Kristen R. Ghodsee (1970) is an award-winning Professor of Russian and East European Studies and a Member of the Graduate Group in Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. Her articles and essays have been translated into over twenty-five languages and have appeared in publications such as Dissent, Foreign Affairs, Jacobin, The Baffler, The New Republic, Quartz, NBC Think, The Lancet, Project Syndicate, Le Monde Diplomatique, Die Tageszeitung, The Washington […]
For more than 1,000 years, the Imperial Family of Japan and its physicians have preserved a treasure of oriental medicine: the complete 30 scrolls of the Ishinhō, or the ‘heart of medical prescription’. This compendium was derived from sources in India, China, Korea and elsewhere, though many of the original documents have since been lost or destroyed. In […]
One morning in may, the existential psychotherapist Irvin Yalom was recuperating in a sunny room on the first floor of a Palo Alto convalescent hospital. He was dressed in white pants and a green sweater, not a hospital gown, and was quick to point out that he is not normally confined to a medical facility. “I […]
Wherever you are in the world, visiting a bookshop is always a treat – but with their numbers dwindling, independent stores that offer something unique are increasingly becoming a destination in themselves. Last year we rounded up some of the world’s most weird and wonderful bookshops – from a bookshop opened by Alice Munro in […]
Britain’s most famous atheist is surprisingly low-key. The public Richard Dawkins – combative, outspoken, relentless – is, it turns out, a different beast from the private one. Anyone who’s witnessed a Dawkins intervention – on television, in print, or in 140 characters or fewer on Twitter – will have experienced him on fighting form: sure […]
A response to some of my critics. When my short essay on Greece after the referendum“The Courage of Hopelessness” was republished by In These Times, its title was changed into “How Alexis Tsipras and Syriza Outmaneuvered Angela Merkel and the Eurocrats”. Although I effectively think that accepting the EU terms was not a simple defeat, […]
Shadowed by the plain-clothes police protection officer that now follows him round the clock, Michel Houellebecq, France’s most successful living writer, shuffles into his Paris publisher’s office. His quiet, otherworldly aura is enhanced by the anti-fashion statement of this ageing literary enfant terrible: too-short cord trousers that swing round his ankles, a C&A parka he […]
Global vs. local identities: The role of media in process of sustainable cultural development In an era of market and media globalization, the concept of national identity and national (cultural) values has been experiencing what appears to be a fundamental transformation. On the other hand, there is conceptualizing crisis of so-called universal values because it […]