publicseminar.org Debate for now. Always free. Published by The New School. Subscribe to our newsletter: publicseminar.substack.com/https://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.socialhttps://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mvv6xa3qxc2hSakiko Fukuda-Parr and Sean Jacobs speak with Nolan Young on how their book, The Palgrave Handbook on Decolonizing International Affairs, interrogates colonialism’s long shadow over modern life and forges a path towards exorcising it from international studies. https://publicseminar.org/2026/09/a-call-for-course-correction/19 Sep 2026 17:20 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mvv6xa3qxc2hhttps://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mvsgfzzd522vA decade and a half after that first night at Zuccotti Park, what has the Left learned from Occupy Wall Street? Nara Roberta Silva argues that Occupy’s legacy should be one of “reclaiming strategy in its deeper and expansive senses.” https://publicseminar.org/2026/09/occupy-fifteen-years-later/18 Sep 2026 14:55 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mvsgfzzd522vhttps://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mvnimc2xuc2dIn a conversation with @apetrossiants.bsky.social, Samuel Stein discusses his new book, A Right to Housing?, and talks reframing the conversation as a right to more than just housing, and “​​what it means to declare a right that we can’t act on.” https://publicseminar.org/2026/09/take-back-the-city/16 Sep 2026 15:51 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mvnimc2xuc2dhttps://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mvic5o33522zJeff Dolven explores the history and meaning of that most taken-for-granted of linguistic building blocks, the sentence, and asks if it might not be possible to imagine a new technic for writing. @socres.org https://publicseminar.org/2026/09/the-end-of-the-sentence/14 Sep 2026 14:12 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mvic5o33522zhttps://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3muzguaz6ek24What do skateboarding, John Waters, Pee-wee Herman, and Jackass have in common? For Kayley Cassidy, all four embody freedom, both bodily and from the nebulous concept of “taste.” https://publicseminar.org/2026/09/dropping-acid/08 Sep 2026 16:27 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3muzguaz6ek24https://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3muuj7jf32s25“Almanza makes clear that even as we work toward a future where prisons are not needed, we must reconsider how we confine people in the present. Abolition, that is, does not happen overnight” —Emma Robertson on Emily Almanza’s debut book, The Price of Mercy https://publicseminar.org/2026/08/how-to-incentivize-justice/06 Sep 2026 17:25 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3muuj7jf32s25https://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mupavdtvus26Thomas Liess and William Milberg argue that Trump’s latest tariffs are not the altruistic tool to fight forced labor they claim to be, but a self-serving way to “refill the US tariff revenue coffers." https://publicseminar.org/2026/08/tariffs-to-eliminate-forced-labor/04 Sep 2026 15:13 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mupavdtvus26https://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3msgklvv5is2rSpeaking with Austin Tannenbaum, @ajawoods.bsky.social , author of The Cultural Marxism Conspiracy, explores how a once-fringe far-right belief became a “political weapon” for conservatives like Ted Cruz. @versobooks.bsky.social https://publicseminar.org/2026/07/the-cultural-marxism-bogeyman/06 Aug 2026 17:22 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3msgklvv5is2rhttps://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mrzzv4qy7c2eNancy K. Miller discusses autofiction, internet-speak, and other literary developments of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, asking: As modernism transformed the novel, will artificial intelligence now reframe the memoir genre? @socres.org https://publicseminar.org/2026/07/the-new-millennium/01 Aug 2026 17:51 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mrzzv4qy7c2ehttps://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mrv667jhvk23In her review of Ben Lerner’s latest novel, Transcription, Elena Rotzokou explores how the pursuit of an exact recording can obscure the messy realities of family and friendship. https://publicseminar.org/2026/07/transcription-review/30 Jul 2026 19:25 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mrv667jhvk23https://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mrseayw6zk2o“The device of ventriloquism is awkward . . . it involves both distancing and intimacy.” — @lanalin.bsky.social speaking with Katie Pruden on writing from her partner’s perspective in The Autobiography of H. Lan Thao Lam. @dorothyproject.bsky.social https://publicseminar.org/2026/07/interview_the-autobiography-of-h-lan-thao-lam-em/29 Jul 2026 16:36 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mrseayw6zk2ohttps://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mrnrgysjf22uBig tech jostles for market access, energy, and the most valuable resource of all, the state, writes Nolan Young in a review of Nick Srnicek’s new book, Silicon Empires: The Fight for the Future of AI. @politybooks.bsky.social https://publicseminar.org/2026/07/the-silicon-empires-interregnum/27 Jul 2026 20:48 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mrnrgysjf22uhttps://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mrg6wvsfjk2r“Hate expressed across different structural positions is received entirely differently: pathologized in some, legitimized in others.” —L. Zhang on Şeyda Kurt’s new book, Hate: The Uses of a Powerful Emotion @versobooks.bsky.social https://publicseminar.org/2026/07/against-peace-and-love/24 Jul 2026 20:29 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mrg6wvsfjk2rhttps://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mraohbkgo226Shere Hite’s 1976 survey of women’s sex lives “broke the story that sex was not just a private affair between two people.” Speaking with Rachel Potter, Rosa Campbell discusses her new book on Hite, The Book That Taught the World to Orgasm and Then Disappeared. https://publicseminar.org/2026/07/re-revolutionizing-the-female-orgasm/22 Jul 2026 15:50 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mraohbkgo226https://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mr6hohrvx22nIn a conversation with Gil Bittner, Thomsen discusses how language deployed in the name of queerness and reproductive justice can end up reinforcing the very structures it is meant to challenge. @ucpress.bsky.social https://publicseminar.org/2026/06/queer-reproductive-justice/21 Jul 2026 18:44 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mr6hohrvx22nhttps://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mr3x6vuuh22oAs American public health infrastructure struggles to contain the parasitic infection cyclosporiasis, we return to a 2020 piece covering the nearly hundred-year history of conservative opposition to funding social programs. https://publicseminar.org/essays/social-programs-are-not-socialism/20 Jul 2026 18:43 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mr3x6vuuh22ohttps://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mqrs6hfbc22u“The visitor is surrounded by robots, aliens, and cyborgs in all directions. The wealth of content is both a nod to and a strain on attention spans in our current technological age.” —Yazan Ashqar on the New Museum’s exhibition New Humans: Memories of the Future https://publicseminar.org/2026/07/review-new-humans-at-the-new-museum/16 Jul 2026 17:47 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mqrs6hfbc22uhttps://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mq5y2mmwo22nIn her review of Charlotte Strange’s latest chapbook, Strange Biology, Colette Estelle explores how Strange borrows online, medical, and marketing language about the microbiome to question political resistance, illness, and the body. https://publicseminar.org/2026/06/gut-feeling/08 Jul 2026 20:39 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mq5y2mmwo22nhttps://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mplqb2tvuk2ySiobhan Kattago reflects on Jeffrey C. Goldfarb’s latest book with an analysis of how our current state of “neo-totalitarianism” must be fought through openness tempered by a critical awareness of when compromise becomes collaboration. @ceu-press.bsky.social https://publicseminar.org/2026/05/goldfarb-neototalitarianism/01 Jul 2026 14:32 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mplqb2tvuk2yhttps://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mpjbucegzk2z“This right to comfort could both be language to think about the right to air conditioning in prisons [and] it could also help us think about what an abolitionist world might look like.” —Anna Terwiel talks to Madeline Trice on her book Prison Abolition for Realists https://publicseminar.org/2026/06/practical-prison-abolition/30 Jun 2026 15:09 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mpjbucegzk2zhttps://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mpgxiaaaks2xAs Tamir Bell, Paul Draus, and Anna Müller watched Rwandans grapple with reintegrating perpetrators of the 1994 genocide, they witnessed how trust, vulnerability, and the space for return enables justice. https://publicseminar.org/2026/06/reconciliation-in-rwanda/29 Jun 2026 16:58 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mpgxiaaaks2xhttps://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mpe5trr75s2b“Any effort to quantify historical judgment involves choices about what counts, how it is weighted, and how it is presented.” —Larry Schwartz on the problem with C-SPAN’s presidential ranking system https://publicseminar.org/2026/06/c-span-presidential-historians-survey/28 Jun 2026 14:13 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mpe5trr75s2bhttps://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mpbqts3shk24In a review of Attensity!, a new manifesto on the value of living offscreen, Rachel Potter wonders about the efficacy of a book that invokes NPCs and lizard people in its quest to get us off our phones. https://publicseminar.org/2026/06/attensity-book-review/27 Jun 2026 15:15 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mpbqts3shk24https://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mp53b2lrl22eOn The New School’s past attempts to sell its murals by José Clemente Orozco, Gil Bittner writes that deaccessioning works that were made for specific universities is to betray “the school’s educational mission and intellectual legacy.” https://publicseminar.org/2026/06/when-the-new-school-tried-to-sell-the-orozco-room/25 Jun 2026 18:38 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mp53b2lrl22ehttps://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3moxhxqeics2t“When does a simulacrum mark erasure—and when does it mark latency? When does it hollow out democratic life—and when does it preserve the grammar of its possible return?” —Elzbieta Matynia on how democracy can survive (or expire) through memory https://publicseminar.org/2026/06/simulacra-of-democracy/23 Jun 2026 13:10 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3moxhxqeics2thttps://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mov5g2xqjc2gThe late nun-turned-pop-artist Corita Kent’s legacy is one of engagement with radical change in both art and politics. Julie Allan explores the artist’s life and career in her review of the newly reissued Someday Is Now: The Art of Corita Kent. https://publicseminar.org/2026/06/the-good-word-according-to-sister-corita-kent/22 Jun 2026 14:56 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mov5g2xqjc2ghttps://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3motbynlpi226As our longtime executive editor James Miller retires, he leaves us with a parting question: What if modern politics isn’t a battle of Left versus Right but between “capitalism and governance”? https://publicseminar.org/2026/06/has-conservatism-outlived-its-usefulness/21 Jun 2026 21:12 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3motbynlpi226https://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3monxuzfccc2k“Despite its leaders’ efforts to distance themselves from Trump’s anti-immigrant excesses, Canada is not the immigration utopia it purports to be.” —Rachel Charney McKenzie on Canada’s increasingly hostile policies for asylum seekers https://publicseminar.org/2026/06/roxham-canada-immigration-law/19 Jun 2026 18:28 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3monxuzfccc2khttps://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3mokvp3yplc22Dominick DeJoy discusses the paradox of the Artist Status in Belgium: a much-needed social safety net that obscures the growing casualization of cultural labor. https://publicseminar.org/2026/06/belgium-artist-status/18 Jun 2026 13:11 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3mokvp3yplc22https://bsky.app/profile/publicseminar.bsky.social/post/3moiyl7wd422o“No matter the outcome of this war, one result is already clear: The United States is more isolated in the world than ever before.” —Sylvia Taschka on the Trump administration abandoning even the pretense of democratic idealism. https://publicseminar.org/2026/05/the-waning-of-the-american-illusion/17 Jun 2026 18:57 +0000at://did:plc:z2dtftobjjcamjxp76j4btbe/app.bsky.feed.post/3moiyl7wd422o