The Archive
Refrigerators in the Future
The house is ours for one month, the insides cluttered with wind meters and amphibian figurines.We eat the breakfast at the …
University Students Demand an Equitable Pandemic Response
On April 21, Brown University announced that it will temporarily house healthcare workers who are keeping the Brown and Rhode Island …
Dear Dear
Reading ancestors into being
I know my great-great-great-great grandmother’s handwriting well. The stroke of her t comes after the vertical without crossing, leading the eye …
Week in Ghosts
Nowis agood time for ghost stories. One might pass quarantined-induced time digging out old, spooky books from the attic or recounting …
Music, Mischief, and Blisters
Wedding season commences in Sudan
Drumbeats loud enough to ripple through the Nile, caterers pressed to make over 200meals, children running around, ruining their fancy dresses …
The Urgency of Shame
A conversation with writer Garth Greenwell
Near the beginning of Garth Greenwell's first novel What Belongs To You, the narrator checks into a seedy hotel on the …
The EXTRA! Files
Volume 40 of the College Hill Independent marks, strangely enough, our 30th anniversary. Thirty years of Metro reporting, 600 Weeks Reviewed, …
Should Poetry Be Everywhere?
In defense of the home, being just that and nothing else
There is perhaps no better time for mandatory solitude than right now. We have all become master pretenders, comfortably encased in …
On Huikau
Tensions simmering in the melting pot
I have photos that help me recall the day my Aunty and Uncle took me to the summit of Maunakea around …
On Track?
Advanced academics and the pipeline to Classical
An increasingly broad body of social science research demonstrates that educational tracking—the separation of students by evaluated academic ability—disproportionately disadvantages low-income …
Doomed by Design
Unnatural disasters, from Katrina to COVID
Picture the forest from our favorite philosophical thought experiment—if a tree falls in the forest, but no one is around to …
American-ness, Ever-elusive
What does it mean to be Asian and American in the United States?
As the number of coronavirus infections and deaths increases in the United States, so too do hate crimes against Asians in …
When We Are Apart We Are Not Alone
A conversation with Fred Moten and Stefano Harney
In the first issue of the semester, we published areflection on Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s The Undercommons, a book that …
Consider the Lobster (Again)
Climate change puts RI lobsters in hot water
Peter Brodeur was only a few miles away from his home on the Narrow River in Narragansett, a seaside community in …
Bridging the Gulf
MoMA PS1 and the Art of War
MoMA PS1, the Museum of Modern Art’s contemporary outpost in Queens, occupies an outwardly unassuming space in a converted school building. …
Fire From Ashes
A conversation with sound maker Nicolás Jaar
Collage by Alex Westfall /Photo courtesy of Nico Jaar with drawings by Somnath Bhatt A twinkling piano riff grows louder as …
Get it in Writing
Maximalist Journaling in Crisis and Calmness
cw: abuse, gaslighting If someone you are about to date for a long time mentions that they have previously read their …
O, It’s Manifold
Poems and Flash Fiction
O, It’s Manifold I. They embalmed all the women in one Museum. Critics write, What a surfeit Of hidden beauty! Competence …
The EFF and the Anticolonial Struggle
What can students learn from South Africa's fastest-growing political movement?
It has been nearly three decades since Black people in South Africa emerged victorious from the bitter struggle against apartheid through …
Week in State Feuds
States whose biggest beef with each other typically involves passing a pigskin have gone one step further during this global pandemic …
Lost in Translation
Providence public schools, multilingual pedagogy, and the coronavirus crisis
ENTERING: The language of achievement and deficit Two comprehensive reports researching the conditions in the Providence Public School District (PPSD) came …
A Socially-Distanced 2020 Census
How Rhode Island is attempting to count every single one of its residents
The United States Census Bureau has historically declared April 1 as a national "Census Day," a time to unite the nation …
The In-Between Times
My mother used to tell me that we feel the blues because we’re Jews. We connect to the sound of suffering. …
Gold, Alone
On finding beauty in moments of solitude
I took a photo of the crown before I knew what it meant. It looked like a flimsy grade-school art project, …
Farm to Quarantine
I landed in Spain on March 3, the same day health officials reported the country’s first death from the coronavirus. At …
From Italy to New York
The first six weeks I spent in Bologna were nothing short of a dream: I was studying abroad in the culinary …
The Breakers
A proscenium play: Newport, Rhode Island. The set has lots of neo-baroque curlicues. Also metal pipes and gears, perhaps serving specific …
Sitting Places
An incomplete list of seats
DINING CHAIR Do you ever sit in someone else’s kitchen while they cook for you? You drink half a glass of …
Bracing for Crisis
The EU turns a blind eye to overcrowded refugee camps in Greece
“My name is Omar. I am from Syria. I am in Greece, on Leros island. This is the minor section, next …
Cities in Nonexistent Spaces
Notes on a virtual performance of Pauline Oliveros’ Lunar Opera
I was late for the soundcheck. Fifteen minutes after the hour, I was still seeking the perfect position for my computer …
Amazon Strikes
Warehouse Workers in Staten Island Inspire Walkouts Across the Country
It is often said that in times of crisis, people and nations show their true colors. Blurry lines sharpen as the …
Human Heart
Jan 28, 1986, 11:38 AM Hundreds of students have gathered in the Concord High School auditorium, eyes glued to the television …
Week in Shared Enemies
Of the many common turns of phrase flipped upside down by the current global pandemic, few have become as utterly meaningless …