Christine de Pizan and Women’s Tongues

Why do women bleed milk?

I am doing it again. Teaching Christine de Pizan’s The Book of the City of Ladies. As I always do, I asked at the beginning of class who knew the work before our “Philosophy and Literature” class. This time, a positive surprise! One student had been introduced to de Pizan’s ...
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Christine de Pizan and Women’s Tongues

Becca Rothfeld’s Essays in Praise of Excess

A celebrated young critic hungry for more than our contemporary culture typically offers

Like William Blake, Becca Rothfeld believes that “the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.”   A widely praised young critic (winner of the National Book Critics Circle Nona Balakian Prize for Criticism and the Robert B. Silvers Prize for Literary Criticism), Rothfeld is the nonfiction book critic for The ...
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Becca Rothfeld’s Essays in Praise of Excess

Thinking in Dark Times: Life, Death, and Social Solidarity

Living through war can transform how we engage with philosophy

This lecture was delivered as part of a benefit conference for the Ukrainian academy that Aaron James Wendland organized in March 2023 at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. The benefit conference was designed to provide financial support for academic and civic ...
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Thinking in Dark Times: Life, Death, and Social Solidarity

The Furies Reconsidered

A review of Elizabeth Flock’s new book on women and vengeance

Read as a book about how institutions disempower women, The Furies makes the kind of actions that the three characters take seem not only reasonable but necessary for their survival. ...

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The Furies Reconsidered