Alex Vaughan Williams

• Arts
• Culture

In 2006, Russian auteur Ilya Khrzhanovsky decided to produce a film titled “DAU” about Lev Landau, a prominent Soviet physicist and 1962 Nobel laureate. Khrzhanovsky obsessed for two years over how the film could achieve total authenticit...

• Arts
• Culture

The mission statement of the Tehran Auction–one of Iran’s largest annual art events–proudly refers to a phenomenon that may appear inexplicable in light of current world politics: “the increasing interest in modern and contemporary Ir...

• Culture
• Religion

For those unfamiliar with the seminal piece of Christian fan fiction, Paradise Lost is the epic tale of Satan’s fall from heaven. In over ten thousand lines of British renaissance poetry, John Milton recounts Satan’s failed celestial coup, heaven...

• Culture

For the overwhelming majority of banned books, it takes only the vaguest understanding of their premises to guess why they were banned. 1984, the eternal and easiest example of a banned book, has been censored because of its overt political themes. S...

• Culture

Archaeologists and historians alike have long studied the ancient Iraqi city of Samarra. Spanning both banks of the Tigris, the once-Capital of the Abbasid Caliphate is perhaps one of the largest testaments to the grandeur of medieval Iraq. Besides t...

• Arts
• Culture
• Features

The documentary has always been the global community’s preferred medium of political exposé. Even devotees to the masterworks of journalistic critique — the written accounts of human suffering and strife penned by the likes of Norman Mailer,...

• Culture
• Gender
• Technology

Riding the ever-surging wave of alt-right sentiment in recent years, right wing political commentators have effectively monopolized the production of incendiary thought. Their provocation of the left comes in many fiery varieties; whether you’re mo...

• Arts
• Culture

If any line could summarize the politics of Israeli-produced film Foxtrot, it is perhaps the one elaborating on the film’s own title. “Did you know the foxtrot is a dance?” asks Michael to his mourning wife Dafna. “No matter where you go, you...

• Arts
• Culture

Of the many canons in global literary history, specific attention has always been paid to banned and censored books. The reason for this seems pretty simple: Any book censored by a political authority must have in some way hit the nail on the head, r...