On Sadness (Part 1)
By Mark McConaghy
Despite our technological and material mastery over the world, why does melancholy still persist?
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Reading Scandal: On Rob Ford
By Mark McConaghy Here in Toronto, as the city moves on with its daily business amidst the aftermath of the Rob Ford scandal, many of us are still trying to take our bearings and figure out just what it all meant. Many people have asked me- why haven’t I written about it yet? Given the […]
Read more "Reading Scandal: On Rob Ford"Images That Hurt: Steve McQueen’s 12 Years as a Slave
by Mark McConaghy In this essay, Mark McConaghy explains why British director Steve McQueen’s new film 12 Years as a Slave is such an important artistic work in our current visual and political culture. We live in an age in which we are, by and large, desensitized to much of the imagery around us. It’s […]
Read more "Images That Hurt: Steve McQueen’s 12 Years as a Slave"A Day of Pride
By Mark McConaghy We woke up this morning to the wonderful news that Alice Munro has become the first female Canadian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. In our age of digital frenzy, there has already been an immense outpouring of celebration for the author and her life’s work. As Douglas Gibson, Munro’s longtime […]
Read more "A Day of Pride"On Happiness
In this essay, Mark McConaghy asks the question: what is happiness in this day and age of bourgeois normalcy? Is being happy possible? And should it be considered the very point of existence itself? The new semester is upon us and the old familiar rhythms have returned. For those readers of ours who have worked […]
Read more "On Happiness"On Monumental Spaces
By Mark McConaghy What is a monumental space? Any built environment that bespeaks grandeur, openness, solemnity. These are spaces that make you feel your own individual insignificance in the grand historical scheme of things, and yet that oddly provide a sense of comfort in that anonymity, making you happy to get lost in their epic […]
Read more "On Monumental Spaces"Why Read Literature Part 2: We Still Need Scalpels
By Mark McConaghy In part one of this series, I asked the question: why read literature in this day and age? What can literature actually do to better humanity? While intellectuals, professors, and graduate students may feel that an answer to such a question is readily apparent- literature Enlightens! Enthralls! Nurtures our Soul!- I have […]
Read more "Why Read Literature Part 2: We Still Need Scalpels"Why Read Literature: Part 1
In part 1 of this two part series, Mark McConaghy attempts to answer the question: why is literature important in our contemporary age? One of the most important things in life is to have friends from many different walks of society. For nothing shows you how modestly narrow your own investments are then encountering people […]
Read more "Why Read Literature: Part 1"A Politics Without a Name
By Mark McConaghy For the last couple of years we have heard nothing but glowing news reports about Brazil’s rapid economic growth. This was South America’s answer to China- a regional dominant that was growing into a global economic powerhouse, replete with double digit GDP expansion and a sky rocketing demand for commodities of all […]
Read more "A Politics Without a Name"The Scandal We Knew All Along
By Mark McConaghy Hundreds of news pundits and editorial columnists declared outrage last week over the revelation that the US government’s National Security Agency has direct access to the servers of the world’s largest internet companies, including Google, Facebook, Skype, Apple, and Microsoft. The government can monitor and track all online communication, even if it is […]
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The 14th Floor 