Category: Reviews

H is for Hawk

During the breaks at the ALTA conference in Tucson at the beginning of November, I found myself often answering questions about my Sea of Intimacy. This makes a lot of sense, as it was at the ALTA in Tucson in, I want to say 2021, that I first spoke about it with friends there, sitting… Continue reading H is for Hawk

My Roman History: A Review

Alizah Holstein’s 2024 book My Roman History: A Memoir (published by Viking Penguin) takes a long view of the author’s journey to a failed academic career as a historian of medieval Roman history. The journey is the main story, the drive and wonder behind it especially, including what otherwise might be esoteric questions of power,… Continue reading My Roman History: A Review

Words and the World

[This post also available as a podcast.] I’m always a bit more secure on the territory of words and their transfer across the supposed boundaries among languages. Maybe this is inevitable, given my expertise and how I have spent most of my time in the world. So in reading two books recommended to me as… Continue reading Words and the World

Olga

The final film in our Slavic series came on the day after we completed the 4th annual Taras Shevchenko Ukrainian Studies Conference, so while I was able to attend and take some notes, I was too wiped out to write anything about it, hence the delay in this final review. It was a wonderful series,… Continue reading Olga

Petrov’s Flu

I make a point of not reading anything about the films we’re showing as part of our Slavic film series before I watch them. The series has been organized by the Indiana Slavic department in collaboration with the Ryder Magazine and Film Series, in collaboration with the Byrnes Russian and East European Institute. Mostly this… Continue reading Petrov’s Flu

Meat Breathing Through Plastic Wrap

I wasn’t properly prepared for the fourth film in our Slavic and East European series with the Ryder and REEI. (I wrote about the first three, Murina, EO, and The Other Side of Everything here, here, and here.) There’s a good reason for this, which I’ll get to shortly. The slices of meat squirming across… Continue reading Meat Breathing Through Plastic Wrap

Polishing the Keys to the Future: The Other Side of Everything

By contrast to the first two films in our Slavic and East European series with the Ryder and REEI, Murina and EO (which I wrote about here and here), there is never any doubt about where we find ourselves in Mila Turajlić’s 2018 documentary The Other Side of Everything. Almost all the action takes place… Continue reading Polishing the Keys to the Future: The Other Side of Everything

EO and The Golden Ass

I initially thought Jerzy Skolimovski’s 2022 feature EO, which IU’s Slavic department and REEI sponsored for a Ryder screening as part of its spring semester film series last Sunday, was very complex in terms of its composition. Probably this is because it uses some rather aggressive editing at the start, especially with the pulsing red… Continue reading EO and The Golden Ass

Life of Ivanna

The most ironic aspect of the 2021 documentary Life of Ivanna is Ivanna’s dream of having her own place, which actually pushes the film along its main trajectory. This claim requires a little context. Ivanna is a twenty-six-year-old Nenets mother of five living, at the beginning of the film, on the Taimyr Peninsula in the… Continue reading Life of Ivanna

Kaplan’s Adriatic

I’m about 60 pages into Robert D. Kaplan’s Adriatic: A Concert of Civilizations at the End of the Modern Era and am still uncertain about it. With such a big sounding title, in such a nice new cloth bound edition from Random House, it seems it should be more substantial than it is so far.… Continue reading Kaplan’s Adriatic