Compulsory reading

Up on a hill was a lone goatherd… who accidentally shot himself with an arrow? The Getty just acquired the 11th Century *Irmengard Codex* manuscript featuring this and other fascinating illustrations of medieval Germanic Christianity, from the Evangelicals to religious festivals. In tempera, gold and ink, this specific panel tells the story of Mount Gargano, where an arrow a shepherd shot to shake a wandering bull out of a nearby cave is said to have miraculously changed course. and hit him instead (ouch). (courtesy Dr. Guenther Rare Books, Getty Museum)

Over the past few decades, and accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic, student-faculty power dynamics have undergone a sea change.

Traditionally, faculty members are considered the masters of the class. They decide what is taught and how. This could mean that students have to tackle difficult assignments under tight deadlines and struggle with ideas and information that bothers them. The underlying assumption is that students defer to the judgment of the professor (or, according to some, to the domination of the professor).

But for a confluence of reasons, student attitudes have changed. For one thing, what’s considered appropriate for a college professor to say and do in the classroom has changed dramatically, particularly around topics of race, gender, and other forms of identity. On the other hand, students’ deference to their teachers is no longer as strong as it once was.

Students may be quick to judge an instructional choice as harmful, offensive or superfluous to their education, say some professors, who wonder whether their colleges, which they describe as having embraced a “the customer is always right” philosophy, will have the back if and when the client is wrong.

Under certain circumstances, choices or behaviors criticized by students would have been “considered benign not so long ago,” said Angus Johnston, a historian of American student activism who teaches at Hostos Community College in the City. University of New York.

While this shift in power may be “baffling” and “scary” for faculty members, especially older ones, he said, “that doesn’t mean it’s a bad move.”

There’s reason to believe that Republicans, at least in more purple states, are worried about the kind of electoral backlash that was reflected in the referendum rejecting Kansas’ abortion ban last year and the recent midterm elections. It could actually fuel escalating attacks on trans people, says Rose MacKenzie, an ACLU campaign strategist who focuses on reproductive rights. “I think anti-abortion politicians worry about politics,” MacKenzie says. “They turned to attacking trans youth to stay politically viable.”

For the nationMolly Crabapple links the precarious state of housing in New York to community-led efforts to fight the politicians and private equity firms behind it:

At the start of 2022, I was in the middle of my own eviction crisis. My boyfriend and I had lived for 12 years in a seedy, 10-story, nine-unit loft on Maiden Lane in Manhattan. We loved the place with our blood and bones. Our parties were legendary. How many times have we met on our fire escape at 4 a.m., with stale cigarettes from war reporters and porn stars? How many canvases – and protest banners – have we painted on the dilapidated floors of our apartment? The heat was dodgy; black mold has bloomed on the shower ceiling; the rats held banquets in front. None of this dulled our enthusiasm. It was at home.

The apartment was not rent stabilized, and during Covid our landlord let everyone’s lease expire. It didn’t worry us at first, since he had done it before, only to rush later with a new contract and higher rent. Yet, I slowly noticed the telltale signs of a landlord preparing to sell his building. They were as obvious as a pigeon starting to molt. The owner furiously denied it until the end of the moratorium on evictions. After that, we woke up to flyers telling us to cut our rent checks to a new LLC called Diamond Lane. Once those checks were cashed, Diamond Lane hired an usher to serve each tenant with 90 days notice to vacate. He also threatened legal action if we didn’t comply.

The industry of full-time freelance journalists is riddled with inequality, as Nicole Chung explores in a trial for Squire on the costs of labor as a writer or editor without fair compensation – and who can or cannot afford it:

I continue to struggle with the instability of this industry and the kind of opportunities that will be available to me in the years to come, as well as broader questions about whether my editorial work has been valued. If it was worth it, especially considering the needs of my family. I think about who becomes a writer or an editor, who can afford to wait for that decent salary or that higher advance. Who can choose to prioritize their creative goals, take potential career risks, invest precious years in this work with no guarantee of financial stability. And I think of whose work we stand to lose, of the stories of who we are not read – because they, and perhaps their families, simply cannot afford to hang around and wait.

If the art of handwriting is dead, should we try to revive it? For the New York TimesIsabella Paoletto studies the phenomenon of messy calligraphy and what the transition from pencil to paper writing, from education to forged signatures means for us today:

Anne Trubek, the author of ‘The History and Uncertain Future of Handwriting’, said that when, more than a decade ago, she began researching the history of handwriting technologies. writing and on whether the digital age was changing, the writing of his work received a huge pushback.

At the time, she says, people believed that not teaching children cursive was against traditional American values. They worried that children would lose their connection to history if they were unable to read historical documents like the Declaration of Independence.

These anxieties eventually evolved into the belief that children wouldn’t be as smart if they didn’t learn handwriting, an idea that Dr. Trubek says discriminates against children with physical disabilities.

“Whenever there’s a huge shift from one technology to another, whether it’s the invention of writing, printing, or the typewriter, there’s this sort of rearguard anxiety about what this means for the previously supplanted primary pathway for people to write,” Dr. Trubek said.