When Passing was published in 1929, Nella Larsen’s literary career was on the cusp of greater visibility. She had dedicated the novel to Carl Van Vechten and Fania Marinoff, white patrons of Harlem Renaissance creators. They also had supported the work of Gertrude Stein and other gay writers of the time. Shortly after Passing was … Read more
Just a quick glimpse of Lowell High School in San Francisco, the oldest public high school west of the Mississippi, tells the viewer that what matters most are not the flashy amenities of other campuses but instead the experiences of what it means to be an academic powerhouse. At Lowell, a public school where a … Read more
In the U.S., the art of dance has been a revolutionary art form. Dance artists and choreographers have expanded the possibilities of movement languages and their own distinctive vocabularies to produce work that often speaks to the urgency of the contemporary dynamics socially, politically and culturally through magnificent storytelling without the necessity of text. It … Read more
In 1965, as the last sessions of Vatican II concluded in Rome, the number of Catholic nuns in the U.S. had reached its highest point of 180,000. Five years later, the numbers already had declined by nearly 10 percent and by late 2019, there were just 31,350. In 1970, when three-fourths of the Sisters of … Read more
In a Bay Nature magazine essay published earlier this month about what Californians should learn from recent years of devastating wildfires, Don Hankins poses the central question and context: Where did we go wrong, and what can we do differently to live in this land? To recognize that fire is the law of the land is … Read more
For his novel Death in Venice, Thomas Mann’s visualization of Tadzio, the strikingly beautiful boy, was based in part on Boy with Thorn, an ancient Hellenistic bronze sculpture of a boy who was pulling a thorn from the sole of his foot. In 1970, when Björn Andrésen, who was just 15, was cast as Tadzio … Read more
A Mormon-themed dark comedy narrative and a Turkish sociological thriller surrounding two university students underscore just how rigorously curated this year’s Sundance short film program is. Gregory Barnes’ The Touch of the Master’s Hand and Serhat Karaaslan’s The Criminals are among this year’s 50 short films which were selected from 9,933 submissions. The Touch of … Read more
EDITOR’S NOTE: Part II summarizes the films and programs from Sundance 2021 that are part of The Utah Review coverage. For Part I which is an overview of the state of the film industry in Utah, see here. Films premiering this week at Sundance include documentaries about one of the greatest American choreographers of the … Read more
EDITOR’S NOTE: Part I is an overview of the Utah film industry in the current moment. Part II (tomorrow) will offer a summary preview of the Sundance 2021 feature-length and short films, which The Utah Review will cover. In several hopeful signs, given its size, Utah’s film industry has weathered the pandemic with enough resilience … Read more
INTRODUCTION One year ago, when The Utah Review presented the 2019 edition of the top 10 moments of the Utah Enlightenment, it was a jubilant representation of Utah’s integral strengths as a community of the arts and the momentum that catapulted Salt Lake City as one of the Intermountain West’s most dynamic centers for creative … Read more