“If we’ve learned anything from revolutionary history, it’s that we won’t know how it will look until it happens.” Brilliant review by Matt on recent works on history of the left.
Books under review: 'The Commune Form: The Transformation of Everyday Life' by Kristen Ross and 'The Future of Revolutions: Communist Prospects from the Paris Commune to the George Floyd Uprising' by Jasper Bernes. Both published by Verso in 2024 and 2024 respectively. @versobooks.bsky.social
MTC contributing writer Matthew Beeber reviews recent books that return Paris Commune of 1871 as way of thinking about contemporary leftist uprisings and the future of revolution.
Maggie Boyd reviews Nina McConigley's debut novel HOW TO COMMIT A POSTCOLONIAL MURDER and the author's self-conscious attempt to foil certain novelistic expectations.
"The novel resists resolution at every turn, repeatedly identifying a satisfying story arc and then refusing to take the exit."
MTC is running a series of reading & writing groups this spring & summer. Our first reading group on the recent English translation of Punjabi novella Keeru by Fauzia Rafique hosted by Nico Millman & the translator Haider Shabaz will meet on April 15 @ 6pm ET.
Sign up here: tinyurl.com/yfvycxut
Congratulations to Jess! You can read her piece for MTC on precarity and platform hygiene MTC:
mid-theory.com/2025/04/03/o...
adaptation really IS everywhere!
Adaptation is everywhere! This spring MTC is running a new series called ADAPTATION ANXIETY, where new and returning writers consider literary adaptations from the last few years. To kick off our managing editor Martha Henzy takes on the unsexy absolution of the gothic monster.
MTC is running a series of reading & writing groups this spring & summer. Our first reading group on the recent English translation of Punjabi novella Keeru by Fauzia Rafique hosted by Nico Millman & the translator Haider Shabaz will meet on April 15 @ 6pm ET.
Sign up here: tinyurl.com/yfvycxut
Reading the pedagogy column at @mid-theory.bsky.social and finding it to be quite good!
mid-theory.com/category/ped...
Our monthly newsletter just went out. And because humans, committed and overcommitted humans do our homework the newsletter which goes out on February 23 can have "January" in its subject line. Check out what we have been up to and what is coming!
tinyurl.com/53tanrns
MTC is launching a pedagogy section, where we invite our colleagues to reflect on a question, an assignment, an activity, an experience, a challenge, or a joy they have had in the classroom. To kick off, Alec Abramson, a recent college graduate, discusses his adventures with "dramaturgy design."
Love this idea and encourage my HS pedagogy people to follow along!
There is also @johndownesangus.bsky.social incredible essay on why it matters to teach difficult books in high school and why "Now seems like a particularly terrible time to give up on trying to help students develop meaningful relationships with books."
You can also revisit some of the excellent pedagogy pieces we have previously published, including Sam Catlin's moving and precise meditation of John Berger's Ways of Seeing and the power of sitting with open-ended questions.
MTC is launching a pedagogy section, where we invite our colleagues to reflect on a question, an assignment, an activity, an experience, a challenge, or a joy they have had in the classroom. To kick off, Alec Abramson, a recent college graduate, discusses his adventures with "dramaturgy design."
This episode opens with an extraordinary—if also utterly banal, routine—story of a professional ethical lapse told by @bakaari.bsky.social, which you must hear. It's in the first four minutes. But you won't want to stop after that.
This is just another way of saying that I love mixed methods work, I guess. Archival research? Yes! Data collection? Yes! Quantitative analysis? Yes! Close reading? Yes! Case studies? Yes! Theoretical speculation? Yes! Let’s do it all why not
For MTC, our contributing writer Charline Jao writes about Shih-Ching Tsou’s new film LEFT-HANDED GIRL and the melodrama of late capitalism.
Illustrations by MTC Contributing Illustrator Carolyn Jao
"There is a lose-lose conundrum: male characters repeatedly make each female character’s life harder in some way (debt, romantic disappointment, etc.), yet the absence of a patriarch or “protector” is its own burden." Catch Charline Jao on Shih-Ching Tsou’s new film!
For MTC, our contributing writer Charline Jao writes about Shih-Ching Tsou’s new film LEFT-HANDED GIRL and the melodrama of late capitalism.
Illustrations by MTC Contributing Illustrator Carolyn Jao
Our colleagues at Lateral Journal are working on a special issue, titled "Performance Between Post-Truths." Check out their CfP at the link below and consider submitting.
For @newyorker.com, I wrote about Bruce Springsteen and also the guy from Staind: www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...
For the Saturday crowd.
For MTC, a reading group reflects on Tsai's WALKER, the literature & legacy of the flâneur, and why thinking needs straying.
"After metaphysics, the monk becomes the aesthete; the empty space left behind by the death of God is filled up by art, literature, and, of course, Tsai Ming-Liang’s cinema."
I ordered this book because of the review. Just a shout out to book reviews.
Today we have such a cool practice-focused piece out! The talented folks of Los Angeles Performance Practice let us peek behind the curtain and eavesdrop into one of their post- mortem conversations. It's also an experiment in coauthorship, with the Co-Directors of LAPP speaking as one voice! 🎭
Book clubs! This essay was so interesting—and I can’t wait to read the book. More convos about reading and what it means for all of us.
Today we have such a cool practice-focused piece out! The talented folks of Los Angeles Performance Practice let us peek behind the curtain and eavesdrop into one of their post- mortem conversations. It's also an experiment in coauthorship, with the Co-Directors of LAPP speaking as one voice! 🎭
