In a small village in West Africa, a young girl explains the special way she was born. Her mother had difficulty getting pregnant, so she seeks help in the form of a doll which she treats like a human baby, carrying it on her back and covering it wit...

What happened to paradise after Adam and Eve were expelled? The question may sound like a theological quibble, or even a joke, but in "The Kingdom and the Garden", Giorgio Agamben uses it as a starting point for an investigation of human nature and t...

Nobel Prize winner Elfriede Jelinek is known as a writer who works in response to contemporary crises and cultural phenomena. Perhaps none of her works display that quality as clearly as "On the Royal Road". Three weeks after Donald Trump's election,...

Few artists have had as much of an impact on American popular culture as Stan Lee. The characters he created – Spider-Man and Iron Man, the X-Men and the Fantastic Four – occupy Hollywood's imagination and production schedules, generate billions at t...

The 1990s and early 2000s were heady days for Indian queer people and their networks as they emerged from the shadows. They grouped together to deal with covert and overt forms of stigma, discrimination, and violence in different spheres of life. Tra...

Palestinian theater today is drawing increasing interest throughout the Arab world and beyond, as theaters and universities in the English-speaking world are becoming familiar with companies like the Freedom Theatre, Al-Kasaba Theatre, Ashtar, Al-Row...

In this new contribution to Yale University Press's Why X Matters series, a distinguished writer and scholar tackles central questions of the discipline of writing. Drawing on his own experience with mentors such as John Updike, John Gardner, and Jam...

In 1916, the war in Europe having prevented a tour abroad, Harry Houdini wrote a film treatment for a rollicking motion picture. Though the movie was never made, its title, "The Marvelous Adventures of Houdini: The Justly Celebrated Elusive American"...

An unprecedented portrait of Moses's inner world and perplexing character, by a distinguished biblical scholar. No figure looms larger in Jewish culture than Moses, and few have stories more enigmatic. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, acclaimed for her many...

Tadeusz Kantor (1915-1990) was renowned for his revolutionary theater performances in both his native Poland and abroad. Despite nominally being a Catholic, Kantor had a unique relationship with Jewish culture and incorporated many elements of Jewish...