Essays Archive | Los Angeles Review of Books

All Essays

I Was Determined to Remember: Harriet Jacobs and the Corporeality of Slavery’s Legacies
Koritha Mitchell discusses her research for a scholarly edition of Harriet Jacobs’s “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.”
Koritha MitchellMay 30, 2023
The Future of Doctoral Education: Four Provocations for a More Just and Sustainable Academy
Stacy M. Hartman and Bianca C. Williams call for a radical reimagining of the project of graduate education.
Bianca C. Williams, Stacy M. HartmanMay 29, 2023
- Education
What Not to Wear
Bharat Jayram Venkat explores the history of how the business suit became the unit of measurement for heat, in an excerpt from LARB Quarterly, no. 37: Fire.
Bharat Jayram VenkatMay 28, 2023
- LARB Lit
How “Gender” Went Rogue
Historian of science Sandra Eder shows how the word “gender” burst out of the clinic circa 1970 and went rogue.
Sandra EderMay 24, 2023
- Gender & Sexuality
What I Was Doing When I Was Writing About Descartes
Melissa Lo considers the link between Cartesian mind-body dualism and the “model minority” identity.
Melissa LoMay 22, 2023
- Memoir & Essay
Thinking in Ruins: On the Llano del Rio Experiment
In a preview of LARB Quarterly's upcoming issue, Earth, Laura Nelson explores the Llano del Rio failed commune experiment in the California desert.
Laura NelsonMay 21, 2023
- LARB Lit
Universal Solvent: Experiencing Mario
J. D. Connor reflects on the seemingly endless mutability of the Super Mario Bros. franchise.
J. D. ConnorMay 20, 2023
- Film
Grieving Redness in the West: Reading Malcolm Harris After Mike Davis
Michael Docherty on what Malcolm Harris’s history of Palo Alto owes to Mike Davis’s histories of Los Angeles.
Michael DochertyMay 20, 2023
- Politics
The Writers’ Strike Opens Old Wounds
Kate Fortmueller explains the deep roots of the latest WGA strike.
Kate FortmuellerMay 19, 2023
- Politics
The Work of the Audiobook
Alexander Manshel, Laura B. McGrath, and J. D. Porter discuss the economics and aesthetics of audiobooks.
Alexander Manshel, J. D. Porter, Laura B. McGrathMay 16, 2023
- Literary Criticism
The Shield That Protects Us: Monarch Butterflies, Biodiversity, and the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act
Priyanka Kumar writes that the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act is essential to preserving not only the monarch butterfly but also biodiversity itself.
Priyanka KumarMay 12, 2023
- Politics
On “Mothers of Sierra Leone”: Improving Maternal Health Through Storytelling
The team behind “Mothers of Sierra Leone” explains the shortcoming of “consciousness raising” in global maternal healthcare and examines how their documentary shorts provide useful films for the women of Sierra Leone.
Fathima Wakeel, Jordyn Pykon, Michael Kramp, Nahjiah MillerMay 10, 2023
- Film
Dignity Cannot Be Annexed
Jemimah Steinfeld presents excerpts from a compelling personal essay by Nariman Dzhelyal, a Crimean Tatar activist who is currently a political prisoner in Russian-occupied Crimea.
Jemimah Steinfeld, Nariman DzhelyalMay 7, 2023
- Politics
The Best of All Possible Wars: Warfare, Worldmaking, and the Creative Imagination
Anders Engberg-Pedersen asks what happens when the military imagines war as an art.
Anders Engberg-PedersenMay 6, 2023
- History
On Excavating the Novel and “Toni Morrison: Sites of Memory”
Jasmine Liu visits Princeton University Library’s exhibition of Toni Morrison’s archive.
Jasmine LiuMay 6, 2023
- Literary Criticism
The Artifice of AI: Why Machine-Generated Text Seems So Fake
Jeffrey Binder uses the rise of ChatGPT to explore the backstory of our unease with artifice.
Jeffrey M. BinderMay 5, 2023
- Science & Technology