The Latest

Gender & Sexuality Politics

Dispatch from Kharkiv National University

On the importance of women’s studies after the USSR collapsed, and what it helps us understand about Putin’s war on Ukraine.

Gender & Sexuality Politics

Putin’s Anti-Gay War on Ukraine

How the Kremlin weaponizes “traditional values,” portraying LGBT rights as existential threats to the nation.

Arts in Society

The Baker’s Tale

“The Earth’s skin had become a million toads.” After a town undergoes a disturbing transformation, a boy finds a solitary companion.

Politics Race

The U.S. Christians Who Pray for Putin

The mystical connection between white Southern nostalgia, the global family values movement, and Russia.

Class & Inequality

Bad Economics

How microeconomic reasoning took over the very institutions of American governance.

Arts in Society

Magritte’s Prophetic Surrealism

No other artist more perfectly anticipated the banal strangeness of life in the twenty-first century.

Arts in Society Race

West Side Story and the Tragedy of Progressive Hollywood

A “woke” remake that peddles in symbolic representation is not the film Puerto Ricans deserve.

Politics

Open Access Book: Conflict in Ukraine

Selected by The New York Times as one of the best reads for context on the current conflict, our book on the unwinding of the post–Cold War order is now available for all to read.

Politics Race

Beyond the Postsoviet

The war in Ukraine is shaped by global neoliberalism, sexism, and racism—not just Cold War dynamics.

Gender & Sexuality Politics

Hating Motherhood

Some feminists think we can improve motherhood. But what if abolishing it is the only way to alleviate its problems?

Politics

What Rule-Based International Order?

Putin’s war in Ukraine breaks the rules, but powerful states always do.

Class & Inequality Gender & Sexuality

Care Work in a Wageless World

Selma James’s work with the Wages for Housework movement shows that we ignore the labor of care at our own peril.

We’re Hiring!

Applications are currently open for two new positions, as well as our Black Voices in the Public Sphere Fellowship.

Race

Remembering Black Hawk

A history of imperial forgetting.

Gender & Sexuality

The Beginnings of Queer Citizenship

In the 1970s, gay and lesbian West Germans sought to forge political solidarity from sexual identity.

Politics

Blue Lies Matter

We need to reckon with police lies not only as a form of individual misconduct but as a matter of political speech.

Arts in Society

Edith Wharton’s Ghosts

Known mainly as a realist, the writer used the gothic form to explore the horror of being confined by gender.

Philosophy

Selling Hope

A cancer diagnosis reveals how pervasive consumerism has become, infecting even the stuff meant to heal us.

Arts in Society

The In-Between of Environmental Crisis

Two recent essay collections explore the interplay between literary genre and a rapidly changing planet.

Class & Inequality Politics

Budgeting Justice

Cities must empower historically marginalized communities to shape how public funds are spent.

Arts in Society

“Representation doesn’t just mean heroes. We need the villains as well.”

Marlon James discusses writing realistic Black characters, being inspired by African folktales, and why we don’t have to let go of the world of make-believe to tell serious stories.

Science

How Medicine Must Change for Endemic COVID-19

To meet the challenge of enduring spread in the years to come, we must prioritize primary care and community health over the profit-driven status quo.

Philosophy Politics

Just Give Me My Equality

A new book explains where egalitarianism went wrong—and what it still has to offer.

Arts in Society

From the Editors: Repair

In this new anthology of poetry, fiction, memoir, comics, and essays from renowned writers and newcomers, contributors explore whether and how we can repair from terrible ruptures.

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