Sublime

The dream of a Liberal (arts) education—which is the scaled, democratic form of the Keatsian ideal of negative capability—cannot hold up when liberalism itself is held to be suspect.

So anthropology grounds Asya. At the same time, the novel gestures to the discipline’s troubled past, with its colonial underpinnings and tendency to exploit, extract, and other its subjects.

Hollis Robbins: Most people focus on the vast reserves of content now available online, but few people ask: “Is this a good teacher?”