Briana Wall

The Middle Ages, at least as reimagined by the 1960s, offered a pre-capitalist, enchanted world of communes and troubadours. Although we now stereotype the Middle Ages aesthetic as a sort of grey porridge full of nuns, this isn’t accurate. Historian Jacques Le Goff describes “big jewels inserted into the boards of book-bindings, glowing gold object... See more

I’m often asked how I organize my days and I wish I had a great answer to offer, where I demonstrated writerly discipline and a well-organized day. Alas. Most weeks, I look at my calendar and I want to vomit at all the pastel shades filling up the blank canvas of each day. On Monday afternoons, I teach. Sometimes, I am in back-to-back meetings for ... See more

I think about this often in class, when students sometimes shut down in response to offensiveness in a work of art I see as having this kind of value. I find myself using two metaphors that are a little contradictory—or maybe not contradictory; maybe they’re two steps in a process. One is a metaphor of suspension. I don’t want to shut down my stude... See more

A CLOSER READ

Taking Offense

Reading through bad feeling

Garth Greenwell

Louisa Clement, Skin Interlacion 18, 2022. Courtesy the artist and Eigen + Art Gallery

I CAME TO ALL of Jane Austen’s novels late, and to Persuasion particularly so, finally discovering it in a graduate seminar on the long eighteenth century. By that time, I had fallen in love with... See more