Culture

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – After the dark year of 2020, I thought it might be nice to talk about poetry and rebirth today. The quatrains or Rubaiyat attributed to the medieval astronomer Omar Khayyam (d. 1131), four-line Persian poems, are often about renewal, and some make special mention of New Year’s Day (Now-Ruz in […]

Cartoon

‘I am that character’: New Marvel heroes battle underrepresentation of Native Americans in comics

Cronkite News Arizona PBS

By Johnny Messiha and McKenzie Allen-Charmley | ( Cronkite News) | – FLAGSTAFF – Asgard, Wakanda, Xandar and other intergalactic empires are well-known to comic book fans, but a new comic is hoping to bring readers back to Earth to learn about Indigenous heroes. Penned by Native American artists and writers, “Marvel’s Voices: Indigenous Voices […]

Democratic Party

Republicans have become the Party of Zombies and Loss at Polls won’t stop them from Coming for Biden

John Feffer

( Foreign Policy in Focus) – How else would you describe Americans who deny a pandemic that’s killed 250,000 people and the election that repudiated Trump? The 2017 film Bushwick begins like a lot of zombie flicks. An unsuspecting couple is walking through a subway station in the working-class neighborhood of Bushwick in Brooklyn. The […]

Juan Cole

An Evening with Juan Cole on the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam at Nicola’s/ Facebook

Juan Cole

Nicola’s Books, Ann Arbor: An Evening with Juan Cole Tuesday, Oct 27 2020 – 7:00 pm ET Our friend Juan Cole is joining us on Facebook LIVE to discuss his new book The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam A New Translation from the Persian. A Q+A will follow. ABOUT THE BOOK: A repository of subversive, joyous […]

Juan Cole

More Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam: ‘With soul afire, words flowing like a sea’

Juan Cole

In 1882 Edward Henry Whinfield (d. 1922) brought out a bilingual Persian and English edition of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, based on eight medieval manuscripts. It is really his own selection, since he admits he played down the wine poetry (!), and several of his manuscripts are late and Indian. Whinfield did not know […]

African-Americans

Taking the Next Knee: Is this Athletic Revolt For Real and Is It a Danger to Donald Trump?

Tomdispatch

By Robert Lipsyte | – ( Tomdispatch.com ) – Last year, when LeBron James described some of President Trump’s public statements as “laughable and scary,” Fox News commentator Laura Ingraham ordered the basketball superstar to “shut up and dribble.” LeBron responded thoughtfully by saying that her comment “resonated with me, but I think it resonated […]

Africa

Chadwick Boseman’s Wakanda: Afro-Futurism is in the Present

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Chadwick Boseman’s tragic death at the all too young age of 43 from colorectal cancer has been weighing on me the past couple of days. I am a fan. But I also am battling cancer, and I think I understand his incredible productivity in his last years, as he knew […]

Culture

Kanye West Offends Muslims by appropriating Angels of Death and Resurrection for his Sneaker Lines

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Muslim twittersphere was on fire this week with the news that Kanye West’s Adidas lines would offer two new sneakers, Yeezy Boost 350 V2 Israfil and Yeezy Boost 350 V2 Asriel. Israfil and Azrael are angels in the Islamic tradition. According to Dubai-based Alarabya, many Muslims found the names […]

African-Americans

Black Lives Mattering: HBO’s ‘Lovecraft Country’ demonstrates that Racism is the True Horror

The Conversation

By Guy Stephen Webster | – Lovecraft Country, a new series from HBO adapted from the 2016 novel by Matt Ruff, takes a critical look at the legacy of the controversial but classic horror writer, HP Lovecraft. By doing so it also sheds a light on the mode of literature he famously pioneered: weird fiction. […]