Writer’s Block
by Advocate Staff
“You don’t know what it is to stay a whole day with your head in your hands trying to squeeze your unfortunate brain so as to find a word.” –Gustave Flaubert
“The imagination is man’s power over nature.” –Wallace Stevens
It happens to all of us at one time or another. The blank page, the blinking cursor, the creeping […]
Student Enrollment to Hit All-Time High
by Advocate Staff
As the economic crisis continues to deepen, many New Yorkers are choosing to return to school, and are looking to do so as cheaply as possible. CUNY has enjoyed a sharp 12 percent increase in applications over the past year, which will likely lead to CUNY’s highest enrollment ever next semester.
According to CUNY overlord Matthew Goldstein, […]
Stifling the Economy of Ideas
by Renee McGarry
Sometimes data and statistics fail us. I work in the humanities so I’m not entirely surprised to say this, but I was shocked when I saw the data released in a recent report by the American Association of University Professors on the Economic Status of the Profession. Swimming in charts and graphs, it looked as if academics were faring […]
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1950 – 2009)
by Advocate Staff
Robert Reid-Pharr
The tremendous impact that Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Distinguished Professor of English at the Graduate Center, has had on the intellectual lives of an entire generation of scholars cannot be overstated. As a writer, teacher, mentor, and friend her sophisticated, precise engagements with questions of sexuality, desire, affect, and emotion have revolutionized literary and cultural studies, […]
Letter from Dakar
by MBusch
Beneath a half-completed section of highway overpass on the dusty outskirts of Dakar, Moussa spreads his arms widely to the concrete slab above his head. “This is what the tycoon classes want for Senegal!” he announces with theatrical triumph. “New roads for their new cars!” Then, lowering his arms, he says in a deadly serious tone, “But […]
Foul Play at Bard?: Controversy Ensues After College Terminates Kovel
by JBoy
As contingent workers in the CUNY system, many members of the Graduate Center community have become inured to the constant threat of losing their teaching positions at short notice. Following Governor Patterson’s budget cuts last summer, many long-serving adjuncts found themselves out of a job as department chairs balanced budgets on their backs. So it may […]
Midlife Crisis for a Movement Icon: At 95, the ‘Peace Pentagon’ building is hardly in its dotage; is it nonetheless nearing the end of its days?
by JOtrompke
The year was 1997 when Molly Klopot first entered the building at 339 Lafayette in Manhattan, and like many people, she was initially struck by the amount of activity that went on in there.
“When I first came into the room, I met a very stately and tall old woman who represented our organization at the United Nations meeting on […]
Reality is Very Haunting: Reevaluating the Ouvre of John Giorno
by Jason Schneiderman
Subduing Demons in America: Selected Poems 1962 – 2007 by John Giorno. Edited by Marcus Boon. Soft Skull Press, 2007. 387 Pages.
I.
John Giorno is the most important poet you’ve never heard of. Elaine Showalter calls him the father of performance poetry, though Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz’s definitive history of slam mentions him not at all, save Dan Nester listing […]
‘No War But Class War’
by Abe Walker
Dynamite: The Story of Class Violence in America by Louis Adamic. AK Press Edition (2008)
The contemporary US labor movement does not have a reputation for militancy. By almost any standard, American unions stack up poorly compared to their European, Asian, African and Latin American counterparts. American workers strike less often than workers almost anywhere else in the […]
Generation ‘Ehh’
by CMatlin
The Generational: Younger Than Jesus. At the New Museum, on view till June 14, 2009
Let’s get right to the point: if this is the best the so-called Millenials have to offer (myself being one of them) then the art world as we know might as well pack up and leave. It’s been a good run. Everyone should […]
