One answer is that academe’s devastation since the late 1990s has rendered it too grim and vulnerable a target for satirists. The gutting of public universities by right-wing politicians, the brute transformation of colleges into exploitative institutions that run on adjunct and graduate-student labor — these changes have resulted in a landscape so desolate it hardly seems worth mocking.
Blog
Jazz Might Be One Our Most Contemporaneously Relevant Art Forms
People think that to appreciate jazz you have to take ten years of music theory. Really, jazz or any kind of improvisational music, when done right, is simply a conversation without words. If you think about your own conversations at parties, [they’re all improvisation].
Watching Violinist Jennifer Koh Rehearse With The Composers Who’ve Written Duets For Her And Themselves
Joshua Barone visits Koh’s apartment-cum-studio and watches her work on brand-new pieces by (and with) Vijay Iyer, Missy Mazzoli, and Lisa Bielawa. (includes audio)
If The Jobs Go Away, What Is The Future Of Leisure?
Properly conceived, leisure could be the ultimate social safety net for an era of technologically driven uncertainty. It is potentially a space for bootstrapping new “careers,” which may or may not adhere to the traditional forms of self-employment or wage labor. It is also a space where one can move beyond the career-as-identity paradigm altogether, and contribute to one’s community through cultural and civic activities that are ignored in economic models because they are unremunerated.
The Best-Foreign-Language-Film Oscar Has Already Affected Politics In The Country That Won It
The award to A Fantastic Woman, about a transgender waitress dealing with the death of her partner, “has been enough to rekindle debate over a gender-identity bill that had been lagging in Chile’s Congress for nearly five years. What was once a proposal with partisan backing is now seeing support from both progressive and conservative legislators.”
How People With Depression Use Language Differently
Psychology researcher Mohammed Al-Mosaiwi writes about what computerized data analysis has revealed about the words and phrases depressives use, and about the practical uses for that knowledge.
Now Recovered From Brain Injury, Tracy Morgan Says He’s A Better Man – But He’s Still Very Much Tracy Morgan
Dave Itzkoff visits the comedian at his 19-bedroom mansion (complete with multiple aquariums, bowling alley, basketball court, and Rolls-Royces), and accompanies Morgan on a visit back to one of the Brooklyn housing projects where he grew up – and where he and some residents still recognize each other.
‘For Decades, Our Coverage Was Racist’: National Geographic Fesses Up
Editor in chief Susan Goldberg: “I’m the tenth editor of National Geographic since its founding in 1888. I’m the first woman and the first Jewish person – a member of two groups that also once faced discrimination here. It hurts to share the appalling stories from the magazine’s past. But when we decided to devote our April magazine to the topic of race, we thought we should examine our own history before turning our reportorial gaze to others.”
Le Figaro Music Critic: How Symphony Orchestras And Conductors Are Changing
Christian Merlin (in part two of an interview whose first half dealt with changes in music criticism): “I think we’re living in an era, at least in the West, where the cult of an individual is no longer in fashion: rather, we’re looking for integration, collaboration, involvement of everyone. The first person to really embody this change was Simon Rattle. There are 128 musicians in the Berlin Phil, and Rattle would always say ‘I am the 129th’. That doesn’t mean that there were no tensions; there were enormous ones – perhaps precisely because the musicians had been used to a conductor who decides everything!”
Atlanta Ballet To Increase Its Ranks By Almost A Third
“Two years ago, when Atlanta Ballet appointed Gennadi Nedvigin as its fourth artistic director, he voiced a vision to increase the company’s size, add a main stage production in the fall, and appear in new venues in Atlanta and beyond. Despite a major turnover last spring, he’s well on his way to realizing that vision. Atlanta Ballet is announcing its 2018-19 season with plans to expand the company from 32 to 42 artists.”