Reviewed: Ahmed, Sara. The Promise of Happiness. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010 In her sweeping new work The Promise of Happiness, Sara Ahmed provocatively challenges the idea of happiness as a necessary social good. Ahmed delivers a compelling and engrossing argument about … Continue reading “The Promise of Happiness”
Reviewed: Fernandes, Sujatha. Who Can Stop the Drums?: Urban Social Movements in Chávez’s Venezuela (Durham: Duke Univeristy Press, 2010) Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez is known for his popularity among the urban poor: they’ve provided a major voting bloc in three victorious national … Continue reading “Comrades in the Barrio”
Reviewed: Menand, Louis. The Marketplace of Ideas. New York: W.W. Norton & Co Ltd, 2010. Louis Menand’s The Marketplace of Ideas offers suggestions for revamping liberal education at a time when the liberal arts seem increasingly irrelevant to incoming freshmen. 1 Andrew Scull’s notorious hatchet job … Continue reading “Liberal Arts: Lurching towards Obsolescence?”
Reviewed: Adrian Heathfield and Tehching Hsieh, Out of Now: The Lifeworks of Tehching Hsieh (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009) Tehching Hsieh, One Year Performance: Art Documents, 1978-1999 (DVD-ROM); available for purchase at www.one-year-performance.com. While the artist Tehching Hsieh has enjoyed … Continue reading “Out of Now: The Lifeworks of Tehching Hsieh”
Reviewed: Tim Lawrence, Hold On to Your Dreams: Arthur Russell and the Downtown Music Scene, 1973-1992 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009). David Suisman, Selling Sounds: The Commercial Revolution in American Music (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009). I began reading these two … Continue reading “Listening at the End of the Twentieth Century”
