Features
Top Down
An examination of the tradition of half-staff
Mark Barnes, Chief Property Manager of the Rhode Island Capitol Campus, might get the email from the Governor’s Office at 3:00 …
Glass House, Shattered
A walkthrough of Philip Johnson’s famed residence
We visited Philip Johnson’s Glass House on a chilly Friday morning in autumn. After multiple failed attempts to reserve a visit …
Muckrakers
Forty years ago, student journalists uncovered records of police brutality in Providence
content warning: graphic descriptions of police brutality In 1980, Steve Kohn returned to the offices of the Providence Human Relations Commission, …
Building my Ofrenda
Embodying ancestral knowledge in a scientific dystopia
Though Día de los Muertos is now over, I often think about the ofrendas, or altars, that my mom sets up …
No Student Left Behind
The road to cultural competency in CAPS and beyond
One phenomenon has seen steady rise on college campuses: the influx of international students, from an average of 600,000 in 2013 …
Items I Lost or Else Forgot While Moving Through
Mourning and melancholia in their transit
“Think of a word, any word. Let’s try coconut.” My old friend whose parents named her after a citrus gives me …
Walking on Eggshells
Tlatelolco, UNAM, and Mexico's resurgent student movement
content warning: state violence, gore, gender violence I am WhatsApping my friend Carolina on a Wednesday night in early October in …
Zoo (Dystopia)
A walk through the Roger Williams Zoo
I have been dreaming about seeing a Snow Leopard. My infatuation with animals started before I was born, when my brother …
Our Kind of People
Crazy Rich Asians and diasporic representation
There’s a particular moment in Jon M. Chu’s Crazy Rich Asians that has left me unsettled for the past few days. …
The Burden of Proof
Dr. Ford, #MeToo, and what we ask from survivors
content warning: sexual assault There were moments in Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s questioning last week when I had to close my …
Critically Making a Campus
RISD’s Prov-Wash gets a new look, but for whom?
“Have you been? It’s very space-agey,” I overheard in my first week back in Providence. 20 Washington Place, better known to …
Communicating Through Taste and Text
Cake fixes everything (I hope)
Prompted by a request from her parents, Rachel Gelmis received an optional drug test from her Alabama high school. As reported …
When Yes Means No
On the violence waged despite of, and through, consent
Four years ago, institutions of higher education across the country began switching out “No Means No” for a “Yes Means Yes” …
Playing in many forms
Tag, the club, and fake personas
On a recent February day, I checked the weather and saw that it was going to be unseasonably warm. In celebration, …
Means to a Beginning
The stakes of academic freedom in the context of the Palestine/Israel conflict
On Thursday, March 8, the Brown Middle East Studies department hosted a panel discussion titled “Permission to Speak: Boycott and Politics …
The Women Who Remember
On matriarchs and memory
content warning: sexual violence Someday your memory will leave the inside of my eyelids and I promise you will not exist …
White Dreams and Soiled Memories
content warning: sexual violence I walk outside and am met with morning dew in the grass and morning crust in my …
Set in Stone
Examining the stakes of transnational monuments
In 2016, the National Park Service, the National Capital Planning Commission, and the Van Alen Institute launched “Memorials for the Future,” …
Summer After Moonlight
On why we are glad Call Me By Your Name didn’t win Best Picture
Queer films represent a break from mainstream cinema, which is usually intent on depicting heterosexual romance. In the past few years, …
Imagining the Black Cowboy
Recovering an alternative history of the West
On a Wednesday afternoon, I’m sitting in the conference style classroom of my workshop in front of a dark wood table …
Chismeando con Ruben
A Conversation with Queer Xicano Chisme
In English, the word chisme translates to gossip. Chisme is a cultural practice in Latin American and diaspora communities, an implicit …
A Loss for Words
Do we have to change our language before we can change our ideas?
Contemporary debates on free speech, political correctness, and identity politics have all taken up language as a site of contention. Figures …
The Veil and What It Holds
Beyond a cultural relativist perspective
Rising nationalist sentiments in Western countries have put religious freedom under attack. With President Trump placing a ban on the entry …
Rainbow Saviors
On the politics of (not) coming out
cw: homophobia, sexual assault. The first accusation of sexual assault against Kevin Spacey surfaced on October 29, 2017 by actor Anthony …
Dear Indy...
Submit your questions anonymously for the Indy advice columnhere. Dear Indy, I’ve just been ghosted by my Tinder date. It feels …
All the Young Women
Lady Bird and shifting representations of teenage girlhood
content warning: sexual assault/harassment There’s a subplot in Greta Gerwig’s acclaimed new movie, Lady Bird, in which the titular protagonist’s best …
The Railroad Lie
Trains and nostalgia
In a May 1867 letter to the San Francisco Alta California, Mark Twain wrote: “A railroad is like a lie—you have …
Vinegar, not Jam
A magical, maximalist artist
“The Two of Swords! This card is something to fear. It means stability, equilibrium. Of course! I’m fucking terrified of stability,” …
A Constructed Divide
Puerto Rican migrants and the future of a people
There are few things more difficult to talk about, even fewer to be hopeful about, than the future of my island. …
Greater Welfare
Nixon’s Family Assistance Plan and the contemporary debate over Universal Basic Incomes
Since the Great Recession, proposals for a radical transformation of the American welfare state have appeared in think-tank proposals and newspapers …
PrEP Failure
Drugs and stigma in the ‘post-AIDS’ era
content warning: homophobia, racism In February of this year, several media outlets picked up a story about a gay man in …
No Clashes
One genealogy of state violence
content warning: sexual violence, suicide “To my daughter I will say, when men come, set yourself on fire.” –Warsan Shire, Teaching …
The Lights Coming Down
An oral history of Aurora
If you live in Providence, it is likely that you have attended an event at Aurora at some point during its …
El Pueblo Unido
Lessons from the Chilean student movement
content warning: police brutality Santiago de Chile, 2013. I clearly remember the first time I was arrested: it was a day …
Sound and then Fury
The azaan in the Islamophobic West
In a video posted on Twitter on September 13, White Woman A stares wide-eyed into her selfie-cam. The azaan plays loudly …
Breaking, Bread
How tradition dictates Russia's relationship to Belarus
In Saint Petersburg, Russia, the words ‘traditional cuisine’ stand guard on so many restaurant signs. They are so pervasive that to …
Mi Puerto Rico
The Cuban writer and revolutionary José Martí coined the term= “patria es humanidad”––homeland is humanity. After Hurricane María hit my island, …
Dear Indy...
Dear Indy, Thoughts on PDA? LB: Despite long being an object of public scrutiny, regulation, judgment, and fantasy, the thing about …
Bleach
What does it mean when East Asians go blonde?
cw: racism, suicide A couple of weeks ago, Kim Kardashian bleached her hair blonde—again. The first time was back in March …