A New Issue of Public Seminar

This week, Public Seminar and the nation said farewell to Congressman John R. Lewis.

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With this final issue of the summer, the staff at Public Seminar is taking a much-needed August break. For the rest of the month, we will publish a “syllabus” every week, a thematic compilation of articles that we hope you will read like a book — and perhaps use in your classes. Next Friday, we begin with the Black Lives Matter Syllabus.

Enjoy.

Monuments

• Marc Hertzman and Giovanna Xavier, “Let’s Build a Monument to Anastácia: An enslaved woman’s image that has traveled around the hemisphere can help us rethink slavery and memorialization.”

• Jeffrey Manual, “The Case of the Hijacked Statue of the Great Abolitionist: What the fate of the monument to Edward Coles in Edwardsville, Illinois, can tell us about the ironies of hoping that statues might tell a new American story.”

Classics Reconsidered

• Anthony Grafton, “Re-reading C. P. Snow: What the mid-century novelist and man of letters understood about being human in an uncertain world

Politics

• Simon Jones, “A Year of Boris Johnson:Only a handful of people would be mad enough to covet being prime minister at this particular point in British history, and one of them now inhabits Downing Street

• Eileen Hunt Botting, “Don’t Let Campuses Become Plague Dystopias: College and university presidents should have the courage to halt their reopening.”

• John Stoehr, “Are Americans Rethinking Who They Are? `Consumers’ and `taxpayers, can’t save a republic.”

Finance

• Janet Roitman and Andrew Moon, “Where Is the Risk in the COVID Economy? A look at shadow banking.”

• Marshall Auerback, “Even If Joe Biden Wins in a Blowout, the ‘Global Economy’ Is Not Coming Back.”

An Examined Life

• Susan Reverby, “Brother Doc,” a Co-Conspirator for Justice: For a physician who supported armed struggle in the 1970s and 1980s, a commitment to radical anti-racism was everything.”

Film:

• Dawnja Burris, “When Filming “On-Location” Is Filming “At-Home”: The pandemic has interrupted business as usual — but that might be good for your creativity

Books

• Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft, “The Enigma of Rescue: On a recent history of The New School for Social Research

• Julia Foulkes and Mark Larrimore, “The New School’s Leading Man: How Alvin Johnson reimagined higher education