Semipublic Intellectual Sessions
October 7, 2021 5:00 pm — November 4, 2021 6:30 pm
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In celebration of our 10th birthday, LARB is hosting a virtual series which we’re calling the Semipublic Intellectual Sessions — a month-long festival of ideas more accessible and wide-ranging than an academic conference yet more penetrating and measured than a Twitter debate. We invite you to join us for a season of smart, timely conversations with over two dozen leading writers, scholars, and critics that reflects the energy, breadth, and commitments of LARB as a publication over the last decade. Conversations will cover subjects ranging from technology and misinformation to leaving academia, the criminal justice system to the place of criticism, with each asking the question of where and how we locate critical conversations, cultural exploration, and calls to decisive action. Every event will be 90 minutes long. The sessions will feature both lively conversation among the discussants and a real-time Q&A with the attendees. Download a full program guide here.
The series is a fundraiser for LARB, a 501(c)(3) reader-supported nonprofit. We invite attendees to make donations for access to each event to help make the work of our staff and contributors possible as we continue to publish great writing and podcasts for free to the public for the next ten years to come.
Series Pass: Donate $75 or more and receive a full season pass, including auto-registration for all five main sessions, a limited edition Semipublic Intellectual tote, and copy of the new Semipublic Intellectual issue of the LARB Quarterly Journal.
Individual Sessions: Sliding-scale donations ($5-50+) offer access to the individual sessions of your choice.
Sponsorship: Media and advertising sponsorship opportunities are available. Contact Advertising Director Bill Harper at bill[at]lareviewofbooks.org for more information regarding sponsorship.
THE LINEUP
Thursday, October 7 @ 5pm (PT)
From university classrooms, talk radio, and op-ed pages to Reddit, podcasts, Twitter, and more, sites of cultural conversation proliferate and grow ever more varied in scope, substance, and norms. What does it mean to cover culture or advocate change in this context? How has the emergence of so many new locations – and with them new critics and audiences – shaped, shattered, and meme-ified “the discourse”? Join the Los Angeles Review of Books for our inaugural Semipublic Intellection Session with cultural critics and writers Daphne Brooks (Liner Notes for the Revolution), Lexis-Olivier Ray (L.A. Taco), Lili Loofbourow (Slate), Sarah Marshall (You’re Wrong About), and Jesse McCarthy (Who Will Pay Reparations on My Soul?) on Thursday, October 7 at 5pm/8pm (PT/ET) to find out!
Thursday, October 14 @ 5pm (PT)
Where do critics come from, and where do they go? In many cases, careers in literary criticism begin in the university, and end up in diverse publications on either side of the public/academic divide. Join Andrea Long Chu (Females), K. Austin Collins (Rolling Stone), Lauren Michele Jackson (White Negroes, The New Yorker), and Christine Smallwood (The Life of the Mind) for a discussion of writing in and out of the academy, moderated by LARB Senior Editor Sarah Chihaya. What kinds of forms, arguments, and styles are made possible by breaking free from the spoken and unspoken rules of scholarly criticism? Conversely, upon leaving strictly academic writing, what might one miss?
Thursday, October 21 @ 1pm (PT)
Co-sponsored by the Thomas Mann House
A global pandemic, a national election, entire regions devastated by one natural disaster after another: new technologies have made it possible for us to track, grasp, and witness these large-scale phenomena in real time and in the palms of our hands. Tech platforms like Facebook and Twitter have encouraged a sense of community and mobilized action, even as they have facilitated the spread of misinformation and the formation of fissures in public life. How do we, as individuals and as communities, navigate technologies of information and misinformation? How much power do tech companies have in shaping public conversation, and how much power should they have? Join us for a conversation about these issues and more with writers and scholars Christoph Bieber (University of Duisburg-Essen), Safiya Noble (Algorithms of Oppression), and Anna Wiener (The New Yorker, Uncanny Valley), moderated by LARB Radio Hour hosts Medaya Ocher and Kate Wolf on Thursday, October 21 at 1pm/4pm (PT/ET).
Thursday, October 28 @ 5pm (PT)
The law is the frontline in our ongoing battle to “create a more perfect union.” The decisions of our courts, and the laws enacted by our legislatures, reflect both our best aspirations and our worst misdeeds. The question of how law aligns with or, too often, works against the cause of social justice is once again at the center of legal, political, and public debates. Join us for a conversation with Jarrett Adams, lawyer, advocate, and author of Redeeming Justice, and Loyola Law School Professor of Criminal Law, Laurie Levenson. Moderated by former LA Country District Attorney Gil Garcetti, the panel will discuss the ways that racism has systemically infected the criminal justice system, and review reform measures, both proposed and enacted.
Thursday, November 4 @ 5pm (PT)
When the Los Angeles Review of Books was founded in 2011, the profession of book reviewing was in crisis. Traditional venues — the book pages of newspapers — were shrinking and vanishing, edging out serious conversations about new publications. Inspired by the near-infinite vistas of virtual space, LARB sought to rekindle those conversations online. But has the web been a blessing for book reviewing, or has proliferation of venues, poor compensation, and the hunger for clicks diluted and compromised the practice? Join us to discuss these pressing questions with critics Aaron Bady, Jane Hu, Christian Lorentzen, Julian Lucas, Ismail Muhammad, and LARB’s Editor-in-Chief Boris Dralyuk.