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More Like ThisProf. Writes ‘Washington Post’ Op-Ed on Shinzo Abe’s Death
Graduate Center Professor Michael Orlando Sharpe (GC/York, Political Science/Behavioral Sciences) published a timely op-ed in The Washington Post, “Shinzo Abe’s death reveals complex story of discrimination and xenophobia.” Sharpe, a 2008 graduate of the Ph.D. Program in Political Science, offers an analysis of the assassination of the former prime minister, linking the killing to his ultranationalist agenda and Japan’s long record of xenophobia.
Sharpe is currently working his second book, The Politics of Racism and Antiracism in Japan.
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Recent News
Oct 2, 2023
Sitting Down With Joshua Brumberg, Interim President, Scientist, and Sports Fan
The Gradate Center’s new interim president, a familiar face to many, shares his priorities and what has shaped them.
- GC Stories
Sep 29, 2023
From President Garrell: Final Message as President
President Garrell reflects on her time at the CUNY Graduate Center and thanks the GC community.
- Community Message
Sep 29, 2023
In Memoriam: Art History Professor Emerita Barbara G. Lane
The Graduate Center is deeply saddened by the death of a renowned scholar and beloved mentor.
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- In Memoriam
Sep 28, 2023
Wild Asian Elephants Display Unique Puzzle-Solving Skills
A new study tests elephants’ abilities to innovate and circumvent barriers to food sources.
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Recent Books
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Seeing | Making
―> Room for Thought
Renowned philosopher Susan Buck-Morss collaborates with conceptual apparel label Boot Boyz Biz's Kevin McCaughey and Inventory Press' Adam Michaels on this experimental image-text update of McLuhan and Benjamin.
Showing how the montage principle allows thought to occupy the space between two seemingly unrelated things, Seeing | Making Room for Thought both studies and embodies how an arrangement of images can be a form of thinking―in other words, images not as illustrations or objects of analysis but as a montage. In a close collaboration with designers Kevin McCaughey (founder of the popular conceptual clothing line Boot Boys Biz) and Adam Michaels of Inventory Press, renowned philosopher Susan Buck-Morss expands on her unique conception of montage, combining images and text―also integrating excerpts from Buck-Morss’ previous work―in an innovative way that provides insight into images and how they work together. In both design and content, Seeing | Making Room for Thought is directly in conversation with Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore’s The Medium Is the Massage, as well as the works of Walter Benjamin.
Published November 2023
Inventory Press

Lights, Camera, Feminism?
Celebrities and Anti-trafficking Politics
Celebrities in the United States have drawn significant attention and resources to the complex issue of human trafficking—a subject of feminist concern—and they are often criticized for promoting sensationalized and simplistic understandings of the issue. In this comprehensive analysis of celebrities’ anti-trafficking activism, however, Samantha Majic finds that this phenomenon is more nuanced: even as some celebrities promote regressive issue narratives and carceral solutions, others use their platforms to elevate more diverse representations of human trafficking and feminist analyses of gender inequality. Lights, Camera, Feminism? thus argues that we should understand celebrities as multilevel political actors whose activism is shaped and mediated by a range of personal and contextual factors, with implications for feminist and democratic politics more broadly.
Published May 2023
University of California Press

Year 1
A Philosophical Recounting
Conventional readings of antiquity cast Athens against Jerusalem, with Athens standing in for "reason" and Jerusalem for "faith." And yet, Susan Buck-Morss reminds us, recent scholarship has overturned this separation. Naming the first century as a zero point--"year one"--that divides time into before and after is equally arbitrary, nothing more than a convenience that is empirically meaningless. In YEAR 1, Buck-Morss liberates the first century so it can speak to us in another way, reclaiming it as common ground rather than the origin of deeply entrenched differences.
Published April 2023
The MIT Press