Ritual Nostalgia: Revising the MFA Stasis

"The architecture of celebrated MFA programs like Iowa reinforces the forward-propelling notion that we are part of a lauded and historied trajectory of literary production, while also providing a feeling of quaint timelessness and suspension. Considering the dark and deranged global moment we’re currently occupying, it’s a multipronged sense of unnerve. The fierce preservation of processes, procedures, and customs all around me simply amplifies the great existential arbitrariness of it all."

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Read my latest essay, Ritual Nostalgia: Revising the MFA Stasis, and think through ritual, routine, and institutions with me.