Features
Long Shadows Smoking Guns
I think many people who live in Downtown Providence and on the East Side would be surprised to discover that a …
Days of Our Lives
On soap operas and suffering
Like the plot of any good melodrama, my relationship to The Bold and the Beautiful was a matter of fate, and …
A High Stakes Game of Jenga
Or, how to move a house
The first time Guy Davis ever moved a house, things did not go as planned. He was told it would be …
City Upon a Hill
A study in the geopolitics of elevation
The Berkeley hills bound the city to the east. The ridge stretches up and down the eastern bank of the San …
Waterlog
On swamps, deserts, and sites of old selves
In Southern Appalachia, the forests have been burying themselves for millennia. The trees collapse where the forest floor puddles: thick floods …
Exit Interview with My Grandmother
On 76th between Columbus and Amsterdam, a ninety-two year old woman is reading Sally Rooney
My grandmother serves me small lunches she likes to call gourmet. Ham, whole wheat, mustard, assorted cookies my mother brings my …
Survivors Have Said "Me Too"
Now what should their perpetrators say?
content warning: sexual assault “Hey, I have a really serious question for you that hasn’t been addressed ever,” reads the text …
Among the Iguanas
On life and the pursuit of death in Guantánamo Bay
content warning: descriptions of death and torture In Taíno, an indigenous language of the Caribbean islands, Guantánamo means “land between the …
Scenic Depictions of Slavic Life
Building a language of irony in Latvian counter-culture
“The Slav Squat is not just about squatting down—no, no. It is about technique. About showing your Slav levels,” explains YouTube …
Bad Lieutenant
Passing, clocking, and the curious case of Catalina de Erauso
Doña Catalina de Erauso does not have much of a place in history. He is a footnote to the Spanish Baroque …
Dear Indy...
I want love but not sex. Help. I know it's a thing, but I don't know how to deal with it! …
What I Learned At Home
The Snakes The garden snakes in New England are harmless. The first one I saw was dead and on our driveway. …
A Second Latin Boom
Echoes and potential in a new aesthetic movement
Sometime in the mid 20th century, a series of novels in translation about the Yoknapatawpha County, William Faulkner’s microcosm of the …
Cooling Off
The first time I’m at their house, the notes of the ice cream truck erase the quiet haze of the summer …
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 …