“What I want to argue is that we in contemporary English and literature departments need to think instead about how to keep doing abstraction, but better—how can we ‘own’ it, as my students might say, rather than wish it away.” Jeanne-Marie Jackson writes at 3:AM Magazine about comparative literature, the public, and politics.
Owning It
The Year of Only Publishing Women
“When author Kamila Shamsie challenged the book industry to publish only women in 2018 to help address a gender imbalance in literature, just one publisher took up the challenge.” And Other Stories, an English publisher who publish translations and English language books, has decided to only publish women writers in 2018, according to the BBC. Pair with: an essay by our own Marie Myung-Ok Lee about the visibility and privacy of women writers.
“Binders Full of Women”
Mitt Romney’s debate remark about where he finds women when he needs to fill some jobs has inspired hundreds of witty product reviewers on Amazon.
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Guy Fawkes Night
“Remember, Remember the Fifth of November / Gunpowder, treason, and plot.” Edward Casey of Electric Literature recalls childhood memories of the strange, lawless, primal, pagan celebration of Guy Fawkes Night–and readers around the world grow jealous.
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For Jane, Forever Ago
“It’s part of Jane Austen’s genius that she can bring the maximum of drama and momentousness to the most minimal of occasions.” Here is David Denby from The New Yorker on reading (and listening to) Austen’s Emma, which is celebrating its two-hundredth year in print. We’ve brought you a bunch of bits on Austen in the past.
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Geoff Dyer on Garry Winogrand
Year in Reading alum Geoff Dyer takes a fascinating look at two photographers – Garry Winogrand and Tod Papageorge – who happened to photograph the same thing at the same time, but wound up producing wildly different images.
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