“With [American Studies] and the three [books] that followed, Mr. Merlis was widely praised for the sensitivity with which he addressed such themes as the corrosive effect of shame and the intersecting paths of past and present.” His An Arrow’s Flight was voted by the LGBT industry organization Publishing Triangle as one of the best gay novels of all time.
Blog
Trove Of Previously Untranslated Medieval World Literature Goes Online
The initial offerings of Stanford’s Global Medieval Sourcebook “range from a 15th-century song translated from Middle French that bemoans a lost love … to five selections from Hong Mai’s 12th-century Yijian Zhi, a sprawling 420-chapter chronicle that is an invaluable record of society, spirituality, and culture of the Southern Song Dynasty. The GMS is, as suggested by its title, a globally focused resource, with plans for medieval texts translated from Arabic, Chinese, Old Spanish, Latin, Middle High German, Old English, and Old French.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 08.24.17
Jazz Singer Cecile McLorin Salvant
orR some reasons, I typically have trouble with jazz singers after, oh, Sarah Vaughan or Abbey Lincoln. There may have been some great ones over the last two decades, but most of the time … read more
AJBlog: CultureCrash Published 2017-08-24
Stress Of Being “Authentic” Weighs On YouTube Stars
“Some 20-somethings are making millions by playing video games or dispensing beauty tips online. But the pressure of having to endlessly produce original content that makes them look accessible, transparent and authentic has proved too much for some people.”
Acrostics As Subversive Protest
It’s a trick that’s been tried twice in recent days. First members of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities spelled out “RESIST” with the first letter of each paragraph in their joint resignation letter. Then Daniel Kammen, formerly the science envoy at the State Department, resigned in a letter that contained the acrostic “IMPEACH.”
Hundreds Rally In Moscow To Protest Detention Of Leading Theatre Director
For four years Kirill Serebrennikov’s Gogol Center has played an important role in Moscow’s cultural life. It was funded by the state but it was Serebrennikov, the theater’s artistic director, who managed this unique venue that provided a platform for political thought and that many fans called “a new place of power.”
A Name By Any Other Spelling? USC Challenges Spelling The Bard
“To E, or not to E, that is the question,” USC said in a statement. “Over the centuries his surname has been spelled 20 different ways. USC chose an older spelling because of the ancient feel of the statue, even though it is not the most common form.”
New World Record For Dancing Robots (No, Seriously – And You Can See Video Here)
“On a large plaza in the city last week, company staff diligently set up more than one thousand of the 18-inch robots to attempt the dancing record. You’ll be pleased to know that the team achieved the feat, with a total of 1,069 Dobi robots strutting their stuff in sync with one another, and as a consequence delighting the Guinness World Record officials who had traveled to Guangzhou to verify the effort.”
What Cities Lose When Alt-Weeklies Die
The shortage of smart, professional digital newsgathering in smaller American cities is a real problem with no immediate solution on the horizon; sadly, the number of eyeballs likely to land before a local story online isn’t enough to generate the income that would justify making it. In the longer term we probably can’t crowdfund our way out of that.
How The New Yorker Trades On Its Unique Style
“The magazine’s paper subscription slips have long carried a tagline: ‘The best writing, anywhere.’ It follows that the source of the best writing, anywhere, must also be the finest available authority on grammar, usage, and punctuation. But regular readers know that The New Yorker’s signature is not standard usage, but its opposite.”