The Latest

Arts in Society

The Third Side of the Page

Mixed media from Anne Carson, Anne Michaels, and Matthea Harvey.

  • Joelle Biele
Arts in Society

What Happened to the Bird People

  • Monique Wentzel
Arts in Society

Microreview: Danniel Schoonebeek, American Barricade

  • John James
Arts in Society

Letters

  • David Sanders
Law Philosophy

“Does Torture Work?” Is an Immoral Question

It’s like asking if slavery is good economic policy.

  • Judith Levine
Arts in Society

Integrity and Despair

Alejandro González Iñárritu's Birdman.

  • Alan A. Stone

Sign up for our newsletter

Arts in Society

Microreview: Joan Naviyuk Kane, Hyperboreal

  • Suzanne Smith
Law

Prosecuting Torture Isn’t Politics, It’s Human Rights

Why do so many legal theorists think prosecuting would be undemocratic?

  • Adam Hosein
Arts in Society

Urban Fantasy

  • Denise Duhamel
Arts in Society

The Flame in the Grate

Uche Nduka's Surrealism 

  • Joyelle McSweeney
Arts in Society

Disassembling a Handgun

The technical challenge of translation.

  • Nick Admussen
Arts in Society

The Russians Came!

Soviet émigré children spent their adolescence stretched on the rack of learning cool.

  • Val Vinokur
Law

The Law Behind Torture

Justifying the necessity defense in Israel and the United States.

  • Itamar Mann
Arts in Society

Microreview: Jane Miller, Thunderbird

  • Alexandria Peary
Arts in Society

Growing Up: Badger’s Daughter Speaks

  • Adam Day
Class & Inequality

The Power of Bad Ideas

Why is free market fundamentalism so durable if it is so obviously wrong and destructive?

  • Michael McCarthy
Class & Inequality Politics Race

Slumming It

Heated response to “slum ethnography” is as old as the genre itself.

  • Claude S. Fischer
Arts in Society

Chokehold

Claudia Rankine's Embodied Rhythms

  • BK Fischer
Gender & Sexuality

Good Feminist

Should feminism join with other causes, or make its own path?

  • Vivian Gornick
Gender & Sexuality

Feminism Can Handle the Truth

What the Rolling Stone “hoax” reveals about feminism and political correctness.

  • Judith Levine
Arts in Society

Microreview: Aaron Belz, Glitter Bomb

  • Andrew Ridker
Race

Should Racism be Considered Mental Illness?

If what we today consider racism was a norm in America’s recent past and is the norm in many places around the world, how can it also be a psychopathology, an abnormal psychological condition?

  • Claude S. Fischer
Arts in Society

Goodbye to All That, the Birds Included

  • Adam Clay
Class & Inequality

Responding to Stress in the Student Brain

Living in an extremely stressful home environment has profound long-term consequences for cognitive growth.

  • Ari Comart
trending_flat
Get our newsletter

Vital reading on politics, ideas, and culture to your inbox

A political and literary forum, independent and nonprofit since 1975

Registered 501(c)(3) organization

Help Us Stay Paywall-Free

Donate

Become a Member

Subscribe