The Boston Review, an independent political and literary magazine edited by Joshua Cohen, professor of political science and philosophy, and Deb Chasman, will celebrate 30 years of continuous publication with a gala on Tuesday, Oct. 11, from 6 to 9 p.m. in the 4th floor commons of the Stata Center.
To honor the Review's mix of essays, fiction, poetry and general ease at the cutting edge, the event will include readings by poets Jorie Graham, winner of the 1996 Pulitzer Prize, and Frank Bidart, author of "Music Like Dirt"; Lani Guinier, Harvard Law School professor; and Elaine Scarry, literary theorist and Harvard professor of aesthetics.��
Hosts for the evening include Cohen; Review fiction editor Junot Diaz, an associate professor in the program in writing and humanistic studies; Nancy Kanwisher, professor of brain and cognitive sciences; Michael Piore, professor of economics; Richard Locke, professor of management; and Richard Samuels, director of the Center for International Studies.
The Review aims to establish a "space in which people can loosen the hold of conventional preconceptions and develop a richer language of public discourse. We are convinced that the imagination eludes political categories, and that open public debate lies at the heart of democracy's great promise," Cohen wrote in an introduction to a greatest-hits-style section of the current issue.
And what great hits they are. Just among the MIT faculty, contributors have included Noam Chomsky (linguistics); Alex Byrne and Judith Thomson (philosophy); Rebecca Saxe (cognitive sciences); Alan Lightman (writing); Peter Diamond (economics); Stephen van Evera and Stephen Ansolabehere (political science); Philip Thompson (urban studies and planning); and Philip Khoury, dean of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences.
For more information about the celebration, visit bostonreview.net.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on October 5, 2005 (download PDF).
