from his essay in the recently published volume The Scandal of Susan Sontag. Tomorrow, January 16th would have been Sontag’s 77th birthday, so we thought it appropriate to highlight the book and Sontag herself....

January 14, 2010

Steven Cohen on Haiti and the Obama Administration

“This is a critical moment for the United States and the Obama administration to demonstrate that the lessons of our government’s shameful response to Katrina have truly been learned.”—Steven Cohen, “Haiti Is a Critical Test for the Obama Administration.” Steven...

January 14, 2010

Teens in Crisis

Frederic Reamer, co-author of Teens In Crisis: How the Industry Serving Struggling Teens Helps and Hurts Our Kids was tapped to be the blogger on adolescent issues for the recently aired PBS TV series This Emotional Life. The series aired...

January 13, 2010

Cixous to go!

With the recent publication of The Portable Cixous, we are re-posting an interview with Cixous in which she discusses how the concept of intellectual has been masculinized, the idea of universalism, and more (see below). For those interested in a...

January 12, 2010

Darwin & Poetry? An interview with John Holmes

The following is an interview with John Holmes the author of the recently published Darwin’s Bards: British and American Poetry in the Age of Evolution. Question: There has been a lot written and said about Darwin recently, but Darwin’s Bards...

January 11, 2010

Stephen Burt, Randall Jarrell, W. H. Auden and the best of the aughts.

Here are a couple of interesting news items relating to the always-active Stephen Burt, author of The Forms of Youth: Twentieth Century Poetry and Adolescence and the editor of Randall Jarrell on W. H. Auden, which was recently selected by...

January 8, 2010

Big Think interview with R. Glenn Hubbard

With many experts seeing the question of aid as one of the key issues of the next decade, R. Glenn Hubbard’s interview with Big Think about his new book The Aid Trap: Hard Truths About Ending Poverty is particularly timely....

January 7, 2010

Jacqueline Stevens on the ruse and sometimes illegal operations of immigration agents

Jacqueline Stevens, author of States Without Nations: Citizenship for Mortals, has been a frequent guest on various programs in connection to her recent article in The Nation exposing the detention of longtime U.S. residents in unlisted buildings by Immigration and...

January 6, 2010

There’s Nothing I Can Do When I Think of You Late at Night named to the fiction longlist for the 2010 Best Translated Book

Apologies for the long title to the blog post but the title to Cao Naiqian’s novel requires such length. The reason for the headline is thatThere’s Nothing I Can Do When I Think of You Late at Night was named...

January 5, 2010

Connecting the dots — James Walsh on the recent attempted terrorist attack

On his blog, Back Channels, James Walsh, author of The International Politics of Intelligence Sharing, examines the blame game that resulted in the aftermath of the failed terrorist attack on Christmas. While newspapers and former government officials have pointed to...

January 4, 2010

The myth of "Chindia" — An interview with Jonathan Holslag

At the end of the year, Jonathan Holslag, author of China and India: Prospects for Peace, was interviewed in the Wall Street Journal about the relationship between the two nations that many feel will be increasingly prominent in the coming...

December 31, 2009

Food traditions for New Year's

On his blog Frederick Douglass Opie, author of Hog and Hominy: Soul Food from Africa to America, looks at the history of some culinary traditions observed among African Americans on New Year’s Day and also provides some recipes! Opie explains...