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23/10/2025

New at PB: Stefania Heim and Ara H. Merjian discuss the literary work of metaphysical painter Giorgio de Chirico. Considered the godfather of surrealism, de Chirico's controversial trajectory as an artist is well known. His work as a writer, less so.

"Mr. Dudron," translated by Stefania Heim, is out now from A Public Space; and "Hebdomeros" is available from David Zwirner Books.

“I came to translating de Chirico very much by accident.”

22/10/2025

“The film simultaneously introduces the means to reclaim, repurpose, and reimagine the violence of the archive: research.”

New at PB: In a review of "I'll Be Back," Tita Chico explores how Hope Strickland’s camera formally renders the intimacies of Black global history.

As we follow the camera’s quiet, careful study, we observe—as Fred Moten reflects—that the slave ship also contains the means of its own undoing.

21/10/2025

“Woolf’s 'The Village in the Jungle' unexpectedly insists on making visible the lives of the British empire’s seemingly most insignificant subjects. It is an ethnographic study hiding inside a thriller.”

New at PB: Priyasha Mukhopadhyay revisits Leonard Woolf’s “The Village in the Jungle,” arguing that while Woolf's decision to write a novel was predictable, the book itself is not.

As in Conrad, even when characters think they understand the dynamics of Leonard Woolf’s jungle, they really don’t.

16/10/2025

“The border attempts to discriminate between those who serve US ruling coalition projects and those who threaten it.”

New at PB: Last in our series on Iván Chaar López’s book "The Cybernetic Border," Lilly Irani warns that no one is safe under the cybernetic border, as data grows and the definition of "intruder" shifts.

We are in a moment that makes clear that the border—as a regime of enmity—can make intruders of us all.

15/10/2025

“Settler colonial formulations use the permanent residence of the colonizer itself as a technology, one for dispossessing the land from its people as well as gaining command of space.”

New at PB: Next in our series on Iván Chaar López’s book "The Cybernetic Border," Kalindi Vora looks at how art can function as a space of intervention and dissent.

Art practice and speculative imaginaries can be sites of dissent and intervention.

14/10/2025

“Border technologies live within loops of failure → crisis → fix → failure → crisis → fix, eternally to be tested. It will work, promise! Just wait for one more iteration.”

New at PB: As part of our series on Iván Chaar López’s book "The Cybernetic Border," Philipp Seuferling outlines 3 ideas that history debunks: 1) that border technologies are neutral; 2) that technology equals progress; and 3) that technology offers solutions to crises.

Border technologies live within loops of failure → crisis → fix → failure → crisis → fix, eternally to be tested. It will work, promise! Just wait for one more iteration

13/10/2025

“For centuries—from the dispossession, displacement, and enclosure of Indigenous peoples through colonial settlement and frontier making since the 17th century, all the way to the US–Mexico War in the mid-19th century—military action and violence has created and maintained US borders.”

This week at PB: Contributors respond to “The Cybernetic Border” by Iván Chaar López, a book that shows how the US border was shaped by questions of identity, frontier imaginaries, and the history of the US as a settler colony and an empire-nation.

The border today is and is made through sociotechnical arrangements centering data in the regulation of racial difference.

12/10/2025

New at PB: As part of a series exploring higher ed under Trump, curated by Dennis M. Hogan, Anna E. Clark discusses the way the Common Core failed us—and opened doors for Trump’s direct attack on academic freedom and funding sources.

The influence of K-12 policy and pedagogy on higher ed can perhaps be seen best in the trickle-up effect of the standards of the Common Core.

11/10/2025

“Taken together, our roundtable contributors present a suite of ideas that, if enacted, just might make higher education more livable for us all.”
The full series “Higher Ed Under Trump” is live at Public Books. Read all the contributions here:

The path higher education was on before Trump’s reelection was neither certain nor stable. There is not much to go back to now.

09/10/2025

New at PB: As part of a series exploring higher ed under Trump, curated by Dennis M. Hogan, Jarrel T. Johnson addresses three steps HBCUs can take to empower q***r and trans* students in the Trump era: 1) embody a radical love and care ethic. 2) commit to (un)learning. And 3) lead and transform from where you are.

This essay calls in HBCUs to recommit to Black q***r and trans* inclusion.

08/10/2025

New at PB: As part of a series exploring higher ed under Trump, curated by Dennis M. Hogan, Stephanie Reist explains how open admissions to all state-funded public universities could break the competitive concentration of prestige, increase affordability through more egalitarian institutional funding, and restore Americans’ faith in higher education as a public.

Open admissions to all state-funded public universities could break the competitive concentration of prestige, increase affordability through more egalitarian institutional funding, and restore Americans’ faith in higher education.

07/10/2025

New at PB: As part of a series exploring higher ed under Trump, curated by Dennis M. Hogan, Christian Collins argues that institutions should lead and organize dialogue about how to support the enrollment and success of Black and Hispanic men in post-secondary schools.

Policymakers and institutional leaders seeking to preserve higher education’s functionality should consider the enrollment and completion rates of Black and Hispanic men.

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