Category: Living
Immigrant Farmers and Alternative Practices of Sustainability in Creating Climate Havens
In cities like Ann Arbor and Duluth, immigrant farmers are quietly building climate havens, cities of the future designed to withstand the storms of climate change. They are already laying the foundations of resilience through practices ranging from seed saving to mixed farming, sustaining both ecosystems and cultural identity. The term “climate haven” was introduced
Ad Astra: Eduardo Kac and Narratives of Progress
On January 15th, 2025, the private aerospace company Firefly launched its first ever lunar lander aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. At my time of writing, the rocket is currently en route to the surface of the moon. This collaboration between Firefly and SpaceX is the latest example of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative,
Natural Hauntings: A Return to the Creaturely
“Humans,” art historian Glenn Peers contends, “have slipped into a modern faith in knowingness that thinks it exceeds the scale and complexity of our world…, blind[ing] us to other human possibilities.” The statement embodies the recent artworks of Pakistani multimedia artist Huma Bhabha in her 2024 exhibition entitled, “Welcome…to the one who came.” Primarily a
Transcending Boundaries: A Mother’s Work
Referencing his mother’s passing in 1992, Nathaniel Mary Quinn’s “aim as an artist [was] to make a work that [was] so palpable and so dynamic and so incredibly felt that [his] Mom could literally walk off the surface of the canvas and back to life.”[1] The result was Untitled (Portrait of the Artist’s Mother) from
A Painfully Honest Portrayal of Beauty
Tracey Emin, Like A Cloud of Blood, 2022, acrylic on canvas, 59 7/8 x 71 5/8 in. (152 x 182cm) The difficulty in comprehending Tracey Emin’s Like A Cloud of Blood (2022) is the paradox of witnessing a disappearing figure coming into being. In Emin’s painting, an incomplete and empty body lies isolated in curled
Begin (Again): The Art of Openings
How do you feel about epigraphs? My partner once said she hated them, at least in the context of academic writing. Why not just get straight to what you want to say? Many readers find them pretty easy to skip over (as I’m sure at least a couple of you did when approaching this blog post) and if used incorrectly they can easily become unnecessary filler, pretentious excess, or both…
On Track for Success: PhDs Working Off the Tenure Track (Week 4)
To conclude our series on humanities PhDs working full-time off the tenure track, we have Colleen Kennedy, who earned her English PhD from The Ohio State University in 2015. Her dissertation considered the role of odors, aromas, and other olfactory descriptors in early-modern literature. Today, she works in the publicity unit of the Shakespeare Theatre
On Track for Success: PhDs Working Off the Tenure Track (Week 3)
Welcome back to our series on humanities PhDs who are now working full-time off the tenure track! This week brings us Katherine Kidd, who earned her English PhD from the University of Pittsburgh in 2016. Her dissertation looked at depictions of queer and non-normative people in the working class and below the poverty line, and
On Track for Success: PhDs Working Off the Tenure Track (Week 2)
This week, we continue our series on humanities PhDs who are now working full-time off the tenure track. We interviewed former Broadly Textual Pub contributor Melissa Welshans, an alumna of the English PhD program at Syracuse University, where in 2017 she defended her dissertation on gender and sexuality in the institution of marriage in early-modern
On Track for Success: PhDs Working Off the Tenure Track (Week 1)
Picture this: You’re a PhD student. For whatever reason, you’ve decided to look for a career outside the academy, or at least off the tenure track. But while your PhD program gave you a lot of preparation for a tenure-track job, veering off this prepared path isn’t something you’ve been trained for. What do you