The Mississippi River may look like just another river, but experiencing it can contain so much more. Continue reading

April 6, 2022
by Aesthetics for Birds
1 Comment
April 6, 2022
by Aesthetics for Birds
1 Comment
The Mississippi River may look like just another river, but experiencing it can contain so much more. Continue reading
October 1, 2021
by Alex King
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Netflix’s new comedy/drama gets some key things wrong about higher education, including its “sendup” of woke culture. Continue reading
August 27, 2021
by Aesthetics for Birds
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Promising Young Woman is an unsatisfying film. But that’s what it gets deeply right about misogyny and patriarchy. Continue reading
August 19, 2021
by Aesthetics for Birds
3 Comments
Reading star signs does not reliably lead to knowledge, so why read them? Because it’s fun. Continue reading
August 5, 2021
by Aesthetics for Birds
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How Wittgenstein can help us think about cultural identities and the male gaze Continue reading
June 30, 2021
by C. Thi Nguyen
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Why would we ever spend our already scarce time and effort on difficult art? A lot of the time, it’s because we trust somebody. Continue reading
February 26, 2021
by Aesthetics for Birds
3 Comments
True diversification will ultimately require aesthetic integration to create something new that appeals to a diverse constituency. Continue reading
June 18, 2020
by Aesthetics for Birds
4 Comments
Removing statues is powerfully symbolic; how we treat them in their death is too. Continue reading
March 19, 2020
by Aesthetics for Birds
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What follows is a guest post by Patrick Fessenbecker. In a recent column in The New York Times, Ross Douthat contends that English professors aren’t having the right kind of arguments. Reflecting on the analysis of the decline of the humanities in a series of essays in the Chronicle of Higher Education over the last year, Douthat makes a familiar diagnosis: the problem is that we literature professors no longer believe in the real value of the objects we study. Engaging Simon During’s account of the decline of the humanities as a “second secularization” in particular, Douthat argues that secular attempts to defend the humanities will fail just as surely as secular attempts to defend religious ethics and norms did: it doesn’t work unless you really believe in the thing. Correspondingly, the debates literary scholars are having about how to expand the range of texts and subjects we teach are … Continue reading
March 2, 2020
by Aesthetics for Birds
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What follows is a guest post by Adriana Clavel-Vázquez and Sergio A. Gallegos. Against all odds, Novohispanic nun Juana Inés de la Cruz gained widespread recognition as a writer in her lifetime. Today, she is also recognized as a distinguished Early Modern philosopher who advanced one of the earliest defenses of the right of women to be educated, and who emphasized how human knowledge is constituted by doubts and struggles. She was particularly preoccupied with the lack of recognition of women as intellectual peers, and its consequences for how women are treated.