Volume 13
Volume 12
Volume 11
Volume 10
Volume 9
Volume 8
Volume 7
Volume 6
Volume 5
Volume 4
Volume 3
Volume 2
Volume 1
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Autumn 2018 |
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| 2016 |
Spring 2016 |
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Spring 2013 |
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| 2012 |
Winter 2012
Winter 2012, vol. 7, issue 2
Meditations on a Queer Canon
If the works of the Western canon do not answer to our "fresh sufferings," we can pitch them to the side and make our own canon.
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Winter 2012, vol. 7, issue 2
Steam and Deliver: How Canning Revolutionized, United, and Globalized Italian Culture
While canning itself proved extraordinarily revolutionary, one product in particular completely transformed the face of Italian-American cuisine: the canned tomato.
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Winter 2012, vol. 7, issue 2
What is Kosher? Three Principles in Consideration of the Partial Prohibition of Pork in Israel
In building a national narrative that is consistent with the spirit of republicanism, all that is emblematic is readily grafted onto the collective.
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Winter 2012, vol. 7, issue 2
Why Violence Will Not Die: Pakistan's Domestic Military
With little salvation to console their grievances, a manifold of locals picked up arms in resistance to the Pakistani state.
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Spring 2012
Spring 2012, vol. 7, issue 3
The Post-Modern House Style of American Verse: Ben Lerner and the Stickup Poets
How do we, as readers and authors, give ourselves over to poetry? Can we commit to it unabashedly or in any way that isn’t ironic? Can we write a poem and take credit for it?
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Spring 2012, vol. 7, issue 3
Living a Literary Paradox in Paris
I elbowed my way through crowds of tourists with the novel in hand, reading Hugo’s description and comparing it to the stone reality.
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Spring 2012, vol. 7, issue 3
The Demise of "How I Met Your Mother"
Ennui has so plainly taken hold of the show as a whole that the prospect of at least two more seasons, as CBS has intuited, is actually depressing.
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Spring 2012, vol. 7, issue 3
Untethered: Identity in Subculture and "The Mighty Boosh"
A comedic text featuring exuberant exaggeration and detached critique, "Boosh" both glorifies and lampoons notions of authenticity and coolness.
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| 2011 |
Winter 2011
Winter 2011, vol. 6, issue 2
The Mythology of Bob Dylan: A Study in Social Identity
A man of many identities, and his refusal to abide by any of them, results in tension.
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Winter 2011, vol. 6, issue 2
The Real Culture War: The Values Battle We Should Be Having
Beyond the numbers and the polls, a deeper culture of dissatisfaction with and distrust of government has been bubbling underneath the surface for quite some time.
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Winter 2011, vol. 6, issue 2
Mad Men and Race: A Critical Look
When Mad Men attempts to placate the complaints of a few aggrieved bloggers or to succumb to the pressures of political correctness, the authenticity of the show rapidly disintegrates, and more importantly, the quality of the show suffers
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Winter 2011, vol. 6, issue 2
The Search for Engrossment
Trivialities have surely begun to structure our lives in the same way that they structure novels, so that small objects and actions become significant
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Winter 2011, vol. 6, issue 2
A New Bond
It is not the character itself that has changed, but the rest of the world, and the fact that for the first time he is shaped by that world in ways outside of his control
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Spring 2011
Spring 2011, vol. 6, issue 3
A Critique of an Æsthetic Ideal
I hate cautionary tales; there isn’t always a lesson to be learned, and there especially isn’t one here. This is simply the explanation of how something has gone wrong.
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Spring 2011, vol. 6, issue 3
The Beauty of the Game: Æsthetics and the Role of Sport in Citizenship
Finding and fitting into a role on the court plays a vital part in the beauty of the game.
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Spring 2011, vol. 6, issue 3
Eyeless in Macedonia: History, Memory, and the Battle of Kleidion
This use of history to harness the past for a sense of direction in the present, both on a national and personal level, may seem foreign to the more “rational” states of North America or Western Europe.
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Spring 2011, vol. 6, issue 3
The Pendulum of American History
The disillusionment with American history emerges as part of the general disillusionment with life that comes in early adulthood.
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| 2010 |
Autumn 2010
Autumn 2010, vol. 6, issue 1
A Student Loan Crisis
So the question worth asking is, are for-profit college student loans the new subprime mortgage?
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Autumn 2010, vol. 6, issue 1
The Nature of KNowledge
One compares the value of distinct Frames not according to the degree of accurate conformation to an underlying truth but by the human predilection for ordering theworld in a practically coherent manner per the standard of the observer.
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Autumn 2010, vol. 6, issue 1
Drugs, Alcohol, and Selling Your Vote on eBay: A Brief History of Campaign Finance
In the pecuniary bloodletting that has defined campaign finance since the late 17th century, one can say that there is no winner in the end.
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Autumn 2010, vol. 6, issue 1
Language: Are We the Only Ones? An Exploration of Language-use in Animals and Homesigners
If language use makes humans unique from animals, then a definition of language should successfully qualify humans as language users and exclude animals.
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Autumn 2010, vol. 6, issue 1
The Terms of Transformation: The Chicago Housing Authority’s Plan to Change its Structures, Community, and Administration
Chicagoans are skeptical that the Plan will bring real change. Some fear the problem of urban poverty will be displaced rather than eliminated; that the high-rise ‘vertical ghettos’ will just turn into ‘horizontal ghettos.
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Autumn 2010, vol. 6, issue 1
What Do They Do? Symbolism, Musical Agency, and the Role of Orchestral Conductors
In the broadest possible terms, then, a conductor’s musical agency refers to his or her control over a musical event, and this inevitably includes controlover what many other people do in the process of executing that event.
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Autumn 2010, vol. 6, issue 1
The Quest of Translation: A Beginning Translator’s Adventure
Lorenzo Oliván’s Libro de los elementos and I had an inauspicious meeting
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Autumn 2010, vol. 6, issue 1
Libertarianism and Power
Politics that champions individual autonomy must still account for the social context of that individual.
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Winter 2010
Winter 2010, vol. 5, issue 2
The Fate of Latin American Populism
Though the appeal of populism is still robust, liberal democracy in Latin America will become stronger and more consolidated as Latin Americans' experience with it is lengthened.
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Winter 2010, vol. 5, issue 2
The Underworld of Movement
In movement communication, we relinquish the control of knowing that we are understood in order to gain the control of knowing how to respond.
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Winter 2010, vol. 5, issue 2
Myface Tweets When I Blog: I'm Having an Identity Crisis!
Perhaps the link between self-made profiles and real-life identities is so tenuous that after decades of longitudinal studies we discover that social networks are as much of a phase as adolescence itself.
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Winter 2010, vol. 5, issue 2
Tooling Around With the Western Tradition
Central not only to our conceptions but also to our culture, the phallis farce may be the one thing that holds the key to our global salvation.
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Winter 2010, vol. 5, issue 2
Rethinking Congress
The major questions facing legislatures are primarily non-political, and the complexity of those questions are so great that generalists are unfit to answer them.
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Winter 2010, vol. 5, issue 2
Infinite Gist
The compendia of Piero Scaruffi and Martin Seymour-Smith
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Spring 2010
Spring 2010, vol. 5, issue 3
Otis McDonald Had a Gun
While Justice Breyer wrote wearily of “the formidable task” that a McDonald ruling could leave
in its wake, it might be one worth undertaking if it provides a legal foundation for sensible
policymaking.
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Spring 2010, vol. 5, issue 3
The Moral Politics of Technocratism
I share with Ben Field a belief that public intellectuals and technical knowledge are invaluable
aspects of the legislative process, yet despite this sympathy, I am skeptical that a social science
exists that somehow escapes the grit of moral debate.
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Spring 2010, vol. 5, issue 3
The Death of the Episode
DVDs, Tivo, On Demand, and Youtube have revolutionized the way we watch television. The
autonomous, three-act (commercials!) half hour or six-act (commercials!) full hour shows have been
supplanted by a spectrum of new forms. The older way of making TV, exemplified by, say, Seinfeld
or Law and Order is coming under attack from both left and right.
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Spring 2010, vol. 5, issue 3
Reframing the Abortion Issue
Regardless of the issues surrounding the start of human life, the liberal will not concede to anything
less than abortions on demand, and the conservative will resist the demand to concede their beliefs.
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Spring 2010, vol. 5, issue 3
Beyond Founders Chic: The Lost Philosophy of John Adams
If Hamilton was, as Ron Chernow would have it, “the messenger of the future we all inhabit,” and
if “to repudiate his legacy…is to repudiate the modern world,” then Adams was a voice of discon-
tent with much of what would become associated with modernity itself.
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| 2009 | Autumn 2009
Autumn 2009, vol. 5, issue 1
No Little Plans: Chicago’s Next Olympic Marathon
If citizens on both sides of the bid are serious about making Chicago an even safer and more prosperous place to live, and a hot-spot for international tourism, they won’t take down their 2016 banners
or protest fliers.
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Autumn 2009, vol. 5, issue 1
Talking About Torture: Why a Simple Confession Just Isn’t Enough
More than the truth of torture, shouldn’t we take an interest in the truth about torture?
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Autumn 2009, vol. 5, issue 1
The Most Mundane Loss of Self
Isolated chunks of vocabulary and syntax were thrown so often into the mix, that the idea of a gradual shift in language pattern begins to look more complicated.
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Autumn 2009, vol. 5, issue 1
Chess Is Not a Game
I’d wager that much of chess appreciation is predicated on a human love of the general concepts that
seem to govern chess play.
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Autumn 2009, vol. 5, issue 1
Men as Mushrooms
In order to fully understand
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Autumn 2009, vol. 5, issue 1
Re-writing Memory: A Case Study of Vladimir Nabokov’s “Mademoiselle O”
Searching for patterns isn’t meant to discover the true “Mademoiselle O” story; rather, it is an attempt to
extrapolate details about Nabokov’s autobiography and to investigate how narrative memory works.
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Autumn 2009, vol. 5, issue 1
The Economist and the Hack: The Treachery of Paul Krugman
The arguments presented by Krugman are based on gross simplifications of complex ideas and out-of-context quotes meant to portray neoclassicists as heartless fools.
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Autumn 2009, vol. 5, issue 1
At Whit’s End
Although Stillman’s films have almost completely escaped the notice of the broader public, their combination
of the best elements of classic Hollywood and modern comedy makes them worthy of reappraisal.
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Winter 2009
Winter 2009, vol. 4, issue 2
New Sincerity in a Postmodern World
So what is New Sincerity? It represents a return to universality, emotion, and a renewed concern with the human condition.
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Winter 2009, vol. 4, issue 2
Oppositional Politics under President Obama: Thoughts on a Left Approach
The left critique must adapt to a super-competent, sophisticated and politically sympathetic president—a much harder target than the eight years of conservative failure that preceded him.
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Winter 2009, vol. 4, issue 2
The Tension of Conservatism
Conservatives need to see their infighting in the context of the history of postwar American conservatism.
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Winter 2009, vol. 4, issue 2
Reading _Lapham's Quarterly__
From the thesis of an amnesiac media and the antithesis of a ponderous, unreadable parade of tomes, Lapham synthesizes a sleek, artfully decorated volume of distilled thoughts on a single theme of contemporary and enduring significance.
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Winter 2009, vol. 4, issue 2
Behind "I Claim": the Dialectics of Writing
Programmatic language creates at once an excess and a lack, and I consider this the major dilemma behind "I claim," which haunts me as my writing appears presumptuous and inadequate.
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Winter 2009, vol. 4, issue 2
Saul Bellow, Literary Columbus
Bellow gives America a modern voice that rattles us and affirms that we're not through with serious novels and characters.
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Winter 2009, vol. 4, issue 2
An Orderly Miscellany
The need of a country like the post-Marshall Plan United States for tragi-farce is enormous.
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Winter 2009, vol. 4, issue 2
Sapere aude!
Barton is successful in perspicuously presenting what might plausibly be said to constitute the defining principles of biblical criticism. Still, the deeper question is whether his description and defense of biblical criticism lives up to his claim that biblical criticism approaches the text "on its own terms."
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Winter 2009, vol. 4, issue 2
Economics and Politics: Inequality in Partisan Politics
Bartels's work will help dispel some of these myths about the saliency of "culture issues" in shaping the voting behavior of the working and lower-middle classes.
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Winter 2009, vol. 4, issue 2
Fearful Symmetry: Looking Beneath the Surface of Alan Moore's _Watchmen__
By weaving overt oppositions and subtle parallels between Rorschach and Veidt into
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Winter 2009, vol. 4, issue 2
The Sexual Politics of _Twilight__
To say that
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Winter 2009, vol. 4, issue 2
The Space of the University: Notes from the Underground
What is in play today is nothing short of a wide-ranging attempt to reframe the University using standards of instrumental logic.
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Spring 2009
Spring 2009, vol. 4, issue 3
Nabokov’s Anti-Politics
Vladimir Nabokov seems at first glance to have very little to say about any political question. There
is therefore a fundamental irony in the existence of what are often called his two “political novels.”
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Spring 2009, vol. 4, issue 3
Déjà Vu: Rashid Khalidi on the Cold War Mindset
I thought the Cold War had not been properly treated in the literature, which focuses on the point of
view of Moscow or Washington rather than the point of view of the Middle East.
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Spring 2009, vol. 4, issue 3
360˚
I said I’d just come from Iran and he asked about the girls. I told him it was different there, they all
had to wear headscarves and he said it didn’t matter, there were lots of Iranian girls here in Dubai
and they were just 30-50 dirhams.
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Spring 2009, vol. 4, issue 3
We Deserve Each Other: Rethinking Domestication and Its Implications for Animal
Rights
The morality to which these activists appeal is situated in a fundamentally flawed understanding of
what anthropology and biology have taught us about the process of domestication.
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Spring 2009, vol. 4, issue 3
A Pointed Apology
We must shake ourselves out of the torpor which has deeply affected cultural criticism and the humanities
as a whole.
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Spring 2009, vol. 4, issue 3
Animal Spirits, Behavioral Economics, and the Great Recession
George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller argue for the incorporation of behavioral and psychological
considerations into macro- and microeconomics.
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Spring 2009, vol. 4, issue 3
Taking the Street Out of Street Art
While Shepard Fairey had been well known in his own right before the Obama campaign, this design
has given him a new wave of attention, not only from his former base of skaters and street artists, but
in the contemporary art community as well.
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| 2008 | Autumn 2008
Autumn 2008, vol. 4, issue 1
New Departures: American Literature and the Grand Dialogue
That such an important and well-known author as Le Clezio could be all but non-existent in our bookstores is one thing, but the lack of interest in or response to his winning the most prestigious literary prize in the world is egregious.
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Autumn 2008, vol. 4, issue 1
_Book Review.__ Code Green: Thomas Friedman Puts America on the Alternative Energy Alert
If you ask Thomas Friedman, thanks to climate change, globalization and climbing population rates, the earth looks hotter, flatter and more crowded than ever before.
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Autumn 2008, vol. 4, issue 1
Guido Anselmi Goes to Washington
Through his noble attempt to do his part in preserving the polity, the reflective man is likely to find himself transformed from dutiful citizen into diffident skeptic.
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Autumn 2008, vol. 4, issue 1
_Sola Scriptura__ and Christian Values
As time moves forward and social norms change, Biblical interpretation becomes an increasingly confusing activity, as views are informed more so by outside influences rather than the Bible itself.
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Autumn 2008, vol. 4, issue 1
A Contemporary Problem: Music and the Listener
I’m compelled to understand what exactly might have constructed this barrier between a common lover of art like myself and the music of Olivier Messiaen.
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Winter 2008
Winter 2008, vol. 3, issue 2
Right Cause, Wrong Rhetoric?
Activists at a meeting of the London School of Economics Student Union inadvertently illustrate the deep significance of language as employed for political ends
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Winter 2008, vol. 3, issue 2
The Open Possibilities of Dostoevsky’s Diary
Dostoevsky’s
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Winter 2008, vol. 3, issue 2
Teacher of Evil? Not Quite
An interview with Professors Catherine and Michael Zuckert on the polarizing, stubbornly relevant subject of their recent book,
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Winter 2008, vol. 3, issue 2
UChicago: the Life of the Mind (Bowed to the Yoke)
The American college experience has become dangerously defined by a marketplace mentality rooted in consumerism that effectively serves nobody
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Winter 2008, vol. 3, issue 2
Beyond the Political: the Other Orhan Pamuk
The masterful Turkish writer who won the 2006 Nobel Prize for Literature has managed to subtly craft a double identity
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Winter 2008, vol. 3, issue 2
More Than a Campaign Promise: Making Economic Equality a Social Priority
If they truly embrace the American commitment to equality, the presidential candidates must also confront our increasingly serious need for economic reform
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Winter 2008, vol. 3, issue 2
The Aesthetics of Revival
In reviving theatrical productions with an eye towards contemporary relevance, directors perform a disservice to the plays and their new audience
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Winter 2008, vol. 3, issue 2
The Hubris of David Simon
producer David Simon’s blistering revenge against the
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Winter 2008, vol. 3, issue 2
The World According to Paul Krugman
The maverick economist Paul Krugman analyzes the political forces shaping modern American income inequality in his new book,
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Spring 2008
Spring 2008, vol. 3, issue 3
Letter to the Editor
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Spring 2008, vol. 3, issue 3
Against Practicality
Utilitarian arguments about the purpose of college ignore the intrinsic good of conversation that may be the most edifying aspect of one’s education
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Spring 2008, vol. 3, issue 3
The Rights of Man, the Rights of Citizen
Unless rights that are defined as inalienable spring from an understanding of human nature, they cannot fall under the category “human rights”
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Spring 2008, vol. 3, issue 3
The Elusive Dialogue of Law and Literature
While the procedures and the decisions of the courtroom depend significantly upon narrative, the imposition of literary study upon such is elucidating but problematic
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Spring 2008, vol. 3, issue 3
SCHIP and the Politics of Nescience
The heated debate over President Bush’s SCHIP veto ignores fundamental problems caused by the program’s bureaucratic structure and inefficient administration
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Spring 2008, vol. 3, issue 3
The Administration’s Bewildering Interpretation of the Kalven Report
If the University is to rely on the Kalven Report as a guide to its response on social and political issues, its newfound position on sustainability is untenable
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Spring 2008, vol. 3, issue 3
The New Pornographers: Women and the Production of Raunch Culture
Women can be empowered by their role in the production of and participation in pornography, perhaps surprisingly, if it is executed on their own terms
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Spring 2008, vol. 3, issue 3
Paul Thomas Anderson and the Ego
Among contemporary filmmakers, Anderson is the master at exposing man’s inner self in all its manifold complexity
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| 2007 | Autumn 2007
Autumn 2007, vol. 3, issue 1
Questions for Michelle Obama
“I’m not really giving a lot of thought at this point to the role I would play in January 2009—I’m much more concerned about the schedule for next week.”
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Autumn 2007, vol. 3, issue 1
The Torture Exception
I mean to illustrate an interesting quirk of American moral thinking: many citizens may oppose torture, war, and prison abuse with equivalent vigor. But this is not the norm.
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Autumn 2007, vol. 3, issue 1
Tipping the Scales: China’s Energy Ambitions in Africa
China has dramatically stepped up its efforts to reap the riches of Africa, and has lately become one of the most commercially influential foreign powers on the continent.
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Autumn 2007, vol. 3, issue 1
Towards a Postmodern Conservatism
Although true conservatives share with postmodern philosophers a distrust of modern institutions, they suspect the postmodernist obsession with ideology.
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Autumn 2007, vol. 3, issue 1
Whither Prescriptivism?
Clear and unclear thinking, precise and vague distinction, cogency and casuistry are all equally possible in standard and in nonstandard language.
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Autumn 2007, vol. 3, issue 1
Richard Dawkins’s Controversies and Redemptions
Dawkins comes across as a philosopher with the accessibility of a journalist and the creativity of a novelist.
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Autumn 2007, vol. 3, issue 1
Joseph Brodsky and a Poet’s Responsibilities
Brodsky’s biography, like any other poet’s, is in his love of language, which influences his sense of ethics and history, and not the other way around.
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Autumn 2007, vol. 3, issue 1
DeLillo’s Literary Leaps in Tackling 9/11
In
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Autumn 2007, vol. 3, issue 1
Allan Bloom’s Closing Revisited
Humane learning does still continue in North America—though not as those sympathetic to Bloom would like it to be.
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Autumn 2007, vol. 3, issue 1
Letters of the World
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