The Neronian Grotesque
Image, Text, and Culture in Classical Antiquity
During the reign of Nero, Roman culture produced some of its most spectacular works of art and literature, and some of its strangest. This study explores these effects across textual and visual media in an integrated way. Weiss’ analysis allows for appreciation of the shared strategies of composition, overlaps between literary and visual rhetoric, the […]
Thinking through Graphic Design History
Challenging the canon
Graphic design has a paradoxical relationship to history. While it claims to promote originality and innovation – ideas that emphasize the new and unique – design practice is deeply embedded in previous ideals. Too often, design students encounter the past in brief visual impressions which seduce them to imitate form rather than engage with historical contexts.
‘Design Agendas: Modern Architecture in St. Louis, 1930s–1970s’
The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis will present “Design Agendas: Modern Architecture in St. Louis, 1930s–1970s” beginning Sept. 13. With nearly 300 architectural drawings, models, photographs, films, digital maps and artworks, “Design Agendas” is the first major exhibition to examine how interlocking civic, cultural and racial histories, as well as conflicting ideological aims, reshaped the city.
A new era for the humanities
As director of the Center for the Humanities in Arts & Sciences, Stephanie Kirk wants to empower humanities graduate students to use their expertise in a range of meaningful careers.
Scattered Snows, to the North
Poems
An arresting study of memory, perception, and the human condition, from the Pulitzer Prize winner Carl Phillips. Carl Phillips’s Scattered Snows, to the North is a collection about distortion and revelation, about knowing and the unreliability of a knowing that’s based on human memory. If the poet’s last few books have concerned themselves with power, this one […]
Crossing borders, bridging divides
Using novels and readings from all over the world, an Arts & Sciences course teaches students to look at the stories that exist on both sides of a geopolitical line.
Building on relationships
As director of the Frank Lloyd Wright House in Ebsworth Park, Kathryn Feldt works at the confluence of natural elegance and architectural brilliance.
‘Mother’ lode
Katya Apekina’s “Mother Doll” takes on the spirit world, the Russian Revolution, a surprise pregnancy and personal upheaval — and it’s hilarious.
Throw like a girl
How graphic artist Bonnie Korte became, at 72, the first woman in the U.S. to earn kudan, a ninth degree rank in judo.
Copyright Vigilantes
Intellectual Property and the Hollywood Superhero
“Copyright Vigilantes: Intellectual Property and the Hollywood Superhero” explains superhero blockbusters as allegories of intellectual property relations. In movies based on characters owned by the comics duopoly of DC and Marvel, no narrative recurs more often than a villain’s attempt to copy the superhero’s unique powers. In this volume, author Ezra Claverie explains this fixation as a symptom of the films’ mode of production.
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