Making Mas: TruDynasty Carnival Takes Josephine Baker to the Caribbean Carnival

Jacqueline Taucar, in conversation with Thea and Dario Jackson, investigates the sculptural qualities of the Josephine Baker Mas for the Scotiabank Caribbean Carnival Festival in 2011. This article traces the conception, construction, and complexities of choreography for this carnivalesque reimagining of Baker in Paris of the twenties for a contemporary Canadian ambulant expression. This Queen Mas talks back to the objectification by Parisians and embodying Queen Mas as an instance of female empowerment

Novel Dialogue 3.1: On Being Unmoored: Chang-rae Lee Charts Fiction with Anne Anlin Cheng (SW)

Season three of Novel Dialogue launches in partnership with Public Books and introduces some fresh new voices into the mix. John and Aarthi welcome Chris Holmes, Emily Hyde, Tara Menon, and Sarah Wasserman into the ND pod as guest hosts. And have they brought a series of scintillating conversations with them! In our series premiere, Sarah sits down with acclaimed novelist Chang-rae Lee and Anne Anlin Cheng, renowned scholar of American literature and visual culture at Princeton. The conversation goes small and goes big: from the shortest short story to the totalizing effects of capitalism. Chang-rae is no stranger to such shifting scales: his novels sweep through large stretches of time and space, but their attention to detail and meticulous prose makes for an intimate reading experience. Chang-rae's latest novel, My Year Abroad, fuels a discussion about how we can form meaningful bonds in current conditions (hint: it's often around a table) and about the specters of other, better worlds that haunt Chang-rae's fictions. He discusses his relationship to his own work and the benefits of taking an "orbital view" on his writing. Chang-rae also offers a tantalizing glimpse into his current project, a semi-autobiographical novel about Korean-American immigrants in 1970s New York. In response to a brand new signature question for the podcast this season, Chang-rae reveals the talent he wishes he could suddenly have--one that Anne already possesses

Judging by its cover, Part 1

On October 26, 1936, T. S. Eliot wrote a letter to American writer and host of an influential Parisian literary salon, Natalie Barney. In it he admitted with discernible embarrassment that his most recent author at Faber & Faber, Djuna Barnes—whose Ladies Almanack (1928) was about Barney’s salon and featured her as the character Dame Evangeline Musset—did not approve of the design for the first edition of Nightwood. “I must explain,” he writes, “that we didn’t find out until after publication that Miss Barnes particularly dislikes the colour purple.” Not only had Faber & Faber produced the volume in a rich-toned purple cloth, but, Eliot continued, “There are also one or two howlers by way of misprints to which she has called our attention.