Blog
July 26, 2024 - By Jim Hicks
The UMass4Palestine press conference in front of the Eastern Hampshire County Courthouse in Massachusett, July 17, 2024. Photo: courtesy of UMass FJP. On February 25, 2024, Aaron Bushnell, a member of the US Air Force, set himself on fire in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C. to protest the U.S. . . .
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July 25, 2024 - By Aline Nari, Translated by Joan Benham
Douglas Dunn on the cover of the first edition of Sally Banes’s Terpsichore in Sneakers (1980). Photographer: Robert Alexander. To better understand the origins of contemporary Italian dance, Italian critics, dancers, and choreographers are now examining the American presence in the Italian dance world of the 1970s.[1] In 1969 Fabio Sargentini inaugurated The Danza Volo . . .
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July 22, 2024 - By Franchesca Viaud
At first just one or two people watched the bears. Then they shared the bears with some of their friends and the friends started watching the bears. The friends told other friends who told other friends, and friendly acquaintances, and even strangers. These people told other people. After a while, everybody was watching the bears. . . .
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July 19, 2024 - By Amal Zaman
Photograph of Witness. Courtesy of the Author. “What’s the problem of women? Knowledge! What’s the problem of women? Their head, that’s why they want to cut their head.”—Nawal El Saadawi In the early morning of July 8, as Hurricane Beryl cast the coast of Texas in darkness and disarray, a statue was beheaded on . . .
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July 17, 2024 - By Franchesca Viaud
Here, the bodies of children. They died at dusk.Instead of bread, fed stones from the sling.Kept from shelter until their bodies stiffened.The sun failed to keep them warm.And she, the greatest sun, could not love them,because of the stones, because of the serpent.—translated from Waldo Williams’ “The Dead Children,” Volume 65, Issue . . .
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July 15, 2024 - By Franchesca Viaud
Late spring and early summer belongs to the delicate smell of lindens in bloom, covering the stench of violence and death in the city of Philadelphia. Every year, as the temperatures rise, so does the litany of guns at night, the refrain of a city intent on breaking your heart. Never enough branches and trunks . . .
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July 13, 2024 - By sabine broeck
schutzbunker she says sternly facing us on tagesshau public television paid with our taxes both parts of this untranslatable german noun a blatant lie there is no bunker in gaza for the maimed, hurt, terrorized, killed, abandoned, starving, crazy with terror and fear palestinian all-gender people and their children nor is there . . .
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July 8, 2024 - By Franchesca Viaud
Winter was standing behind him.It imitated his shadowAnd considered itself a tree.It was getting skinny.It felt cold.You’re like a wooden coat hanger prepared to move home.The hat and the four assembled seasonsWouldn’t follow you.They would remain in paper boxes, deepIn their sleep, dreamless and naked.The cat would stay to guard the home.—from . . .
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July 5, 2024 - By Darcy Buerkle
Editor’s note: Alon Confino, director of the IHGMS at UMass, died on June 27, after a long illness. Professor Buerkle offered the following remarks at his funeral on July 2. My name is Darcy Buerkle, I am a faculty member in the History department at Smith College and it is a great . . .
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July 4, 2024 - By Marsha Bryant
From the mountains and prairies, to ocean’s white foam:Hail the beers of America. Let your tastes roam!‘Twixt Atlantic, PacificCome brewers prolificWith tributes for toasting this spacious-skied home. So gallantly streaming, beers pourInto glasses and cups for the Fourth.From the crisp, from the tart,to the hoppy—the heartOf the country pumps out brews galore! . . .
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