• Colloquy

    The Right to the Creative City

    by Michael B. Kahan, Peggy Phelan
    In 2002, Richard Florida, an urban studies scholar then at Carnegie Mellon University, published The Rise of the Creative Class, which became a surprise best-seller. In 2005, he followed... more
  • Dibur Article

    Modernist Networks and the Concept of the Periphery: Introduction

    by Melih Levi, Vered K. Shemtov
    Critical attempts to study modernity and modernism beyond the hegemonic order established in its Western iterations have proliferated exponentially over the last few decades. In a world where established canons of modernism still make it difficult, rather ironically, to live up to the ambition to “make it new,” the concept of the periphery remains important. more
  • Dibur Article

    Periphery or Center? Ukrainian Modernism in Kyiv

    by Irena R. Makaryk
    Contesting the use of the geospatial concepts of “periphery” and “center,” this essay argues that a mathematical metaphor, the Möbius strip, better expresses the continuously morphing, interrelated, dynamic mesh that we call modernism. One of the major but still understudied nodes on this strip was Kyiv (Russian: Kiev). Flourishing between 1905 and the early 1930s, modernism in Kyiv was distinctive by virtue of its historical-political circumstances and by its rapid acceptance, vitality, and astonishing efflorescence. more
  • Blog Post

    "Parentheses" (and quotations)

    by William Flesch
    Geoffrey Nunberg (somewhere) makes the point that parentheses and quotations follow similar typographical, and, you could say syntactic rules: If you open a parentheses (with a lunula) you have to... more
  • Dibur Article

    The Shape-Shifting Margin: Patterns of Change in Arabic Modernism Past Beirut

    by Daniel Behar
    This essay presents an initial foray into the rich field of modern Arabic poetry after the canonization phase of modernism in midcentury Beirut. The chosen case studies cover major orientations in forms of second-wave modernism that swept across poetic writing in the last quarter of the twentieth century. By consciously forming fissures, Arab peripheries propose a reintegration of poetic modernity into a more historically grounded, inclusive, and synchronized project. more
  • Colloquy

    Comparing Literatures: Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Turkish, Urdu

    by Alexander Key
    Comparative Literature has spent the last few decades expanding its focus beyond Europe and the Anglophone Americas. But has it succeeded? Departments around the world include scholars working on Hebrew, Persian, Arabic, and to a lesser extent Turkish, Urdu, and other non-European languages. But the desire for coverage remains a chimera, always tempting with the prospect of inclusion: "if only we had somebody who did…" What would success, even if we subscribed to such teleology, look like? more
  • Essay

    Morrison’s Things: Between History and Memory

    by Kinohi Nishikawa
    Toni Morrison began to formulate her engagement with the black past early in her career, in a project for which she served as editor and makeshift curator of objects. In 1974 Random House brought out a book that Morrison had spent 18 months assembling with four collectors of black memorabilia: a 200-page, oversized compendium that conveys the story of African and African-descended people in the New World. more

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Decolonizing Money Through Deana Lawson's “Portal”
by Scott Ferguson
We owe others our language, our history, our art, our survival, our neighborhood, our relationships, … our ability to defy social conventions as well as support these conventions. All of this we...
Race on Campus and the Tale of Two Libraries: Briscoe and Benson at UT-Austin
by Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra
A few months ago, I visited Dr. Melissa Guy, the Benson Librarian. I wanted to chat with her about my vision of the Benson’s Centennial ( see my letter published in NEP ). After listening to me, Dr...
“Suddenly and Deliberately”: What Campus Evacuations during Japanese American Concentration Can Teach Us about Digital Humanities and Remote Learning
by Rhae Lynn Barnes
At the time of Pearl Harbor, during December 1941, around 700 Japanese Americans were enrolled at the University of California, and at least thirty were at Stanford University. [1] Within weeks,...
On certainty
by William Flesch
How interesting John Milton's use of the word "certain " is.
I am Saint Wolf: Poetry Dwelling of Zurab Rtveliashvili
by Irakli Zurab Kakabadze
The Georgian poet and multimedia artist Zurab Rtveliashvili (1967-2021) represents how poetry's power to dwell confronts authoritarianism.

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