Academia is an honor-culture, in which recognition—in the form of citations—serves as a kind of ersatz currency. In ancient Greek, there is a word “pleonexia,” which means “grasping after more than your share.” Plagiarism norms encourage pleonectic overreach. One can see such overreach in the fact that those with perfect job-security—famous, tenured faculty—do not seem less given to touchiness about having “their” ideas surface in the work of another, unattributed. Quite the contrary. The higher one rises, the louder the call for obeisance: kiss my ring! Stigmatizing plagiarism serves those at the top. – The Point
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World’s Biggest Secondhand Book Market Could Be In Danger
With a history going back almost 150 years, College Street in Kolkata “has every imaginable type of text, available in Bengali, English, Mandarin, Sanskrit, Dutch, and every dialect in between. Precious first editions and literary classics sit cheek by jowl with medical encyclopedias, religious texts, and pulp fiction, often precariously stacked in uneven piles that resemble jagged cliff faces.” But many of the booksellers there are worried about an enormous new mall, planned by the West Bengal state government, set to open next year as a literary hub. – Atlas Obscura
Making Theatre (Or Not) During Chile’s Crisis
Chilean playwright and director Guillermo Calderón: “After the curfew was over, a few theatres came back to do shows and a lot of people went to see them. … People were yearning for a sense of community and space to talk and vent and try to find some sort of solidarity … [Even so,] there has been an overwhelming sense here among theatre artists that it’s impossible to do theatre right now. … How can we say anything that’s going to really mean something at this moment? I mean, we’re in the context of a quasi civil war, right?” – HowlRound
Do Trigger Warnings Work? Research Says…
As you might have noticed, the use of trigger warnings has since spread beyond US universities to educational institutions around the world, and further: into theatres, festivals and even news stories. The warnings have become another battlefield in the culture wars, with many seeing them as threatening free speech and the latest sign of ‘political correctness’ gone mad. – Aeon
How Are European Companies Dealing With The Racial Caricatures In Classic Ballets?
American companies have been looking hard at this problem in the past few years, especially in the annual cash cow that is Nutcracker. With ballet becoming ever more internationalized — “a performance in Moscow can be beamed to a cinema in Massachusetts” — Lyndsey Winship has a look at how dancers and choreographers in London, Paris, Moscow, and Monte Carlo are approaching the issue, from Nutcracker to the Indian temple of La Bayadère and the Ottoman pirate ship of Le Corsaire to the blackface Moor in Petrushka. – The Guardian
There’s Now An Artist-In-Residence At The Philadelphia DA’s Office
“It makes perfect sense to DA Larry Krasner, who sees the arts as central to the criminal justice reform movement … ‘the connection between the reforms we’re trying to make in Philadelphia and the people in Philly who are part of that movement are best made in some ways through the arts,'” he said. The first artist in the position is James Hough, who spent years painting parts of murals for Mural Arts Philadelphia while in prison and is now finally seeing his finished work. – The Philadelphia Inquirer
In New Orleans, Replacing Removed Confederate Statues With Paper Monuments
“The Paper Monuments project, a participatory imagining of the monuments New Orleanians would like, stepped into that pause [after old statues were removed] to involve New Orleanians in the conversation about what should come next … [and] to challenge the idea that monuments must be in stone or bronze.” – Next City
Black Lives Matter Co-Founder Leads New MFA Program For Artist-Activists
Patrisse Cullors, a performance artist who recently completed a master’s degree at USC with a concentration on performance and activism, designed the new two-year online program, called Social and Environmental Arts Practice, with and for Prescott College in Arizona. – Los Angeles Times
Long-Lost Body Of Michel De Montaigne Has ‘Probably’ Turned Up In Museum Basement
In the years after the man who invented the essay died in 1592, his remains were moved between several sites. One of those places was a convent in Bordeaux whose building now houses the Musée d’Aquitaine, where a tomb was found in the basement last year. When that tomb was opened recently, there was a coffin with “Montaigne” written on it; scientists will now analyze the wood in the coffin and the bones inside. – Yahoo! (AFP)
America’s Hottest Opera Director Heads To Long Beach (For A While)
“Yuval Sharon will serve as Long Beach Opera’s interim artistic director and dream up the 2021 season.” He would seem to be a good fit for a small company known for unusual work. “Any other opera company in America would be completely blindsided by the projects that I’m proposing,” he says, “Every other opera company would turn ghost white at the thought of this kind of season. I think it’ll be great.” – Los Angeles Times