Maybe the People Would Be the Times (Verse Chorus Press, 2020) could be described as a memoir in essay form. Collecting pieces from the past two decades, this book covers Luc Sante's childhood as an immigrant from Belgium, his engagement with the downtown arts scene that gave rise to punk, and the eventual downfall of a version of New York that may have been ... Show More
Aug 5
Sara Pappas, "Naturalism's Imaginary Museum, French Art, and the Eclectic Nineteenth Century" (U Toronto Press, 2024)
Naturalism's Imaginary Museum, French Art, and the Eclectic Nineteenth Century (University of Toronto Press, 2024) examines one of the most revered art historical narratives of Western art: the famous turning point for painting and sculpture usually emblematized by the works of É ... Show More
41m 31s
Aug 2
Paulina Banas, "Visualizing Egypt: European Travel, Book Publishing, and the Commercialization of the Middle East in the Nineteenth Century" (American University in Cairo Press, 2025)
Following Napoleon Bonaparte’s 1798 campaign in Egypt, new possibilities of travel and improvements in printing technology saw an emergence of publishing ventures in France and Britain dedicated to the production of albums and travel accounts featuring images of Muslim Egypt and ... Show More
51m 35s
Jul 27
Meredith Gamer, "City of the Gallows: Art and Execution in Eighteenth-Century London" (Yale UP, 2026)
City of the Gallows: Art and Execution in Eighteenth-Century London (Yale UP, 2026) uncovers the complex and often unexpected connections between eighteenth-century London’s sites of punishment and its spaces of art-making, instruction, and display. Drawing together a wide range ... Show More
1h 4m
Sep 2024
Lucy Sante & Juliet Jacques: I Heard Her Call My Name
Born in Belgium in 1954 to conservative, Catholic parents, Lucy Sante migrated to New York in the 1960s, where she became associated with the Bohemian artistic milieu of the city. After producing several highly acclaimed works of history such as Low Life and The Other Paris and t ... Show More
1h 3m
Jun 2021
Alisse Waterston and Charlotte Corden, "Light in Dark Times: The Human Search for Meaning" (U Toronto Press, 2020)
Today I spoke to anthropologist Alisse Waterston and artist Charlotte Corden to ask them questions, such as: What will become of us in these trying times? How will we pass the time that we have on earth? These questions draw on their gorgeously rendered graphic form book, Light i ... Show More
1h 28m
Apr 2025
Best of Design Matters: Lucy Sante
Renowned writer, cultural critic, and scholar of the demimonde Lucy Sante joins to discuss her career and a new memoir, “I Heard Her Call My Name,” reflecting on her transition and self-actualization in her sixties. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
59m 19s
Jun 2019
Ocean Vuong: Live at Politics and Prose
Like the stunning poems of his collection, Night Sky with Exit Wounds, Vuong’s kaleidoscopic first novel speaks from the heart of multi-generational PTSD, charting the fate of a Vietnamese-American family struggling to settle into life in Hartford, Connecticut. Vuong frames his n ... Show More
59m 31s
Dec 2022
Faces in the Crowd
In Faces in the Crowd, the narrative unfolds through multiple, fragmented perspectives, touching upon literary worlds, city life, and the ghosts that are present in our everyday lives. In this episode, John Green and Rosianna Halse Rojas discuss the symbolism of the orange tree, ... Show More
36m 57s
Nov 2022
Two poetry collections find beauty in unexpected places
Poet Franny Choi knows that marginalized communities have been facing apocalypses forever. But in her new book, The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On, she uses their survival as a way to look forward. In this episode, she tells NPR's Leila Fadel how understanding that pai ... Show More
20m 21s