Gregory Barnes’ The Touch of the Master’s Hand is a Mormon movie, a twelve-minute short about a young missionary ashamed of his masturbation habit. It premiered at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival and won the Short Film Jury Award for U.S. Fiction. Despite its look into the cultural oddity of Mormonism, the film is relatable […]
Culture
The Tender Satire of Gregory Barnes’ The Touch of the Master’s Hand
Please keep a safe […]: Chin Chin – Grass Jelly Drinks
by j.p.mot
j.p.mot’s object of research centers on reclaiming the orientalist gaze depicted by colonial ethnographers.
Feminist Flashback: The Woman’s Film
by Jennifer Gauthier
I can’t remember precisely the first time I saw The Woman’s Film, a collaborative short documentary made by San Francisco Newsreel in 1971, but I do remember being struck by its boldly feminist mode of address and content. It has stuck with me for years and now I use it in class anytime I can. […]
Moxie’s Militant Millennial Feminism
by Jennifer L. Gauthier
In 1913, suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst famously said, “You cannot make omelettes without breaking eggs.” The protagonist of Moxie, Amy Poehler’s new film on Netflix, doesn’t break any eggs, but she does smash the principal’s “Best Principal” trophy, en route to “smashing the patriarchy.” Vivian (Hadley Robinson) learns this phrase – and goal – from her […]
Scarcity and Other White Lies
by Ilse Hogan Griffin
We—white folks with financial privilege—are bloated with excess and resistant to messages of our own abundance. Scarcity, the quality or state of being scarce, means, or should mean, a legitimately low supply, not enough of something. Scarcity, legitimate and illegitimate, drives and modifies behaviors. The scarcity myth, which often seems inherent in white people, especially those with considerable […]
Review of Fierce Poise: Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York by Alexander Nemerov
by Aya Kusch
Helen Frankenthaler was adept in the art of getting noticed. On May 19, 1950, she donned a costume meant to transform her into a Picasso painting and made her grand entrance into the Astor Ball flanked by an actress friend, Gaby Rodgers. Fresh from college and largely unknown, Life magazine found her eye-catching enough to […]
Eight Contemporary Female Irish Artists to Fall In Love With Immediately
by Aya Kusch
Ireland is a lush island full of the kind of creativity that verges on magic. Instantly you may think of its entrancing folklore, its grand literary tradition, and even contemporary authors such as Sally Rooney (endorsed by Taylor Swift) and Anna Burns (winner of the 2019 Man Booker Prize). Now I introduce you to your […]
The Killing Thing Between Your Teeth
by Sophia Kaufman
Weeks before the inauguration, I started a screenshot collection of viral tweets or other social media posts comparing the relationship of the U.S. with Trump, Mitch McConnell, and/or the GOP to an abusive relationship. I eventually gave up because there were too many and they were all so similar and it was depressing. Most of […]
Kiran Bhat in Conversation with Aruni Kashyap
Aruni Kashyap is a writer, editor, and translator. He has published two works of fiction in English (The House of a Thousand Stories, Viking/ Penguin Random House, 2013 and His Father’s Disease, Westland, 2019), one work of fiction in his mother tongue, Assamese, (Noikhon Etia Duroit, Panchajanya Books, 2019) and he has edited an anthology […]
The Lie You Buy: An Interview with Koa Beck, author of White Feminism: From the Suffragettes to Influencers and Who They Leave Behind
by Sophia Kaufman
Koa Beck is the former editor-in-chief of Jezebel and co-host of “The #MeToo Memos” on WNYC’s The Takeaway. Previously, she was the executive editor of Vogue.com and the senior features editor at MarieClaire.com. For her reporting on gender, LGBTQ rights, culture, and race, she has spoken at Harvard Law School, Columbia Journalism School, The New […]
