Here, the tragic mulatto is circumstantial: the novel makes it clear that, given the right motivations, anyone is capable of desiring badly, especially when custom furniture is on the line. In the beginning of Danzy Senna’s sixth novel, Colored Television, Jane Gibson, the protagonist, is driving around an elegant Los Angeles neighborhood. She cannot help […]| Mid Theory Collective
In our “For Your Consideration” column, MTC editors, writers, and readers point your attention to works of art and cultural texts that may have dropped out of the 36-hour discourse cycle, but we consider worthy of your attention and consideration. In this inaugural feature, Amanda Ann Klein and Olivia Stowell discuss Aaron Schimberg’s 2024 film […]| Mid Theory Collective
How does this supportive sororal network gradually embraced by the show’s women turn into the nest of monsters perceived by its men? The most immediate and obvious reference to “sirens” in Netflix’…| Mid Theory Collective
2 posts published by Marissa Fenley and Ruari Paterson-Achenbach during October 2025| Mid Theory Collective
The Chicago storefront scene is haunted by what could be called the Steppenwolf effect. As the “home of the dysfunctional family play,” Steppenwolf is known for their psychologically-driven, realist style where conflict emerges from messy interpersonal relationships. This is much of what Chicago’s famed storefront theater scene has to offer: “scrappy” aesthetics and “edgy” plays […]| Mid Theory Collective
There is nothing new being made here. Just the lingering dreams of 90s and 2000s free-wheeling optimism now rotting from the inside. As it stands, I have only managed to create one film list on my …| Mid Theory Collective
So much of being disciplined into adulthood is a curtailing of the imagination. In February this year, I watched around thirty kids movies: movies about children, a few movies made for children, and even one film made by children (1985’s Daemon, by the London-based Children’s Film Unit). Most of these films were made in the […]| Mid Theory Collective
Two recent books offer practical recommendations for how we should attend to art amidst the crisis of attention. After Y2K, when the world failed to end, the art historian T.J. Clark spent six mont…| Mid Theory Collective
But why does anyone film anything? To remember it and, in the case of home viewing, to watch it repeatedly, allowing the images to spread across time like a curse. The same week I began writing this piece, the entertainment company A24 Films texted me to advertise a unique contest, as if they sensed my […]| Mid Theory Collective
August is Women in Translation Month! So for Mixtape #7, we asked critics, scholars, and translators: what are some of your favorite works written and/or translated by women? Here are some of their recommendations. We hope you would check out a few of these and celebrate women in translation! Kasia Bartoszynska – critic, editor, translator, […]| Mid Theory Collective
From childhood to adulthood Revathi’s radical desires remain anchored in the hard to parse and interwoven vagaries of trans living and dying in the global South. In a fascinating story shared early…| Mid Theory Collective
For Mixtape #6, we asked some friends, writers, and readers: What do you like about romance media? What are your favorite romance texts and tropes? Which texts brought you to the genre or represent its possibilities for you; what tropes do you return to again and again? Steve Ammidown, co-host of the Black Romance Has […]| Mid Theory Collective
On the Scene is a recurring reportage on a practice-focused cultural or artistic event taking place now or coming up soon. Framed by an awning of technicolor bougainvillea that blooms in defia…| Mid Theory Collective
How do we face a generic crisis, a sense—a dread—that a subject exceeds the bounds of the genre that seeks to contain it? In retrospect, the generic crisis of the film It Ends With Us (2024) was easy to predict. Like its source text, Colleen Hoover’s 2016 novel of the same name, the film has […]| Mid Theory Collective
What happens if we are never bored? Boredom is a thoroughly modern feeling; or rather, one etymologically contiguous with modernity. The noun did not enter the language until the middle of the nine…| Mid Theory Collective
