“Dahomey” documents the return of 26 Danxomèan treasures to Bénin from France. Much of the film focuses on the slow labor of handling the priceless artifacts & the voices of the curators. The irony, however, is the silence of the film’s “nonskilled” laborers.

“Are you a banker or a manufacturer or an industrialist? If so, Stendhal doesn’t want you to read “Love” (De L’amour, 1822); you wouldn’t understand it.”

New at PB: Naomi Levine revisits Stendhal's overlooked and wonderfully eccentric "Love" (1822), a book that uses a grand metaphor of crystallization to explain the pathology of the mind in love.

“‘Dahomey’ narrates the Danxomèan treasures’ epic journey home. And yet, the film remains haunted by the visible and invisible human labor that made this homecoming—and its cinematic telling—possible.”

In "Dahomey," Mati Diop puts African art and labor on display. But who gets to speak within Diop’s economy of return? Read Doyle D. Calhoun's review, new at PB.

Warren Cariou is a “multihyphenate”: Writer, artist, activist, storyteller, educator, community builder. He spoke with @josevergara.bsky.social’s class at Bryn Mawr about how his work with a dangerous material–bitumen–has made him see energy in different ways.

“Calling Buzzati’s fiction ‘bewitched middlebrow’ is one way of reclaiming this space: not as a bland middle ground, but as a threshold where ordinary life slips into the uncanny.”

“My levels of hope and despair fluctuate. I see progress. I see the possibility of thinking about our relationship to our energy sources in new ways.”

Dino Buzzati was middle class. He rejected revolutionary politics. His work was called a “bourgeois shudder” by Paolo Milano. “And yet,” argues Caterina Domeneghini, “his fiction still captures the spectral logic of a system where even time is taken for granted.

“Does that ambivalence paralyze us, or can we do something about the damage that oil addiction is causing? To me, if we feel ambivalence, that doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re paralyzed.” New at PB: Artist, writer, and activist Warren Cariou on petromodernity:

New at PB: Jed Kudrick & @sdileonardi.bsky.social use data to show the importance of small presses, translators, and arts funders to the publication—and popularity—of translated literature.

“Despite the persistently low share of published translations in the US, when available resources come together to bring international works to market, readers are eagerly standing by.”

“Reframed as a ‘bewitched middlebrow,’ Buzzati’s fiction re-enters literary history not as a comforting escape, but as a sharp tool for existential inquiry across geographical borders.”

“I want to come at these questions in a different way—to remind us of something that we probably all know: that there are corporate interests and government interests invested in making us forget about the violence that our energy connects us to.”

New at PB: Jed Kudrick & @sdileonardi.bsky.social scour bestseller data to unpack trending translation in the US, despite the low national average of translations published each year.

“Proportion is really important when we think about energy politics. How much for each person? How much for each community? And what are the implications of that?” New at PB: Warren Cariou in conversation with @josevergara.bsky.social and students at Bryn Mawr:

The “middlebrow” is a long detested category in the Anglophone world. In Italy, the genre’s true meaning is more difficult to pin down. New at PB, Caterina Domeneghini explains.

“Appropriation of community-owned stories is a crucial issue for Indigenous cultures, because certain stories contain vital teachings about a community’s identity, their spirituality, and how to survive on the land in their territory.”

In a new review, Caterina Domeneghini studies a surge in translation to English of the work of Dino Buzzati. “This new translation project doesn’t just revive Buzzati,” she argues, “it reframes him.”

“‘The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest’ spent nearly 80 weeks—more than a year and a half—in a top 10 spot. This gives Larsson’s novel the record of securing the longest length of time on the NYT bestseller list of any translated novel—from any language—ever.”

New at PB: Artist, activist, & writer Warren Cariou visits @josevergara.bsky.social’s class for a conversation about his writing, his petrography (photographs produced with bitumen), Indigenous land relations, and the need for local control over energy.

“There’s something about Buzzati’s middlebrow that does not quite fit the Anglophone caricature. His fiction is neither comfortable nor sentimental—it is eerie.”

New at PB: In a new review of Dino Buzzati's "The Bewitched Bourgeouis" (@nyrb-imprints.bsky.social), Caterina Domeneghini asks: How useful is it to apply an Anglo-American cultural label to an Italian writer whose literary landscape lacked a direct equivalent?

A translation renaissance in US publishing just ended. And you probably missed it. New at PB: Jed Kudrick & @sdileonardi.bsky.social ask how such a renaissance went unnoticed?

“The three waves of translated bestsellers suggest that, despite the persistently low share of published translations in the US, when available resources come together to bring international works to market, readers are eagerly standing by.”

New at PB: Jed Kudrick & @sdileonardi.bsky.social use data from the NYT bestseller list to map 3 popular waves of literature in translation in the US: the postwar popularity of European titles, the "Latin American boom," & the more recent explosion of Nordic noir.

“I also wanted to problematize the whole concept of Latino/a—as a colonial construction. It is not something just to be celebrated.” For artist Pedro Lasch, criticism is as much a part of his work as celebration.

“I also wanted to problematize the whole concept of Latino/a—as a colonial construction. It is not something just to be celebrated.” For artist Pedro Lasch, criticism is as much a part of his work as celebration.

“Women’s studies emblematizes the university’s central tenet: that knowledge-making is an outcome of contention, not conformity.”

“The biggest transformations of culture are done by population shifts, not by intellectuals.” New at PB: Pedro Lasch talks with Jennifer A. González about art that celebrates migration.

“Latin America had many of the same sociological variables as Spain: a powerful, praetorian Catholic landed class, threatened by militant peasants and modernizing economic nationalists.” New at PB: Greg Grandin & Alexander Aviña on the history of Latin America. www.publicbooks.org/a-second-enl...

Women’s studies programs in the United States are threatened by authoritarian pressure. Annabel Barry, Caroline Godard, & Anna Park visit the archives of a founding women’s studies movement to dispel claims that the field is ideologically monolithic.

“Too often when we talk about migration, the feminine side gets erased. One of the earliest versions I did of Latino/a América was actually with lipstick on glass precisely to address this, just through the smell.”

“One can see an arc running from Spain’s conquest of the Americas to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.” www.publicbooks.org/a-second-enl...

“As writers of feminist history, then, our best tool against authoritarianism’s appropriations of feminist language is telling a feminist history that highlights conflict.”

“I often use the past to address a really difficult issue of the present. So, I see myself as part of a tradition of public intellectuals who are critical of the place that they are in.” New at PB: Pedro Lasch on art as activism.

“What I have tried to do is find categories of objects that can exist in art and outside of art.” In a new interview with Jennifer A. González, Pedro Lasch explains his work with what he calls “hybrid social objects.”

New at PB: Three writers of feminist history look at the Berkeley Women’s Studies Movement Archive and find a history of conflict. Where organizers went wrong, they argue, was not in disagreeing but in believing that conflicts should be assimilated into consensus.

“Gaitán’s murder is the climax of the book, a death foretold, an event so compressed with hope that its explosion sent historical shrapnel in all directions.” In a new interview at PB, Greg Grandin discusses the execution of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán. www.publicbooks.org/a-second-enl...

“From the very beginning, I knew I was part of a social movement for undocumented immigrants’ rights.”

“This dream of consensus is belied by the archival record of continuous disagreement.” The founding of women’s studies as a university department may have been fraught, but conflict is essential to the history of feminism, and to the history of democracy.

Greg Grandin on 3 notable things about Spanish American independence: It brought about an already socialized community of nations. Its leaders understood their movement as atonement for conquest. They broke free from one empire to confront a new one.

New at PB: Jennifer A. González interviews Pedro Lasch, whose works assert that “art” acquires meaning through its interactions with its audience.

“Contradicting this idea that feminism is no longer relevant, gendered rhetoric is now a primary mode of bolstering state power. Insidiously, feminist language is being reappropriated to justify the erasure of feminist ideas and feminist history.”

New at PB: In an era of appropriation of feminist language to erase feminist ideas, Annabel Barry, Caroline Godard, & Anna Park visit the Berkeley Women’s Studies Movement Archive at the Bancroft Library to uncover ways to inherit feminist legacies.

“England couldn’t find—once you do away with papal dispensation—a legal foundation for war, conquest, and enslavement. And so the English conclude, maybe it is better we don’t say anything.” www.publicbooks.org/a-second-enl...

“Crossing the border into Huehuetenango was one of those life-changing moments. I can’t put it into words, but the air was different.” New at PB: In an interview with Alexander Aviña, Greg Grandin talks about his newest book, “America, América.” www.publicbooks.org/a-second-enl...

New at PB: Alexander Aviña interviews Greg Grandin about Grandin’s latest book, “America, América” (@penguinpress.bsky.social), which examines the intellectual, economic, and political sources of Latin America’s social-rights tradition. www.publicbooks.org/a-second-enl...

“Will Kuang’s Gen Z readers be interested in the magic of academia? … She may even inspire some of them to go to grad school—an offense for which, if there is justice in the afterlife, she will certainly have to put in some time in Purgatory.”

“Given that the border is already mystified as a technology, new forms of computerized border technologies doubly fetishize the configurations of people, materials, force, and law that compose bordering practices.”