Orientation leaders

It's Orientation week - new students and faculty are in the house! The New School is welcoming them with more than the usual info sessions: it's our centennial, of course. So there's special signage...

I found these somewhat underwhelming posters of our male "founders" in the lobbies of 66 W12th., 55 W13th and 2W13th; the ones destined for the UC and 6E16 - a Dewey surely! - were nowhere to be found.
Good thing I included a woman's image instead in remarks I made to Lang's 550 (!) incoming students (most of them women). Let Dorothy Payne Whitney, one of our foundresses, be their image of the school!

Curated!

The latest installment of our newer truer history of the New School is up! Here one of the curators of an exhibition for the centennial explains (and relishes) the paradoxes of commemorating a history of the new.

Turning

Just in time, our philodendron's putting out a final Brooklyn leaf.

Archaeology of knowledge

The moving-out part of moving is never fun. It's mortifying how much stuff one accumulates, even if one (thinks one) isn't into that. Even stuff that was worth keeping may have passed its expiration date since you put it away some- where. For a person in the book biz this hits especially hard with books which were relevant when boxed, but are now out of date. This describes many of the tomes I excavated from a wall of books I boxed two decades ago and haven't cracked open since. (They were covered by a very attractive Indian textile.) Sedimented but not quite fossilized: Japan, Princeton, Paris.

Temps perdus

Now tell me

As the death of Ann Snitow sinks in, people are sharing memories.

One, which I suspect will resonate with everyone who knew her: 
[Ella Boureau:] There was nothing like being invited over to Ann’s house to see her standing in the doorway, waiting to accept me with a big bear hug and an “Oh, my darling Ella!” There was nothing like the anticipation of the moment she’d sit across from me, arranging her long legs, before saying, “Now tell me,” her eyes serious and head cocked to suggest that her question was of the utmost importance: “What are you thinking about these days?”  

Another confirms that her interest was as true as true can be:
[Sarah Leonard:] She was skeptical of hard categories like, for example, “woman.” For some, reflexive skepticism might lead to a sort of academic cul-de-sac. But Ann’s questioning led her not to hopelessness or inaction but to expansiveness. When queer politics was becoming a bigger force at the New School, Ann was thrilled: “The idea that gender is a construct, a performance, moved to the center of feminism . . . It was opening up the whole question of why we have organized the world in this rigid way. And, you know, I love that,” she told me. This attitude pervaded her relationship with younger feminists, to whom she provided invaluable guidance, but also listened. She is the only person I’ve ever met who seemed unthreatened by the dissolution of the categories that were fundamental to her field and by that field’s reshaping by successive generations. She delighted in change.

Yes, it was about delight.
[Vivian Gornick:] She had the great gift of making everyone she encountered—from the closest friend to the merest acquaintance—feel themselves not only a person of worth but of delight. While you occupied her field of vision she seemed to be thinking, “This is an enchanting creature, I could happily go on talking to her alone for a year or two.” This gift was intimately related to the pleasure she took in being alive, and in a world whose every aspect she found attractive, deeply attractive. She was the only political person I’ve ever known whose organizing powers stemmed from the fact that she found everything in the world endearing—and I mean everything: people, politics, literature, food, gardens, movies, Polish dolls and Moroccan rugs, Doris Lessing and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And then of course there was her abiding love of the feminist movement, evoking for more than fifty years joy and amusement, anger and outrage, hope and anxiety. But not despair, never despair. Because hers was a great soul, and great souls hold it all together for the sake of that beloved world, the thought of whose salvation they never abandon. We shall not soon see her like again.

Might find myself missing the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket...

Yellow brick road

The building I've lived in almost a dozen years might have guessed we're leaving. The Japanese Pagoda/Chinese Scholar tree planted to replace the one destroyed by a tornado 8 years ago is sparkling like fireworks.

Pray for us sinners

August 15th is a day many kinds of Christians devote to Mary. Two remarkable images my far-flung friends shared stopped me in my tracks: one a stunning icon by a young woman artist in Ukraine named Lyuba Yatskiv, the other from the Catholic Worker's Maryhouse here in NYC.

I lift up mine eyes

Our soon to be new neighborhood is veritably awash with religious institutions. Out the window we'll see the Riverside Church and Union Theological Seminary (where the wondrous ceiling at right is to be found), up the block is the Jewish Theological Seminary, and around the corner from Riverside the so-called "God Box" where a gaggle of religious non-profits are based. And that's just looking south and west!

Illuminations

In other news, someone just told me that the illuminated Byzantine Bible from which I took the cover picture for my Job book Has been digitized! There are many more scenes than Paul Huber was able to reproduce in the book where I found them at UCLA. Above, messengers bring Job news of the destruction of his world; through it you can make out shapes from the scene on the page before: the death of his children.

Preen

Hey, didn't know I could post gifs - here a bluejay who took refuge in the trees outside my office window after a burst of rain.

Anti-racist religious studies

Shall I include this in my syllabus?

Statement Against White Nationalism

 August 12, 2019

The American Academy of Religion resoundingly condemns white nationalism and urges all members, individually, institutionally, and collectively, to fight against white supremacy and white nationalism while standing alongside those who bear the brunt of this violent ideology, willful ignorance, and oppressive behavior. The American Academy of Religion advocates for the study of religion as a powerful means to resist white supremacist structures, policies, and thought patterns. In promoting its values of academic excellence, professional responsibility, free inquiry, critical examination, diversity, inclusion, respect, and transparency in the study of religion, the American Academy of Religion hopes to help uncover and dismantle white supremacy at the structural and personal levels. The American Academy of Religion acknowledges that the lives of scholars, teachers, and students of religion are made better, more productive, and more meaningful by diversity of all kinds.

RIP Ann Snitow

 

Our beloved colleague Ann Snitow has died. Seeing her in an obituary in the Times makes it real but also unreal. The many communities she's inspired have known she was ill, but it'll take some time to absorb that her great spirit is now living only in us. Ann's been a central part of the story J and I tell about the New School, and even about the way we tell it. I was happy to spot her among the slides at the "In the Historical Present" exhibition. It's from her retirement party in April, also the last time I saw her. Wizened by her struggle with cancer but indomitable in the love, intelligence, humor and joy she radiated. May it shine on.

Blueskying

New digs! Bring new decisions....!

And yet it moves

You might remember these sand dollars. We found them on the beach at Del Mar in December. Finding ten at once was so remarkable we took it as the universe's chipping in for the down payment on the new apartment we were seeking. Well, not too many months later, we are today the proud owners of a new apartment! (And it's one better in every way than the one we were angling for in December.) Moving our stuff in will take a few more weeks, but we're already half there!

Moving up

I'm looking at even the non-spaces of my Brooklyn life with anticipatory nostalgia. Not just farmer's market, botanic garden, favorite shops and restos, the charm of tree-lined brownstone streets at dusk, but uneven pavements and subway stations! Tata 7th Ave, hello 125th St!

Sex is for fun?!

Latest installment of our newer truer history of the New School is up!

This tribute to the life-changing work of my feminist colleague Ann Snitow as part of the Transdisciplinary Center for Democratic Studies in eastern Europe is part of our "in the classroom" series, a reminder that our campus has extended well beyond New York - and that questioning received views of gender has always been part of our message!

Late summer late afternoon

Having the Brooklyn Botanic Garden a short walk away is something we know we'll miss as we move Manhattanward. What new gardens await?

Shedding

Moving is shedding sin. Not just the skin of your current life, but skins of past lives, things you held on to last time you moved, and even the time before. These are my files from graduate school and my first job. I haven't looked at them, or thought of them, in years. I recognize the research projects, completed and forgotten, but won't ever return to them. It's sad I'm not sadder to let them go, but only a little.

For real?

As we approach the finish line for our move - we "close" on our new apartment on Friday! - it's amusing to get an inside view of the real

estate machine still grinding away. A specialist photographer brought in by our landlady's agent has transformed our current digs into glossy

real estate, with just a little wide-angling and photoshopping. The dining room has never had so much light, or New York such jewel skies!

Your home is your temple

Encountered an unanticipated blast of spirituality - if that's what it was - at a home furnishings place replete with religious figures today. Buddha accessories are nothing new, but this place stood out. For one thing, the entrance to the store is full of bundles of sage and other herbs for American Indian-inspired 
smudging of your home, enterprisingly, or shamelessly, combined with Indian statuary (Ganesh) and a first cluster of what turn out to be a cave's worth of crystals. Faux-Norse magic incense sticks are available too. And the decorator's pantheon is ecumenical - a few lost-looking angels are there too.

     

But there's more, as becomes clear on the furniture floor. ABC Carpet and Home has a special link to Thich Nhat Hanh, whose calligraphy graces all the walls. Enjoy your self free day, it urges, Breathe and smile. Mother Earth is the Kingdom of God. Look with compassion. Available for

a (steep) price, too, but mind (from the website): Purchasing the artwork is an agreement to accept the piece just as it is and in the manner the Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh intended it to be. Haha! I'm tempted to try to find a way to integrate this homey hodepodge with all its spiritual sleights of hand into "Theorizing Religion"!

Leaving home

As we prepare to move, I'm starting to go through my things to see what might have seen its day and the weekly farmer's market collects old clothing so I went through my wardrobe. This blazer told me it was ready to move on. It's old - the very colors betray its eighties origins! - and more than a little tight for me now. But the cut remains snazzy and the royal blue lining is as good as new. After its patient wait, may it accompany some other young person on new adventures! Adieu!

Chop chop!

 

Nice, after more than five weeks on the road, to be cooking again!

Historical present

The New School centennial exhibition "In the historical present" is up, at the Sheila Johnson Design Center, and it's lots of fun. A dozen contemporary artists, some alums, were commissioned to create something new engaging the New School's past, and if not all of them are quite New School specific, they're interesting reflections on what it is to recall, reconstruct, revitalize a tradition challenging the status quo. Archival objects are also featured and displayed in engaging ways. The curators (both alumnae) strike a suitably serious-playful tone:

An intricate and disorderly bureaucracy with a paradox at its heart, The New School is at once an institution and a scrappy insurgency, a venerable newcomer, an official dissident.

Three of the works invite you to take something with you (above). Daniel Bejar's poster Don't say you don't remember takes words from a New School student protest flyer - itself appropriating a McGovern presidential campaign slogan about the killings at Kent State - and makes it a generic and obscurely poignant plea for memory. Sheila Bridges' "19" takes the form of paint swatches to critique the white walls ubiquitous even at The New School. And Matthew Jensen's "New School Forest Archive Walk" lovingly documents all the street trees near our several buildings. Clever interventions all, if a little general.



The more truly New School content comes from archival selections, which are displayed in accessible and witty ways. For instance, slides of images from across many decades invite viewers to play with them... each can make their own little exhibition!! But all the while the curators are playing with us, and with the paradoxes of memory, and of exhibition. I gather the retro form of the slide is an ironic late addition to the life of these images, which live in the archives as prints. They were rendered as slides only for this show, this object lesson.