Perspectives on the political scene, public discourse, and matters of policy that are making the world around us.
My childhood church was on Dylann Roof’s short list. During his trial, it was revealed that Roof had conducted research about churches in South Carolina’s Richland County and identified five possible targets for his murderous rampage. He later selected Charleston, in part because he had heard that the city had a large Black population. The…
I study the history of rhetoric, something that has made me intimately, painfully aware of the long history of hysteria around the idea of a woman speaking in public. The stubborn persistence of this hostility towards female speech is everywhere in evidence—as just one example, take the online and print harassment of the classicist Mary…
On the Tuesday before Inauguration Day, a fake news cycle briefly claimed that the poem “Pibroch for the Domhnall,” by Joseph Charles MacKenzie, would be the official poetry selection for Donald Trump’s inaugural ceremony. The poem — which seems to have been written to praise Trump, but was not composed at his request nor ever…
Recently I saw a brilliantly chilling local production of Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins. This musical, which grants the stage to the men and women who have attempted and, in four instances, succeeded in assassinating the President of the United States, is usually modified by the word “controversial.”.The show’s inaugural run in 1990-91 lost momentum amid surging…
Avidly is edited by two 19c Americanists. We are happy to host this important fundraising request. –Eds. We are a group of scholars who want to collectively raise funds to help people suffering in Haiti. As scholars of the Americas, with links to the Caribbean and other postcolonial nations, we feel a historical debt to…
Dearly beloved We are gathered here today To get through this thing called “life” Electric word, life It means forever and that’s a mighty long time -Prince and the Revolution, “Let’s Go Crazy” (1983) What kinds of narratives do we tell others, and tell ourselves, to get through this thing called life? This…
On Monday night, Michelle Obama painted a picture of America’s political foundations that many still try to paper over. “I wake up every day in a house built by slaves,” she described with emotion, offering an insight into the intertwined histories of White supremacy and Black labor, which are both symbolized and made material fact…
My kid vomits his way through the night of the referendum. Sometimes life gives you all the metaphors you need. I move around with towels and glasses of water by the blue light of the laptop open on the kitchen table. The kid sleeps in my arms, moaning. Things I took for granted are in…