Paul Laurence Dunbar March 22, 2023 A major poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872–1906) was one of the first African American writers to garner international recognition in the wake of emancipation. Read More
Arthur V. Evans on The Lives of Beetles March 20, 2023 With some 400,000 species, beetles are among the largest and most successful groups of organisms on earth, making up one-fifth of all plant and animal species. Read More
Listen in: Algorithms for the People March 15, 2023 Artificial intelligence and machine learning are reshaping our world. Police forces use them to decide where to send police officers, judges to decide whom to release on bail, welfare agencies to decide which children are at risk of abuse, and Facebook and Google to rank content and distribute ads. Read More
How to see the world, by Nathaniel Hawthorne March 15, 2023 Sitting before a lake one summer, Nathaniel Hawthorne took a newspaper from his pocket and began to read. His object was not to catch up on the news but to play a trick—to lull nature into a false sense of security, to make it think he was not perceiving the world around him, so he could look up suddenly and see the trees for how they really are. Read More
Pi is magic March 14, 2023 Pi is magic. It is a number that is infinite, universal, transcendental, and irrational. It appears everywhere, and my mathematician friends tell me that Pi is as close to religion as you can get in math. Read More
Office Hours with Kimberly Kay Hoang March 14, 2023 This month, I am delighted to bring you Office Hours with Kimberly Kay Hoang, author of Spiderweb Capitalism. She has some excellent book recommendations, she offers valuable career advice for graduate students and junior faculty alike, and she shares a story that illuminates how a single conversation can completely change the trajectory of one’s research. Read More
On spiny ants and the rising tide March 11, 2023 In the mangrove forest mudflats Down Under, a worker ant cautiously extends her antennae. What is the expansive substance before her? Tap, tap, tap. Water! Read More
Laurence Packer on Bees of the World March 09, 2023 The archetypal bee is the western domesticated honey bee (Apis mellifera)—which is just one among over 20,500 different species of bees. Few realize there are so many species or that our honey bee is such an unusual one. Read More
The Influencer Industry March 07, 2023 Before there were Instagram likes, Twitter hashtags, or TikTok trends, there were bloggers who seemed to have the passion and authenticity that traditional media lacked. Read More
Books to read during Women’s History Month March 02, 2023 Throughout Women’s History Month in March, we will highlight books by and about women who have pushed boundaries, affected change, redefined roles, or who have complicated our understanding of what it means to be powerful. Read More
What your publisher wishes you knew March 02, 2023 One of the scariest parts of the publishing process, at least for some people, is promotion, i.e., all the things that you and your press will do to make sure people are aware of your book when it’s published and hopefully read it. Read More
Marion Turner on The Wife of Bath March 01, 2023 Medieval women led varied, interesting, risky lives. They worked in a wide variety of jobs, were economically active, and were often independent. This is the world in which Chaucer’s Wife of Bath–one of the most famous and enduring female characters in English literature–was born. Read More
In Dialogue: What is misunderstood about Blackness? February 27, 2023 For decades, ‘Blackness’ has been a crucial political and cultural category that grounds a public discourse on cherishing a robust historical tradition and systemically uprooting white supremacy. Read More
Meaning and the hard problem of life February 21, 2023 In the middle of the twentieth century something happened to the meaning of “meaning.” Until then meaning had been associated with concepts, definitions, and language—and so associated strongly with the human animals who hold concepts, define things, and speak. But now it came to be connected to a term, information, that was sponsoring revolutions in areas from computation to biology. Read More
Why democracy belongs in artificial intelligence February 21, 2023 Most of the real harms AI systems can cause—but also the opportunities they can afford—are nothing to do with robots taking over the world or self-generating AI systems. They are to do with what, how, when, and why we should use powerful predictive tools in the decision-making systems of our political, social, and economic organizations. Read More
