Issue 27
The annotated table of contents below offers a sneak peek at what’s in issue 27. To get the issue delivered straight to your door, subscribe…
Top Ten of 2021
As 2021 comes to a close, we’re proud to present our top-ten most-read essays of the year, listed below in reverse order. If you enjoy…
On the End of the Canon Wars
Why is it, then, that when I encounter defenses for the value of a humanistic education today, I can’t help but find the resulting arguments…
On Duty
The protests did not stop the allied war effort in Iraq; those in Russia will not end the invasion of Ukraine. But both mobilizations imply…
On Language Games
For a country so often believed to be anti-intellectual, it is striking how much of American political conversation has come to revolve around seemingly pedantic…
Try Something Out
“I can’t account for what kind of encounter someone will have with what I write in turn. All I can do is have a good…
Legitimation Crisis
John Guillory’s forthcoming book Professing Criticism will force professors to rethink graduate education and challenge literary scholars to confront the paradoxes inherent to the discipline.
Violent Antagonisms
“I’m always coming back to the perhaps too-basic notion that every object, every movement within culture, every molecule of collective life, is shot through with…
When Meghan Married Harry
This essay is a preview of our forthcoming print issue, which features the symposium “What is college for?”
Limited Time
INTRODUCTION The subtitle of Martin Hägglund’s new book, This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom, indicates its ambition. In the first half of This Life,…
Military Life
We sent around a questionnaire asking veterans to reflect on their time in the military: what it meant to them, how it changed them and…
Culture in the Time of “Military Operations”
This article, a survey of Russian artists responding to war, was originally published on Colta.ru, a Russian website dedicated to sociocultural topics, on March 3rd
College Life
No symposium about what college is for would be complete without the perspectives of those for whom the question is most immediate: college students. This…
Intellectuals in Crisis
Intellectual Ex-Radicals and World Reaction: The Crisis of the Disillusioned Fellow-Travelers of Bolshevism Is Not the Same as a “Crisis of Marxism” (Trotsky 1939) The Intellectual:…
Muellerisms
The following is a collection of statements published in the New York Times about Robert S. Mueller, from 2001 to today.
Comedy Studies
The following are actual titles of papers published in peer-reviewed academic journals.
The Crisis of Language Project
alt right: i) right-wing racists who use leftist rhetoric. ii) establishment.
The (Updated) Dictionary of Received Ideas
Classics, the: force of oppression. Know enough to despise ~: “Plato was an authoritarian.” “Aristotle condoned slavery.”
The Perils of the Past
Enter the basement of the Centre des Archives Nationales in Beirut and you’ll immediately notice the large white sacks, overflowing with documents and papers, strewn…
The Unifier
Some elections are determined by a kingmaker, others are defined by the appearance of a troublemaker. The 2022 presidential election in France falls into the…
Where Dreams Come True
On the third day, God said, “Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear.” And…
The Fall and Rise of McGovern McNabb
First of all Viola Hill and Gracie Rae Gooden were arguing over how do you raise a dead man up from the dead, so loudly…
The Emigrants
while some arms release you, others receive you. that was the title of the novel i wanted to write. that i started to write. that…
The Life of the Mind
By some indicators we are entering a new Dark Age: anti-intellectual fervor is raging, suspicion of experts is at an all-time high and appeals to…
Democracy in America
Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America arrives at an auspicious time. The French sociologist came initially to America to prepare a report on criminal justice,…
Back to Real Life
This is the first column in the fourth round of Reading Room, a collective column on reading and life. In each round, the contributors respond…
Restless Minds
This is the third column in the third round of Reading Room, a collective column on reading and life. In each round, the contributors respond to a prompt…
Guilt Lit
This is the second column in the third round of Reading Room, a collective column on reading and life. In each round, the contributors respond to…
Privacy Settings
This is the first installment of “Human Resources,” an advice column from The Point written by Anastasia Berg.