Éric Vuillard, Leïla Slimani, and Gaël Faye, three of this year's nominees for the Albertine Prize, which 'aims to highlight five new works by authors from the many countries where French is spoken,' recently stopped by the Co-op late last year to talk about their honored work and that of others on our blog. Browse the Co-op's display of Awards-finalists in store and online, and vote on Albertine website before April 30th.
Further reading:
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Open Stacks returns with historian Pamela Toler on women for whom battle was not a metaphor, while positing the use of story in shaping shared history. Meanwhile, feminist-vegan advocate Carol J. Adams deconstructs the narrative surrounding hamburgers and other animal sourced foods, and how eating, like reading, is always political. Plus, Co-op booksellers weigh in on the glut, guilt, and glory of biting off more than most readers can chew when it comes to ARCs (aka, advance reader copies).
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On our Front Table this week, explore the relation of aesthetics and politics, including a study of the use of portraits in women's suffrage movements, a sublime piece of nature writing on the urgency of ecological crisis, questions about the politics of the sentence as a literary form, and an inquiry into the work of art in the age of AI. Find the following titles and more at ...
On our Front Table this week, question whether contemporary practices are natural and necessary or contingent and contestable. Start with explorations of motherhood: from a study of its transformations over time, to an argument that the frameworks for studying middle class mothering are inadequate to the specificities of black experience. Then consider attempts to denaturalize hierarchy and the state as social and political forms. Find the following titles and more at semcoop.com.
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On our Front Table this week, explore the constitution of gendered subjectivity: from the insurgent desires and new intimacies of early twentieth-century black women, to the control of women's bodies through the mobilization of maternity in post-9/11 national security discourses. Find the following titles and more at ...
On our Front Table this week, explore the making of space and its relation to commerce. Start with a history of the longest road in the world and the attempt to unite the Americas. Consider food transportation networks and the contradictions between efficiency and consumer romanticism. Then examine the expropriation of native lands and early forms of urban planning as preconditions for the emergence of capitalism in the United States. Find the following titles and more at semcoop.com.
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From autobiography to music criticism, poet, essayist, and cultural critic Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib walks the floor of the Seminary Co-op in conversation with the books that served as muses of his love letter to A Tribe Called Quest, Go Ahead in the Rain. Oral historian and civil rights activist Timuel D. Black, Jr. shares his long-awaited memoir, Sacred Ground.
This episode, Hanif Abdurraqib joins us in the stacks, sharing his favorite works on the Co-op shelves as well as some that influenced his new work, ...
On our Front Table this week, explore the relations between gender and capital, including the role of mid-century entrepreneurs of gay culture, and interviews with a counter-cultural icon on pop and feminism. Also find the end of American exceptionalism in the closing of the frontier, and the end of human exceptionalism in the collapse of the divide between music and naturally occurring sound. Find the following titles and more at semcoop.com....
In Women Warriors, historian Pamela Toler examines the stories of historical women for whom battle was not a metaphor: using both well known and obscure examples, drawn from the ancient world through the twentieth century and from Asia and Africa as well as from the West. Looking at specific examples of historical women warriors, she considers why they went to war, how those reasons related to their roles as mothers, daughters, wives, or widows, peacemakers, poets or queens—and what happened when women stepped outside their accepted roles to take on other identities. She considers the ways in which their presence on the ramparts or the battlefield has been erased from history and looks at the patterns and parallels that emerge when we look at similar stories across historical periods and geographical boundaries. She looks at ordinary women who did extraordinary things...
On our Front Table this week, explore representations of power and resistance, including the role of art in constituting ecological consciousness, a famous author's newly discovered allegory of a young woman's rebellion, a reconstruction of political society in pre-modern South India, and a powerful collection from two photojournalists at the heart of the protests for LGBTQ rights surrounding the Stonewall Riots. Find the following titles and more at semcoop.com.
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