News

Some highlights of Public Humanities–affiliated faculty,
graduate students in the certificate program, and alumni:

The January 25 Public Humanities and Yale Review co-sponsored event, Poetry in the Time of War was attended by some 100 hundred students and faculty across campus. Poet Ilya Kaminsky began the event with a reading from his award-winning collection Deaf Republic. Following the reading, Leah Mirakhor, Lecturer in American Studies and in Ethnicity, Race, and Migration, who organized the event, served as moderator for a conversation between Kaminsky and historian Marci Shore, where they reflected on the way poetry has long been a survival tool, the importance of translating the work of Ukranian poets, and how his poems try to illuminate both the beauty and horror experienced during war. Students asked Kaminsky about the ways in which writing poetry intersected with living a meaningful life and how to think about the work of craft and form as they write. 

Ned Blackhawk's new book The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History (Yale University Press, forthcoming in April 2023) was named one of The Washington Post's "Books to Read in 2023." Blackhawk, the Howard R. Lamar Professor of History and American Studies, offers a retelling of U.S. history that acknowledges the enduring power, agency, and survival of Indigenous peoples, yielding a truer account of the United States and revealing anew the varied meanings of America.

David Blight, the Sterling Professor of History, of African American Studies, and of American Studies, has published an essay in The New York Times Magazine: "Was the Civil War Inevitable?" Blight's piece traces the path to disunion in the 1850s — and the lessons it holds for our own era of deep division. 

Michael Denning, the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of American Studies and Professor of English and Ethnicity, Race, & Migration, appeared on Jacobin magazine's podcast The Dig to discuss the life and work of Italian communist leader and theorist Antonio Gramsci. Read a full transcript and find the audio link here.

Roderick Ferguson, the William Roberston Coe Professor of Women's, Gender, & Sexuality Studies and Professor of American Studies, has published a new op-ed, "Fear of a Black-Studies Planet" in the Chronicle of Higher Education. The piece addresses the Florida Department of Education’s attempts to prohibit Advanced Placement high-school courses on African American studies. 

Beverly Gage, Professor of History & American Studies, published an article in The New Yorker on her experience seeking medical care for a rare genetic mutation: "Nobody Has My Condition But Me." 

Langdon Hammer, the Niel Gray, Jr. Professor of English, has published "Eliot Among the Ruins," an essay for The Yale Review on the legacies of T. S. Eliot's 1922 poem The Waste Land.

Daniel Martinez HoSang, Professor of Ethnicity, Race, and Migration and American Studies, and Joe Lowndes of the University of Oregon have published a co-authored article in The New Republic: "How Right-Wing Candidates of Color Delivered the House to Republicans."

Matthew Frye Jacobson, Director of Public Humanities and Sterling Professor of American Studies, African American Studies, and History, has published Dancing Down the Barricades: Sammy Davis Jr. and the Long Civil Rights Era: A Cultural History (University of California Press, 2023). Through the lens of Sammy Davis Jr.'s six-decade career in show business—from vaudeville to Vegas to Broadway, Hollywood, and network TV—Dancing Down the Barricades examines the workings of race in American culture. 

Alice Kaplan, the Sterling Professor of French and Director of the Whitney Humanities Center, and Laura Marris have co-authored a new book, States of Plague: Reading Albert Camus in a Pandemic (University of Chicago Press, 2022).

Tavia Nyong'o, the William Lampson Professor of Theater and Performance Studies, Professor of American Studies and African American Studies, and Curator of Public Programming at the Park Avenue Armory, co-organized "Making Space at the Armory," a symposium on "Sound & Color—The Future of Race in Design" that ran January 14–15 at the Armory. Nyong'o also recently published "Don’t Techno For an Answer," an article on techno music, race, and sexuality for e-flux Journal.

Caleb Smith, Professor of English and of American Studies, has published Thoreau's Axe: Distraction and Discipline in American Culture (Princeton University Press, 2023). In Thoreau’s Axe, Smith explores the strange, beautiful archives of the nineteenth-century attention revival—from a Protestant minister’s warning against frivolous thoughts to Thoreau’s reflections on wakefulness at Walden Pond.

As always, we welcome any news submissions from the Public Humanities at Yale community, including publications, events, career updates, and anything else you'd like to share! Send us a note at publichumanities@yale.edu.

Puzzling The Humanities

Click the "START THE PUZZLE" button below to play this month's crossword puzzle: "The Heart of Elm City." This puzzle was created by Matthew Stock, Yale College '18.

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