Month: April 2015

  • Obama’s Mother Books & Ideas 2009-05-20 Gloria Origgi The American presidential election was won by a woman: Stanley Ann Dunham. Born in 1942, she died of cancer in 1995, shortly after turning 52, and thus without having seen her visionary dream realized: the election of her son, Barack Hussein Obama, as 44th President of the…

  • “I was born in this country and I grew up here, and I could only speak Japanese. This is my home country; it’s not a matter of ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes,’ ” she said simply. “Since my dad is an American, I look like a foreigner, so I used to think, ‘It’s cool having U.S. citizenship,’…

  • Race and Republicanism Books & Ideas 2015-02-23 (Originally published in laviedesidees.fr on February 17, 2014.) Dominique Schnapper, Director of Studies École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris, France Translated by (with the support of the Florence Gould Foundation): Michael C. Behrent Though race is socially constructed, it nonetheless really exists: consequently, Magali Bessone argues,…

  • Meeting Miss Universe Japan, the ‘half’ who has it all The Japan Times 2015-04-19 Bay McNeil Star-struck: Baye McNeil meets Miss Universe Japan, Ariana Miyamoto, at The Japan Times offices in Tokyo. | OLGA GARNOVA I felt an almost star-struck excitement at the chance to interview the newly crowned Miss Universe Japan, Ariana Miyamoto. I…

  • Reading Racist Literature New Yorker 2015-04-13 Elif Batuman, Staff Writer Of the many passages that gave me pause when I first read “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” in high school, the one I remember the most clearly is this conversation between Connie, Clifford, and the Irish writer Michaelis: “I find I can’t marry an Englishwoman, not even…

  • Legacies of war The Washington Post 2015-04-17 Annie Gowen, Bureau chief — New Delhi Linda Davidson, Photography Forty years after the fall of Saigon, soldiers’ children are still left behind Vo Huu Nhan was in his vegetable boat in the floating markets of the Mekong Delta when his phone rang. The caller from the United…

  • Today it’s taken for granted that people of all ethnic groups should be treated equally in the armed forces and elsewhere. But as Leslie Gordon Goffe writes, during World War One black officers in the British armed forces faced a system with prejudice at its core.

  • Misty Copeland The 100 Most Influential People Time 2015-04-16 Nadia Comăneci, Five-time Olympic gold medalist Ballet’s breakout star Like all gymnasts, I’ve done some ballet—it’s a part of our program. And people don’t realize the tremendous amount of time and work you have to put in to do the maneuvers they do. Ballerinas like Misty…

  • One Drop of Love at New York University New York University’s Skirball Center for the Performing Arts 566 LaGuardia Place New York, New York 10012 Friday, 2015-04-17, 20:00 EDT (Local Time) One Drop of Love is a multimedia solo show written and performed by Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni. It asks audiences to consider: how does our…

  • Jennifer Lisa Vest to explore ‘post-racial present’ at Women’s and Gender Studies Symposium Report: Faculty/Staff Newsletter Illinois State University 2015-04-02 Rachel Hatch, Editor Performing artist and scholar Jennifer Lisa Vest will be the keynote speaker for the 20th annual Women’s and Gender Studies (WGS) Symposium. Vest will present Black Lives Matter: [Trans]Gender Violence, Disability, and…