Destructive Imagination
Male Fantasies and the Emotional Roots of Russia’s War in Ukraine
Russian soldiers did not go to war with only guns and orders—they went with fantasies that made killing feel meaningful. Drawing on diaries, social media posts, memoirs, poems, and battlefield songs, Maria Kurbak reconstructs the war from below. She shows how Russian combatants turn old wounds—NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia, the collapse of the USSR, personal […]
Kigali
A New City for the End of the World
A searing critique of capitalist solutions to climate change, “Kigali” is an ethnography of a city that is being destroyed so that it can be rebuilt for the end of the world.
Too Precious to Lose
A Memoir of Family, Community, and Possibility
Jason Green, AB ’03, was raised on fellowship — literally. Fellowship Lane served as a spiritual metaphor throughout his coming of age. A precocious preacher’s kid, Green felt a call to the ministry but ultimately devoted himself to public service. After working on Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, the young attorney spent four and a half […]
‘Looking Back Toward the Future’
Celebrated editor, publisher and art collector Larry Warsh recently gifted 56 works of Chinese photography to the Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis. This spring, the museum will publicly display 43 of those works, all made between 1993 and 2006, for the first time in “Looking Back Toward the Future: Contemporary Photography from China.”
The Heroic Adventures of Qin Shubao
from Forgotten Tales of the Sui
Winner, Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for a Translation of a Literary Work, Modern Language Association of America A historical novel by Yuan Yuling, “Forgotten Tales of the Sui” (1633), has indeed been long forgotten in China. This unique coming-of-age tale in classical Chinese literature portrays the chivalrous Qin Shubao, the scion of a line […]
From Vice to Nice
Midwestern Politics and the Gentrification of AIDS
Gentrification: The unexpected consequence of AIDS Shifting the focus of AIDS history away from the coasts to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, this impressive book uncovers how homonormative political strategies weaponized the AIDS crisis to fuel gentrification. During the height of the epidemic, white gay activists and politicians pursued social acceptance by […]
Lipstick
Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Forget your mother’s tube of Revlon. Lipstick today is as messy—and fascinating—as changing attitudes towards femininity. Mining the experience of women across culture, class, and generation, this book tosses out expired ideas about beauty and power like so […]
Taco
Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Taco is a deep dive into the most iconic Mexican food from the perspective of a Mexico City native. In a narrative that moves from Mexico to the United States and back, Sánchez Prado discusses the definition of the […]
‘We have the view of gods’
In his new book “Look Out: The Delight and Danger of Taking the Long View,” WashU’s Edward McPherson explores the human desire for “big picture” perspectives — and how such perspectives cultivate both awe and arrogance.
Free Speech
A Campus Toolkit
Free speech and academic freedom have long been hot topics on college campuses. Free Speech: A Campus Toolkit equips students with the tools they need to make informed judgments about campus controversies for themselves.
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