Focus: Conspiracy Theories — Spring 2024

Focus: Conspiracy Theories

Volume 45, Number 1
Spring 2024

Excerpts available through Project Muse; full articles available to Project Muse subscribers.

From the Editor

The Last Dictionary by Jeffrey R. Di Leo

Focus: Conspiracy Theories

Introduction by Michael Butter

Todor Hristov reviews The Stigmatization of Conspiracy Theories since the 1950s: “A Plot to Make Us Look Foolish” by Katharina Thalmann

It’s the Algorithm, Stupid! by Clare Birchall and Peter Knight

Asbjørn Dyrendal reviews Conspiracy Theories in the Time of Covid-19 by Clare Birchall and Peter Knight

Michael Butter reviews A Lot of People Are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy by Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum

Eliot Borenstein reviews Revealing Schemes: The Politics of Conspiracy in Russia and the Post-Soviet Region by Scott Radnitz

Lili Turza reviews Conspiracy Theories in Eastern Europe: Tropes and Trends ed. by Anastasiya Astapova et al.

Katerina Hatzikidi reviews Conspiracy Theories and Latin American History: Lurking in the Shadows by Luis Roniger and Leonardo Senkman

Claus Oberhauser reviews Perennial Conspiracy Theory: Reflections on the History of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” by Michael Hagemeister

Elżbieta Drążkiewicz reviews Contemporary Conspiracy Culture: Truth and Knowledge in an Era of Epistemic Instability by Jaron Harambam

E-feature

The Heartbreak of Desire by E. Ethelbert Miller

Lost and Found

An Old Poem That Tells You How to Have Beautiful Children by Anthony Madrid

Fiction

Ken Hada reviews Prize for the Fire: A Novel by Rilla Askew

Leonard Schwartz reviews Forgotten Night by Rebecca Goodman and Lilith Walks by Susan M. Schultz

Jane Rosenberg LaForge reviews Porgy & Bess by Miles Davis by George Gershwin by Dubose Heyward by Jeffrey DeShell

Edward M. Bury reviews Water Memory: A Novel by Tom Strelich

Cartography

The Nomad in Situ, or, the Man of the Crowd in the Time of COVID by Robert T. Tally Jr.

Translation

Speaking in Translation, or Speaking in Tongues by Brian O’Keeffe

Poetry

Michael Joyce reviews Nomenclature: New and Collected Poems by Dionne Brand

Hilary Sideris reviews Marvel (the Word) by Ellen Lytle, and: Day True by Roberta Gould

Bonny Finberg reviews When the World Walks toward You by Myra Shapiro

Kathryn Weld reviews The Country Where Everyone’s Name Is Fear: Selected Poems by Boris and Ludmila Khersonsky

David M. Katz reviews An Alphabet by Henry Weinfield

The Laureates

Zeina Azzam’s “Hedge against Hardship”: A Conversation with the Poet Laureate of Alexandria, Virginia by Renee H. Shea

Theory

On Contemporary Theory: An Interview with Jeffrey R. Di Leo by Gina Masucci MacKenzie, Daniel T. O’Hara, and Jeffrey R. Di Leo

Criticism

Will Luers reviews Glitch Poetics by Nathan Allen Jones

Humor

Robert Kramer reviews That Joke Isn’t Funny Anymore: On the Death and Rebirth of Comedy by Lou Perez

Art

Jessi Rae Morton reviews Afterlives: Recovering the Lost Stories of Looted Art by Darsie Alexander and Sam Sackeroff

Alan Steinfeld reviews Surrealist Muse by Anne Whitehouse, Escaping Lee Miller by Anne Whitehouse, and Frida by Anne Whitehouse

Scenes

Scenes: MadHat Press: An Interview with Marc Vincenz

Poetics to Come

Elegy for Elegy by Daniel T. O’Hara

The Departed

Intellectual Civility and Engaged Pluralism: Remembering the Singular Accomplishments of Richard Jacob Bernstein (1932–2022) by Vincent M. Colapietro