Literature

Adam Bradley Asks: Is Rap Poetry? Is It Good Poetry?

Adam Bradley— Last fall saw the publication of The Anthology of Rap, a collection that I co-edited with Andrew DuBois. The book gathers nearly 300 lyrics by dozens of artists from across rap’s four decades. Our purpose was to highlight rap’s development as a literary art form by underscoring the

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Gautier at the Opera

Tonight, L’Opéra National de Paris hosts the second of a two-night special event in honor of the bicentennial of the birth of Théophile Gautier, the French poet, dramatist, and critic who is known for his devotion to Art for Art’s sake. Author of the scenario for the classic ballet Giselle,

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Who Says You Can’t Rewrite The History of the World?

Since you’ve been enjoying our contests and Nigel Warburton’s post on how E.H. Gombrich inspired his new book, we thought we’d try one more challenge for our readers, celebrating the new illustrated edition of A Little History of the World. So it’s not a rewrite, per se, (though the book

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Pacifist Art and Margaret Morris Take Us Above the Battlefield

Inevitably, twentieth-century pacifism, specifically the hippie movement of the 60s, conjures images of flowers, peace signs, and tye-dye. But in Above the Battlefield: Modernism and the Peace Movement in Britain, 1900-1918, Grace Brockington argues that one of the greatest peace movements of the last century occurred at its beginning. Several

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The Doonesbury Debate

Although Garry Trudeau has been creating the Doonesbury comic strip for over four decades, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize twice and won it once, he has stated that his “scrawlings made the cartoon industry safe for bad art.” Brian Walker notes that he “had always felt that [Trudeau] had not received adequate recognition for his talents as an artist and graphic designer.” His Doonesbury and the Art of G.B. Trudeau restores the cartoonist’s reputation as a master of all aspects of his craft.

Why Evil Became Glamorous: Terry Eagleton’s On Evil

Google famously used “Don’t be evil” as their (informal) corporate slogan during the last decade. Recently though, the company has faced more and more accusations that it mimics any other giant, greedy corporation, from its making privacy difficult on Google+ to preventing customers from using competitive operating systems. Whether or

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Contradictions in Love of Land: American Georgics

Follow @yaleSCIbooks No matter where you are in the U.S. this summer, you have probably felt the effects of the record-setting heat. While most of us are just sweating a little more than usual, our country’s agricultural community faces a depressing situation. The heat arrived with an extreme drought throughout

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Propaganda As Art?: Windows on the War

Windows on the War: Soviet TASS Posters at Home and Abroad, 1941-1945, edited by Art Institute of Chicago curators Peter Kort Zegers and Douglas Druick to accompany an exhibition on view there until October 23, 2011, examines an art form that had been forgotten until now. The stenciled, handmade posters made by the Soviet TASS news agency during WWII are now available to the English-speaking public for the first time.

Renegade Henry Miller Gets a Playlist

GalleyCat has created a Spotify playlist for a few of Henry Miller’s works, drawing from his descriptions and opinions of classical music, including Beethoven and Hadelich. In his forthcoming book Renegade: Henry Miller and the Making of “Tropic of Cancer”, Frederick Turner discusses various personal experiences and cultural trends that influenced Millers’ writing of the originally censored, semi-pornographic novel.

The Feininger “Family Business”

Covering the full breadth of Lyonel Feininger’s artistic career, a major retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art, “Lyonel Feininger: At the Edge of the World”, places him as a central figure in developing early 20th-century forms and the conversations that took place between German and American styles of art.