What We’re Reading: Week of 19th March

Here are a few interesting articles and pieces we found around the web this week. If you come across something that other intellectual historians might enjoy, please let us know in the comments section.
 
Eric:
Michael C. Behrent, “Age of Emancipation” (Dissent)
Bronwen Everill, “Demarginalizing West Africa in the Age of Revolutions” (AoR)
Pankaj Mishra, “Jordan Peterson & Fascist Mysticism” (NYRdaily)
Quinn Slobodian, “Making Sense of Neoliberalism” (HUPblog)
Amia Srinivasan, “Does Anyone Have the Right to Sex?” (LRB).
 
Cynthia
March is women’s history month. The National Museum of Women in the Arts launched the #5womenartists social media campaign in 2016. The campaign asks: “Can you name 5 artists? Can you name 5 women artists? Can you name 5 women artists of color?”
To see what users are currently sharing, plug the #5womenartists hashtag into the search bar on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. Now that we’re about halfway through the month, there’s quite a bit to see.
I was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art last Tuesday night for the Met’s 12th annual “Evening Celebrating Women.” One of the women celebrated that evening was Mariët Westermann, who reminded the (mostly female) audience that when she was a student, almost all of the professors and curators she encountered were men, while most of her fellow graduate students were women. Things are changing–though the gender gap continues to exist at the top levels of museum (and art world) leadership, as reported by this 2017 Association of Art Museum Directors study. 48% of art museum directorships are held by women, and the salary disadvantage for women directors continues to hold true (female museum directors make 73 cents for every dollar made by a male director, which is actually below average for women artists, who make 81 cents for every dollar made by a male artist).
I’ve thought a lot about these issues–especially in the wake of #metoo and #notsurprised, and the general drift of things–and thought particularly long and hard about how to go beyond the usual encomiums.
Coincidentally, this event fell on the heels of Armory Week. Art Basel / UBS also released Clare McAndrew’s “The Art Market 2018.”  If you are a keen watcher of art markets, McAndrew’s report won’t surprise you. It is a tale of 2 markets — the “haves” and everyone else. The art fair circuit lays that all out, right there–encomiums won’t get us to where we need to be, in terms of equality, and neither will good energy, nor buzz. Structures and institutions need to change.
 
A.J.
Shannon Connellan, “Ai Weiwei Makes Bold Statement About the Refugee Crisis with Giant Inflatable Boat” (Mashable)
A ChinaFile Conversation, “What Is the Significance of China’s #MeToo Movement?” (ChinaFile)
Bogdan Gherasim, “First Sustainable Lego Bricks Will be Launched in 2018” (Lego.com)
Molly Gottschalk, “These Drawings Show How Pop Culture Has Changed the Way We See UFOs” (Artsy)
                 
Brendan:
Reid McCarter, Astrid Budgor and Ed Smith, “Video Game Guns Don’t Need to be Fun to Be Interesting” (Waypoint)
Pauk Ford, “Facebook Is Why We Need a Digital Protection Agency” (Bloomberg Businessweek)
Tasmin Shaw, “Beware the Big Five” (NYRB)
Linda Colley, “Can History Help?” (LRB)
 
Derek:
Matt Young, “Stop looking for one war story to make sense of all wars” (Lithub)
Jill Lepore, “The Right Way to Remember Rachel Carson” (New Yorker)
David S. Reynolds, “Fine Specimens” (NYRB)
Britta Lokting, “The Portlandia Effect” (Vulture)
 
Nuala:
Sandip Patel, Two-pore channels open up. (Nature)
David P. Barash. It’s Time to Make Human-Chimp Hybrids. (Nautilus)
Jacey Fortin, She Was the Only Woman in a Photo of 38 Scientists, and Now She’s Been Identified. (New York TImes)
Andrew McConnell Stott, Stage Light. (Lapham’s Quarterly)
Carolina Diettrich, Mallet de Lima, and Anita Göndör, Circadian organization of the Genome. (Science)
 
Sarah:
Charisse Burden-Stelly, “The Absence of Political Economy in African Diaspora Studies,” (Black Perspectives)
Eric Foner, “I just get my pistol and shoot him right down,” (LRB)
Jeremy Harding, “Report from Sirius B,” (LRB)
Louisa Lim, “Policing the Contour Lines,” (LARB)
Sumanth Subramanian, “How Balkrishna Doshi Bent Le Corbusier’s Modernism to the Needs of India,” (New Yorker)
 
Spencer:
Colm Tóibín, “Desolation Row” (NYRB)
Antonia Quirke, “Devastatingly Milton” (New Statesman)
Peter Nagy, “TV’s Radical, Bisexual Comic-Book Antihero” (The Atlantic)
Michael Fischer, “How Much Easier to Hate” (Guernica Magazine)