Books for Jewish American Heritage Month
In celebration of Jewish American Heritage Month in May, we are sharing books by authors who share their individual stories, experiences, and lives. Find our full collection of books here.
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What, exactly, constitutes the “bad”? Can one consciously produce in the name of “badness,” or is badness a value judgment that comes after the fact, from an Other? How does one begin to assign aesthetic value to an object? If one is to accept the “bad” as “good,” or to find aesthetic value in badness, then when does the bad succeed and when does it fail? If, pace Beckett, we are to embrace failure as an inevitable goal, then isn't it necessary to invent a new mode of criticism that accommodates this aesthetic reality?
Travis Jeppesen's Bad Writing offers a series of interconnected essays, many of which appear in print for the first time, forging a pathway for a truly radical “bad” modernism in art and literature. He explores the terrain of failure, assessing the situation of the twenty-first century literary avant-garde; considers the work of perennial outsiders; and offers “ficto-criticisms,” including his controversial, no-holds-barred takedown of the 2015 Venice Biennale, originally published in Art in America. Erudite, irreverent, witty, and occasionally controversial, Bad Writing reinvigorates the too-often staid medium of art criticism as an iconoclastic and inventive literary art form.
Travis Jeppesen's 'willful defiance of the commodification of art criticism' is not just necessary, it's outrageous.
—Bruce Schawbsky, art critic for The Nation—[Jeppesen]'s the Weird Al Yankovic of art criticism, but gayer.
—Bruce Hainley, author of Under the Sign of [sic]: Sturtevant's Volte-Face—What, exactly, constitutes the “bad”? Can one consciously produce in the name of “badness,” or is badness a value judgment that comes after the fact, from an Other? How does one begin to assign aesthetic value to an object? If one is to accept the “bad” as “good,” or to find aesthetic value in badness, then when does the bad succeed and when does it fail? If, pace Beckett, we are to embrace failure as an inevitable goal, then isn't it necessary to invent a new mode of criticism that accommodates this aesthetic reality?
Travis Jeppesen's Bad Writing offers a series of interconnected essays, many of which appear in print for the first time, forging a pathway for a truly radical “bad” modernism in art and literature. He explores the terrain of failure, assessing the situation of the twenty-first century literary avant-garde; considers the work of perennial outsiders; and offers “ficto-criticisms,” including his controversial, no-holds-barred takedown of the 2015 Venice Biennale, originally published in Art in America. Erudite, irreverent, witty, and occasionally controversial, Bad Writing reinvigorates the too-often staid medium of art criticism as an iconoclastic and inventive literary art form.
Travis Jeppesen's 'willful defiance of the commodification of art criticism' is not just necessary, it's outrageous.
—Bruce Schawbsky, art critic for The Nation—[Jeppesen]'s the Weird Al Yankovic of art criticism, but gayer.
—Bruce Hainley, author of Under the Sign of [sic]: Sturtevant's Volte-Face—
In celebration of Jewish American Heritage Month in May, we are sharing books by authors who share their individual stories, experiences, and lives. Find our full collection of books here.
For Mental Health Awareness Month in May, we are sharing books to educate and raise awareness about mental health and the various factors that may affect it, and to provide tools and resources for student wellness. Find our full collection of titles here.
Each May, we honor the stories, histories, and cultures of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders. Below is a selection of acclaimed fiction and nonfiction books by AANHPI creators to share with your students this month and throughout the year. Find our full collection of titles for Higher Education here.
