It was a 2006 exhibition focused on melancholy in Western Art at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin that planted a seed for Nana Adusei-Poku thinking about how grief, mourning, and sadness are expressed by artists of the African Diasporas.
“No artists of...
Richard Deming was at work on an essay about the 2008 film “Synecdoche, New York” when he received an unexpected phone call from an old friend. Philip Seymour Hoffman, the star of that very film, had just been found dead of a drug overdose.
The news was...
You’re staring at your officemates from the comfort of your home. They’re lined up on the Zoom screen, each against their preferred backdrops, each exposing only as much of their surroundings as they like.
You’re in your own space, but partly in theirs as...
Julian Posada spent the COVID lockdown researching the working conditions of Latin Americans who do much of the data work needed for the growing artificial intelligence industry. And he became increasingly frustrated that discussions about the ethics of...
In the latest edition of Humanitas, a column focused on the arts and humanities at Yale, a book that centers Native Americans in the country’s history earns national acclaim; a boundary-smashing artist brings a “sensory circuit workout” to campus; a Yale...
Patrick Del Percio first showed an interest in learning the Cherokee language at the age of seven, when their family visited a living history museum portraying a 1760s Cherokee village. Del Percio asked the tour guide for the Cherokee word for “hello.”...
During the pandemic lockdown, Yale’s Ayesha Ramachandran tried an experiment in poetry consumption.
Ramachandran, an associate professor of comparative literature, bought stacks of books of contemporary poetry and committed to reading a volume a night....
On a Friday afternoon this spring, a group of students slowly streamed into a classroom at 370 Temple Street, chatting as they found their seats. As they settled in, the instructor, Lauri Lafferty, grabbed their attention. “Today, we’re learning about...