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The 10 Best Essay Collections of the Decade

Ever tried. ever failed. no matter..

Friends, it’s true: the end of the decade approaches. It’s been a difficult, anxiety-provoking, morally compromised decade, but at least it’s been populated by some damn fine literature. We’ll take our silver linings where we can.

So, as is our hallowed duty as a literary and culture website—though with full awareness of the potentially fruitless and endlessly contestable nature of the task—in the coming weeks, we’ll be taking a look at the best and most important (these being not always the same) books of the decade that was. We will do this, of course, by means of a variety of lists. We began with the best debut novels , the best short story collections , the best poetry collections , and the best memoirs of the decade , and we have now reached the fifth list in our series: the best essay collections published in English between 2010 and 2019.

The following books were chosen after much debate (and several rounds of voting) by the Literary Hub staff. Tears were spilled, feelings were hurt, books were re-read. And as you’ll shortly see, we had a hard time choosing just ten—so we’ve also included a list of dissenting opinions, and an even longer list of also-rans. As ever, free to add any of your own favorites that we’ve missed in the comments below.

The Top Ten

Oliver sacks, the mind’s eye (2010).

Toward the end of his life, maybe suspecting or sensing that it was coming to a close, Dr. Oliver Sacks tended to focus his efforts on sweeping intellectual projects like On the Move (a memoir), The River of Consciousness (a hybrid intellectual history), and Hallucinations (a book-length meditation on, what else, hallucinations). But in 2010, he gave us one more classic in the style that first made him famous, a form he revolutionized and brought into the contemporary literary canon: the medical case study as essay. In The Mind’s Eye , Sacks focuses on vision, expanding the notion to embrace not only how we see the world, but also how we map that world onto our brains when our eyes are closed and we’re communing with the deeper recesses of consciousness. Relaying histories of patients and public figures, as well as his own history of ocular cancer (the condition that would eventually spread and contribute to his death), Sacks uses vision as a lens through which to see all of what makes us human, what binds us together, and what keeps us painfully apart. The essays that make up this collection are quintessential Sacks: sensitive, searching, with an expertise that conveys scientific information and experimentation in terms we can not only comprehend, but which also expand how we see life carrying on around us. The case studies of “Stereo Sue,” of the concert pianist Lillian Kalir, and of Howard, the mystery novelist who can no longer read, are highlights of the collection, but each essay is a kind of gem, mined and polished by one of the great storytellers of our era.  –Dwyer Murphy, CrimeReads Managing Editor

John Jeremiah Sullivan, Pulphead (2011)

The American essay was having a moment at the beginning of the decade, and Pulphead was smack in the middle. Without any hard data, I can tell you that this collection of John Jeremiah Sullivan’s magazine features—published primarily in GQ , but also in The Paris Review , and Harper’s —was the only full book of essays most of my literary friends had read since Slouching Towards Bethlehem , and probably one of the only full books of essays they had even heard of.

Well, we all picked a good one. Every essay in Pulphead is brilliant and entertaining, and illuminates some small corner of the American experience—even if it’s just one house, with Sullivan and an aging writer inside (“Mr. Lytle” is in fact a standout in a collection with no filler; fittingly, it won a National Magazine Award and a Pushcart Prize). But what are they about? Oh, Axl Rose, Christian Rock festivals, living around the filming of One Tree Hill , the Tea Party movement, Michael Jackson, Bunny Wailer, the influence of animals, and by god, the Miz (of Real World/Road Rules Challenge fame).

But as Dan Kois has pointed out , what connects these essays, apart from their general tone and excellence, is “their author’s essential curiosity about the world, his eye for the perfect detail, and his great good humor in revealing both his subjects’ and his own foibles.” They are also extremely well written, drawing much from fictional techniques and sentence craft, their literary pleasures so acute and remarkable that James Wood began his review of the collection in The New Yorker with a quiz: “Are the following sentences the beginnings of essays or of short stories?” (It was not a hard quiz, considering the context.)

It’s hard not to feel, reading this collection, like someone reached into your brain, took out the half-baked stuff you talk about with your friends, researched it, lived it, and represented it to you smarter and better and more thoroughly than you ever could. So read it in awe if you must, but read it.  –Emily Temple, Senior Editor

Aleksandar Hemon, The Book of My Lives (2013)

Such is the sentence-level virtuosity of Aleksandar Hemon—the Bosnian-American writer, essayist, and critic—that throughout his career he has frequently been compared to the granddaddy of borrowed language prose stylists: Vladimir Nabokov. While it is, of course, objectively remarkable that anyone could write so beautifully in a language they learned in their twenties, what I admire most about Hemon’s work is the way in which he infuses every essay and story and novel with both a deep humanity and a controlled (but never subdued) fury. He can also be damn funny. Hemon grew up in Sarajevo and left in 1992 to study in Chicago, where he almost immediately found himself stranded, forced to watch from afar as his beloved home city was subjected to a relentless four-year bombardment, the longest siege of a capital in the history of modern warfare. This extraordinary memoir-in-essays is many things: it’s a love letter to both the family that raised him and the family he built in exile; it’s a rich, joyous, and complex portrait of a place the 90s made synonymous with war and devastation; and it’s an elegy for the wrenching loss of precious things. There’s an essay about coming of age in Sarajevo and another about why he can’t bring himself to leave Chicago. There are stories about relationships forged and maintained on the soccer pitch or over the chessboard, and stories about neighbors and mentors turned monstrous by ethnic prejudice. As a chorus they sing with insight, wry humor, and unimaginable sorrow. I am not exaggerating when I say that the collection’s devastating final piece, “The Aquarium”—which details his infant daughter’s brain tumor and the agonizing months which led up to her death—remains the most painful essay I have ever read.  –Dan Sheehan, Book Marks Editor

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass (2013)

Of every essay in my relentlessly earmarked copy of Braiding Sweetgrass , Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer’s gorgeously rendered argument for why and how we should keep going, there’s one that especially hits home: her account of professor-turned-forester Franz Dolp. When Dolp, several decades ago, revisited the farm that he had once shared with his ex-wife, he found a scene of destruction: The farm’s new owners had razed the land where he had tried to build a life. “I sat among the stumps and the swirling red dust and I cried,” he wrote in his journal.

So many in my generation (and younger) feel this kind of helplessness–and considerable rage–at finding ourselves newly adult in a world where those in power seem determined to abandon or destroy everything that human bodies have always needed to survive: air, water, land. Asking any single book to speak to this helplessness feels unfair, somehow; yet, Braiding Sweetgrass does, by weaving descriptions of indigenous tradition with the environmental sciences in order to show what survival has looked like over the course of many millennia. Kimmerer’s essays describe her personal experience as a Potawotami woman, plant ecologist, and teacher alongside stories of the many ways that humans have lived in relationship to other species. Whether describing Dolp’s work–he left the stumps for a life of forest restoration on the Oregon coast–or the work of others in maple sugar harvesting, creating black ash baskets, or planting a Three Sisters garden of corn, beans, and squash, she brings hope. “In ripe ears and swelling fruit, they counsel us that all gifts are multiplied in relationship,” she writes of the Three Sisters, which all sustain one another as they grow. “This is how the world keeps going.”  –Corinne Segal, Senior Editor

Hilton Als, White Girls (2013)

In a world where we are so often reduced to one essential self, Hilton Als’ breathtaking book of critical essays, White Girls , which meditates on the ways he and other subjects read, project and absorb parts of white femininity, is a radically liberating book. It’s one of the only works of critical thinking that doesn’t ask the reader, its author or anyone he writes about to stoop before the doorframe of complete legibility before entering. Something he also permitted the subjects and readers of his first book, the glorious book-length essay, The Women , a series of riffs and psychological portraits of Dorothy Dean, Owen Dodson, and the author’s own mother, among others. One of the shifts of that book, uncommon at the time, was how it acknowledges the way we inhabit bodies made up of variously gendered influences. To read White Girls now is to experience the utter freedom of this gift and to marvel at Als’ tremendous versatility and intelligence.

He is easily the most diversely talented American critic alive. He can write into genres like pop music and film where being part of an audience is a fantasy happening in the dark. He’s also wired enough to know how the art world builds reputations on the nod of rich white patrons, a significant collision in a time when Jean-Michel Basquiat is America’s most expensive modern artist. Als’ swerving and always moving grip on performance means he’s especially good on describing the effect of art which is volatile and unstable and built on the mingling of made-up concepts and the hard fact of their effect on behavior, such as race. Writing on Flannery O’Connor for instance he alone puts a finger on her “uneasy and unavoidable union between black and white, the sacred and the profane, the shit and the stars.” From Eminem to Richard Pryor, André Leon Talley to Michael Jackson, Als enters the life and work of numerous artists here who turn the fascinations of race and with whiteness into fury and song and describes the complexity of their beauty like his life depended upon it. There are also brief memoirs here that will stop your heart. This is an essential work to understanding American culture.  –John Freeman, Executive Editor

Eula Biss, On Immunity (2014)

We move through the world as if we can protect ourselves from its myriad dangers, exercising what little agency we have in an effort to keep at bay those fears that gather at the edges of any given life: of loss, illness, disaster, death. It is these fears—amplified by the birth of her first child—that Eula Biss confronts in her essential 2014 essay collection, On Immunity . As any great essayist does, Biss moves outward in concentric circles from her own very private view of the world to reveal wider truths, discovering as she does a culture consumed by anxiety at the pervasive toxicity of contemporary life. As Biss interrogates this culture—of privilege, of whiteness—she interrogates herself, questioning the flimsy ways in which we arm ourselves with science or superstition against the impurities of daily existence.

Five years on from its publication, it is dismaying that On Immunity feels as urgent (and necessary) a defense of basic science as ever. Vaccination, we learn, is derived from vacca —for cow—after the 17th-century discovery that a small application of cowpox was often enough to inoculate against the scourge of smallpox, an etymological digression that belies modern conspiratorial fears of Big Pharma and its vaccination agenda. But Biss never scolds or belittles the fears of others, and in her generosity and openness pulls off a neat (and important) trick: insofar as we are of the very world we fear, she seems to be suggesting, we ourselves are impure, have always been so, permeable, vulnerable, yet so much stronger than we think.  –Jonny Diamond, Editor-in-Chief 

Rebecca Solnit, The Mother of All Questions (2016)

When Rebecca Solnit’s essay, “Men Explain Things to Me,” was published in 2008, it quickly became a cultural phenomenon unlike almost any other in recent memory, assigning language to a behavior that almost every woman has witnessed—mansplaining—and, in the course of identifying that behavior, spurring a movement, online and offline, to share the ways in which patriarchal arrogance has intersected all our lives. (It would also come to be the titular essay in her collection published in 2014.) The Mother of All Questions follows up on that work and takes it further in order to examine the nature of self-expression—who is afforded it and denied it, what institutions have been put in place to limit it, and what happens when it is employed by women. Solnit has a singular gift for describing and decoding the misogynistic dynamics that govern the world so universally that they can seem invisible and the gendered violence that is so common as to seem unremarkable; this naming is powerful, and it opens space for sharing the stories that shape our lives.

The Mother of All Questions, comprised of essays written between 2014 and 2016, in many ways armed us with some of the tools necessary to survive the gaslighting of the Trump years, in which many of us—and especially women—have continued to hear from those in power that the things we see and hear do not exist and never existed. Solnit also acknowledges that labels like “woman,” and other gendered labels, are identities that are fluid in reality; in reviewing the book for The New Yorker , Moira Donegan suggested that, “One useful working definition of a woman might be ‘someone who experiences misogyny.'” Whichever words we use, Solnit writes in the introduction to the book that “when words break through unspeakability, what was tolerated by a society sometimes becomes intolerable.” This storytelling work has always been vital; it continues to be vital, and in this book, it is brilliantly done.  –Corinne Segal, Senior Editor

Valeria Luiselli, Tell Me How It Ends (2017)

The newly minted MacArthur fellow Valeria Luiselli’s four-part (but really six-part) essay  Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions  was inspired by her time spent volunteering at the federal immigration court in New York City, working as an interpreter for undocumented, unaccompanied migrant children who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border. Written concurrently with her novel  Lost Children Archive  (a fictional exploration of the same topic), Luiselli’s essay offers a fascinating conceit, the fashioning of an argument from the questions on the government intake form given to these children to process their arrivals. (Aside from the fact that this essay is a heartbreaking masterpiece, this is such a  good  conceit—transforming a cold, reproducible administrative document into highly personal literature.) Luiselli interweaves a grounded discussion of the questionnaire with a narrative of the road trip Luiselli takes with her husband and family, across America, while they (both Mexican citizens) wait for their own Green Card applications to be processed. It is on this trip when Luiselli reflects on the thousands of migrant children mysteriously traveling across the border by themselves. But the real point of the essay is to actually delve into the real stories of some of these children, which are agonizing, as well as to gravely, clearly expose what literally happens, procedural, when they do arrive—from forms to courts, as they’re swallowed by a bureaucratic vortex. Amid all of this, Luiselli also takes on more, exploring the larger contextual relationship between the United States of America and Mexico (as well as other countries in Central America, more broadly) as it has evolved to our current, adverse moment.  Tell Me How It Ends  is so small, but it is so passionate and vigorous: it desperately accomplishes in its less-than-100-pages-of-prose what centuries and miles and endless records of federal bureaucracy have never been able, and have never cared, to do: reverse the dehumanization of Latin American immigrants that occurs once they set foot in this country.  –Olivia Rutigliano, CrimeReads Editorial Fellow

Zadie Smith, Feel Free (2018)

In the essay “Meet Justin Bieber!” in Feel Free , Zadie Smith writes that her interest in Justin Bieber is not an interest in the interiority of the singer himself, but in “the idea of the love object”. This essay—in which Smith imagines a meeting between Bieber and the late philosopher Martin Buber (“Bieber and Buber are alternative spellings of the same German surname,” she explains in one of many winning footnotes. “Who am I to ignore these hints from the universe?”). Smith allows that this premise is a bit premise -y: “I know, I know.” Still, the resulting essay is a very funny, very smart, and un-tricky exploration of individuality and true “meeting,” with a dash of late capitalism thrown in for good measure. The melding of high and low culture is the bread and butter of pretty much every prestige publication on the internet these days (and certainly of the Twitter feeds of all “public intellectuals”), but the essays in Smith’s collection don’t feel familiar—perhaps because hers is, as we’ve long known, an uncommon skill. Though I believe Smith could probably write compellingly about anything, she chooses her subjects wisely. She writes with as much electricity about Brexit as the aforementioned Beliebers—and each essay is utterly engrossing. “She contains multitudes, but her point is we all do,” writes Hermione Hoby in her review of the collection in The New Republic . “At the same time, we are, in our endless difference, nobody but ourselves.”  –Jessie Gaynor, Social Media Editor

Tressie McMillan Cottom, Thick: And Other Essays (2019)

Tressie McMillan Cottom is an academic who has transcended the ivory tower to become the sort of public intellectual who can easily appear on radio or television talk shows to discuss race, gender, and capitalism. Her collection of essays reflects this duality, blending scholarly work with memoir to create a collection on the black female experience in postmodern America that’s “intersectional analysis with a side of pop culture.” The essays range from an analysis of sexual violence, to populist politics, to social media, but in centering her own experiences throughout, the collection becomes something unlike other pieces of criticism of contemporary culture. In explaining the title, she reflects on what an editor had said about her work: “I was too readable to be academic, too deep to be popular, too country black to be literary, and too naïve to show the rigor of my thinking in the complexity of my prose. I had wanted to create something meaningful that sounded not only like me, but like all of me. It was too thick.” One of the most powerful essays in the book is “Dying to be Competent” which begins with her unpacking the idiocy of LinkedIn (and the myth of meritocracy) and ends with a description of her miscarriage, the mishandling of black woman’s pain, and a condemnation of healthcare bureaucracy. A finalist for the 2019 National Book Award for Nonfiction, Thick confirms McMillan Cottom as one of our most fearless public intellectuals and one of the most vital.  –Emily Firetog, Deputy Editor

Dissenting Opinions

The following books were just barely nudged out of the top ten, but we (or at least one of us) couldn’t let them pass without comment.

Elif Batuman, The Possessed (2010)

In The Possessed Elif Batuman indulges her love of Russian literature and the result is hilarious and remarkable. Each essay of the collection chronicles some adventure or other that she had while in graduate school for Comparative Literature and each is more unpredictable than the next. There’s the time a “well-known 20th-centuryist” gave a graduate student the finger; and the time when Batuman ended up living in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, for a summer; and the time that she convinced herself Tolstoy was murdered and spent the length of the Tolstoy Conference in Yasnaya Polyana considering clues and motives. Rich in historic detail about Russian authors and literature and thoughtfully constructed, each essay is an amalgam of critical analysis, cultural criticism, and serious contemplation of big ideas like that of identity, intellectual legacy, and authorship. With wit and a serpentine-like shape to her narratives, Batuman adopts a form reminiscent of a Socratic discourse, setting up questions at the beginning of her essays and then following digressions that more or less entreat the reader to synthesize the answer for herself. The digressions are always amusing and arguably the backbone of the collection, relaying absurd anecdotes with foreign scholars or awkward, surreal encounters with Eastern European strangers. Central also to the collection are Batuman’s intellectual asides where she entertains a theory—like the “problem of the person”: the inability to ever wholly capture one’s character—that ultimately layer the book’s themes. “You are certainly my most entertaining student,” a professor said to Batuman. But she is also curious and enthusiastic and reflective and so knowledgeable that she might even convince you (she has me!) that you too love Russian literature as much as she does. –Eleni Theodoropoulos, Editorial Fellow

Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist (2014)

Roxane Gay’s now-classic essay collection is a book that will make you laugh, think, cry, and then wonder, how can cultural criticism be this fun? My favorite essays in the book include Gay’s musings on competitive Scrabble, her stranded-in-academia dispatches, and her joyous film and television criticism, but given the breadth of topics Roxane Gay can discuss in an entertaining manner, there’s something for everyone in this one. This book is accessible because feminism itself should be accessible – Roxane Gay is as likely to draw inspiration from YA novels, or middle-brow shows about friendship, as she is to introduce concepts from the academic world, and if there’s anyone I trust to bridge the gap between high culture, low culture, and pop culture, it’s the Goddess of Twitter. I used to host a book club dedicated to radical reads, and this was one of the first picks for the club; a week after the book club met, I spied a few of the attendees meeting in the café of the bookstore, and found out that they had bonded so much over discussing  Bad Feminist  that they couldn’t wait for the next meeting of the book club to keep discussing politics and intersectionality, and that, in a nutshell, is the power of Roxane. –Molly Odintz, CrimeReads Associate Editor

Rivka Galchen, Little Labors (2016)

Generally, I find stories about the trials and tribulations of child-having to be of limited appeal—useful, maybe, insofar as they offer validation that other people have also endured the bizarre realities of living with a tiny human, but otherwise liable to drift into the musings of parents thrilled at the simple fact of their own fecundity, as if they were the first ones to figure the process out (or not). But Little Labors is not simply an essay collection about motherhood, perhaps because Galchen initially “didn’t want to write about” her new baby—mostly, she writes, “because I had never been interested in babies, or mothers; in fact, those subjects had seemed perfectly not interesting to me.” Like many new mothers, though, Galchen soon discovered her baby—which she refers to sometimes as “the puma”—to be a preoccupying thought, demanding to be written about. Galchen’s interest isn’t just in her own progeny, but in babies in literature (“Literature has more dogs than babies, and also more abortions”), The Pillow Book , the eleventh-century collection of musings by Sei Shōnagon, and writers who are mothers. There are sections that made me laugh out loud, like when Galchen continually finds herself in an elevator with a neighbor who never fails to remark on the puma’s size. There are also deeper, darker musings, like the realization that the baby means “that it’s not permissible to die. There are days when this does not feel good.” It is a slim collection that I happened to read at the perfect time, and it remains one of my favorites of the decade. –Emily Firetog, Deputy Editor

Charlie Fox, This Young Monster (2017)

On social media as in his writing, British art critic Charlie Fox rejects lucidity for allusion and doesn’t quite answer the Twitter textbox’s persistent question: “What’s happening?” These days, it’s hard to tell.  This Young Monster  (2017), Fox’s first book,was published a few months after Donald Trump’s election, and at one point Fox takes a swipe at a man he judges “direct from a nightmare and just a repulsive fucking goon.” Fox doesn’t linger on politics, though, since most of the monsters he looks at “embody otherness and make it into art, ripping any conventional idea of beauty to shreds and replacing it with something weird and troubling of their own invention.”

If clichés are loathed because they conform to what philosopher Georges Bataille called “the common measure,” then monsters are rebellious non-sequiturs, comedic or horrific derailments from a classical ideal. Perverts in the most literal sense, monsters have gone astray from some “proper” course. The book’s nine chapters, which are about a specific monster or type of monster, are full of callbacks to familiar and lesser-known media. Fox cites visual art, film, songs, and books with the screwy buoyancy of a savant. Take one of his essays, “Spook House,” framed as a stage play with two principal characters, Klaus (“an intoxicated young skinhead vampire”) and Hermione (“a teen sorceress with green skin and jet-black hair” who looks more like The Wicked Witch than her namesake). The chorus is a troupe of trick-or-treaters. Using the filmmaker Cameron Jamie as a starting point, the rest is free association on gothic decadence and Detroit and L.A. as cities of the dead. All the while, Klaus quotes from  Artforum ,  Dazed & Confused , and  Time Out. It’s a technical feat that makes fictionalized dialogue a conveyor belt for cultural criticism.

In Fox’s imagination, David Bowie and the Hydra coexist alongside Peter Pan, Dennis Hopper, and the maenads. Fox’s book reaches for the monster’s mask, not really to peel it off but to feel and smell the rubber schnoz, to know how it’s made before making sure it’s still snugly set. With a stylistic blend of arthouse suavity and B-movie chic,  This Young Monster considers how monsters in culture are made. Aren’t the scariest things made in post-production? Isn’t the creature just duplicity, like a looping choir or a dubbed scream? –Aaron Robertson, Assistant Editor

Elena Passarello, Animals Strike Curious Poses (2017)

Elena Passarello’s collection of essays Animals Strike Curious Poses picks out infamous animals and grants them the voice, narrative, and history they deserve. Not only is a collection like this relevant during the sixth extinction but it is an ambitious historical and anthropological undertaking, which Passarello has tackled with thorough research and a playful tone that rather than compromise her subject, complicates and humanizes it. Passarello’s intention is to investigate the role of animals across the span of human civilization and in doing so, to construct a timeline of humanity as told through people’s interactions with said animals. “Of all the images that make our world, animal images are particularly buried inside us,” Passarello writes in her first essay, to introduce us to the object of the book and also to the oldest of her chosen characters: Yuka, a 39,000-year-old mummified woolly mammoth discovered in the Siberian permafrost in 2010. It was an occasion so remarkable and so unfathomable given the span of human civilization that Passarello says of Yuka: “Since language is epically younger than both thought and experience, ‘woolly mammoth’ means, to a human brain, something more like time.” The essay ends with a character placing a hand on a cave drawing of a woolly mammoth, accompanied by a phrase which encapsulates the author’s vision for the book: “And he becomes the mammoth so he can envision the mammoth.” In Passarello’s hands the imagined boundaries between the animal, natural, and human world disintegrate and what emerges is a cohesive if baffling integrated history of life. With the accuracy and tenacity of a journalist and the spirit of a storyteller, Elena Passarello has assembled a modern bestiary worthy of contemplation and awe. –Eleni Theodoropoulos, Editorial Fellow

Esmé Weijun Wang, The Collected Schizophrenias (2019)

Esmé Weijun Wang’s collection of essays is a kaleidoscopic look at mental health and the lives affected by the schizophrenias. Each essay takes on a different aspect of the topic, but you’ll want to read them together for a holistic perspective. Esmé Weijun Wang generously begins The Collected Schizophrenias by acknowledging the stereotype, “Schizophrenia terrifies. It is the archetypal disorder of lunacy.” From there, she walks us through the technical language, breaks down the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual ( DSM-5 )’s clinical definition. And then she gets very personal, telling us about how she came to her own diagnosis and the way it’s touched her daily life (her relationships, her ideas about motherhood). Esmé Weijun Wang is uniquely situated to write about this topic. As a former lab researcher at Stanford, she turns a precise, analytical eye to her experience while simultaneously unfolding everything with great patience for her reader. Throughout, she brilliantly dissects the language around mental health. (On saying “a person living with bipolar disorder” instead of using “bipolar” as the sole subject: “…we are not our diseases. We are instead individuals with disorders and malfunctions. Our conditions lie over us like smallpox blankets; we are one thing and the illness is another.”) She pinpoints the ways she arms herself against anticipated reactions to the schizophrenias: high fashion, having attended an Ivy League institution. In a particularly piercing essay, she traces mental illness back through her family tree. She also places her story within more mainstream cultural contexts, calling on groundbreaking exposés about the dangerous of institutionalization and depictions of mental illness in television and film (like the infamous Slender Man case, in which two young girls stab their best friend because an invented Internet figure told them to). At once intimate and far-reaching, The Collected Schizophrenias is an informative and important (and let’s not forget artful) work. I’ve never read a collection quite so beautifully-written and laid-bare as this. –Katie Yee, Book Marks Assistant Editor

Ross Gay, The Book of Delights (2019)

When Ross Gay began writing what would become The Book of Delights, he envisioned it as a project of daily essays, each focused on a moment or point of delight in his day. This plan quickly disintegrated; on day four, he skipped his self-imposed assignment and decided to “in honor and love, delight in blowing it off.” (Clearly, “blowing it off” is a relative term here, as he still produced the book.) Ross Gay is a generous teacher of how to live, and this moment of reveling in self-compassion is one lesson among many in The Book of Delights , which wanders from moments of connection with strangers to a shade of “red I don’t think I actually have words for,” a text from a friend reading “I love you breadfruit,” and “the sun like a guiding hand on my back, saying everything is possible. Everything .”

Gay does not linger on any one subject for long, creating the sense that delight is a product not of extenuating circumstances, but of our attention; his attunement to the possibilities of a single day, and awareness of all the small moments that produce delight, are a model for life amid the warring factions of the attention economy. These small moments range from the physical–hugging a stranger, transplanting fig cuttings–to the spiritual and philosophical, giving the impression of sitting beside Gay in his garden as he thinks out loud in real time. It’s a privilege to listen. –Corinne Segal, Senior Editor

Honorable Mentions

A selection of other books that we seriously considered for both lists—just to be extra about it (and because decisions are hard).

Terry Castle, The Professor and Other Writings (2010) · Joyce Carol Oates, In Rough Country (2010) · Geoff Dyer, Otherwise Known as the Human Condition (2011) · Christopher Hitchens, Arguably (2011) ·  Roberto Bolaño, tr. Natasha Wimmer, Between Parentheses (2011) · Dubravka Ugresic, tr. David Williams, Karaoke Culture (2011) · Tom Bissell, Magic Hours (2012)  · Kevin Young, The Grey Album (2012) · William H. Gass, Life Sentences: Literary Judgments and Accounts (2012) · Mary Ruefle, Madness, Rack, and Honey (2012) · Herta Müller, tr. Geoffrey Mulligan, Cristina and Her Double (2013) · Leslie Jamison, The Empathy Exams (2014)  · Meghan Daum, The Unspeakable (2014)  · Daphne Merkin, The Fame Lunches (2014)  · Charles D’Ambrosio, Loitering (2015) · Wendy Walters, Multiply/Divide (2015) · Colm Tóibín, On Elizabeth Bishop (2015) ·  Renee Gladman, Calamities (2016)  · Jesmyn Ward, ed. The Fire This Time (2016)  · Lindy West, Shrill (2016)  · Mary Oliver, Upstream (2016)  · Emily Witt, Future Sex (2016)  · Olivia Laing, The Lonely City (2016)  · Mark Greif, Against Everything (2016)  · Durga Chew-Bose, Too Much and Not the Mood (2017)  · Sarah Gerard, Sunshine State (2017)  · Jim Harrison, A Really Big Lunch (2017)  · J.M. Coetzee, Late Essays: 2006-2017 (2017) · Melissa Febos, Abandon Me (2017)  · Louise Glück, American Originality (2017)  · Joan Didion, South and West (2017)  · Tom McCarthy, Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish (2017)  · Hanif Abdurraqib, They Can’t Kill Us Until they Kill Us (2017)  · Ta-Nehisi Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power (2017)  ·  Samantha Irby, We Are Never Meeting in Real Life (2017)  · Alexander Chee, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel (2018)  · Alice Bolin, Dead Girls (2018)  · Marilynne Robinson, What Are We Doing Here? (2018)  · Lorrie Moore, See What Can Be Done (2018)  · Maggie O’Farrell, I Am I Am I Am (2018)  · Ijeoma Oluo, So You Want to Talk About Race (2018)  · Rachel Cusk, Coventry (2019)  · Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror (2019)  · Emily Bernard, Black is the Body (2019)  · Toni Morrison, The Source of Self-Regard (2019)  · Margaret Renkl, Late Migrations (2019)  ·  Rachel Munroe, Savage Appetites (2019)  · Robert A. Caro,  Working  (2019) · Arundhati Roy, My Seditious Heart (2019).

Emily Temple

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50 Must-Read Contemporary Essay Collections

Liberty Hardy

Liberty Hardy is an unrepentant velocireader, writer, bitey mad lady, and tattoo canvas. Turn-ons include books, books and books. Her favorite exclamation is “Holy cats!” Liberty reads more than should be legal, sleeps very little, frequently writes on her belly with Sharpie markers, and when she dies, she’s leaving her body to library science. Until then, she lives with her three cats, Millay, Farrokh, and Zevon, in Maine. She is also right behind you. Just kidding! She’s too busy reading. Twitter: @MissLiberty

View All posts by Liberty Hardy

I feel like essay collections don’t get enough credit. They’re so wonderful! They’re like short story collections, but TRUE. It’s like going to a truth buffet. You can get information about sooooo many topics, sometimes in one single book! To prove that there are a zillion amazing essay collections out there, I compiled 50 great contemporary essay collections, just from the last 18 months alone.  Ranging in topics from food, nature, politics, sex, celebrity, and more, there is something here for everyone!

I’ve included a brief description from the publisher with each title. Tell us in the comments about which of these you’ve read or other contemporary essay collections that you love. There are a LOT of them. Yay, books!

Must-Read Contemporary Essay Collections

They can’t kill us until they kill us  by hanif abdurraqib.

“In an age of confusion, fear, and loss, Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib’s is a voice that matters. Whether he’s attending a Bruce Springsteen concert the day after visiting Michael Brown’s grave, or discussing public displays of affection at a Carly Rae Jepsen show, he writes with a poignancy and magnetism that resonates profoundly.”

Would Everybody Please Stop?: Reflections on Life and Other Bad Ideas  by Jenny Allen

“Jenny Allen’s musings range fluidly from the personal to the philosophical. She writes with the familiarity of someone telling a dinner party anecdote, forgoing decorum for candor and comedy. To read  Would Everybody Please Stop?  is to experience life with imaginative and incisive humor.”

Longthroat Memoirs: Soups, Sex and Nigerian Taste Buds  by Yemisi Aribisala

“A sumptuous menu of essays about Nigerian cuisine, lovingly presented by the nation’s top epicurean writer. As well as a mouth-watering appraisal of Nigerian food,  Longthroat Memoirs  is a series of love letters to the Nigerian palate. From the cultural history of soup, to fish as aphrodisiac and the sensual allure of snails,  Longthroat Memoirs  explores the complexities, the meticulousness, and the tactile joy of Nigerian gastronomy.”

Beyond Measure: Essays  by Rachel Z. Arndt

“ Beyond Measure  is a fascinating exploration of the rituals, routines, metrics and expectations through which we attempt to quantify and ascribe value to our lives. With mordant humor and penetrating intellect, Arndt casts her gaze beyond event-driven narratives to the machinery underlying them: judo competitions measured in weigh-ins and wait times; the significance of the elliptical’s stationary churn; the rote scripts of dating apps; the stupefying sameness of the daily commute.”

Magic Hours  by Tom Bissell

“Award-winning essayist Tom Bissell explores the highs and lows of the creative process. He takes us from the set of  The Big Bang Theory  to the first novel of Ernest Hemingway to the final work of David Foster Wallace; from the films of Werner Herzog to the film of Tommy Wiseau to the editorial meeting in which Paula Fox’s work was relaunched into the world. Originally published in magazines such as  The Believer ,  The New Yorker , and  Harper’s , these essays represent ten years of Bissell’s best writing on every aspect of creation—be it Iraq War documentaries or video-game character voices—and will provoke as much thought as they do laughter.”

Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession  by Alice Bolin

“In this poignant collection, Alice Bolin examines iconic American works from the essays of Joan Didion and James Baldwin to  Twin Peaks , Britney Spears, and  Serial , illuminating the widespread obsession with women who are abused, killed, and disenfranchised, and whose bodies (dead and alive) are used as props to bolster men’s stories. Smart and accessible, thoughtful and heartfelt, Bolin investigates the implications of our cultural fixations, and her own role as a consumer and creator.”

Betwixt-and-Between: Essays on the Writing Life  by Jenny Boully

“Jenny Boully’s essays are ripe with romance and sensual pleasures, drawing connections between the digression, reflection, imagination, and experience that characterizes falling in love as well as the life of a writer. Literary theory, philosophy, and linguistics rub up against memory, dreamscapes, and fancy, making the practice of writing a metaphor for the illusory nature of experience.  Betwixt and Between  is, in many ways, simply a book about how to live.”

Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give by Ada Calhoun

“In  Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give , Ada Calhoun presents an unflinching but also loving portrait of her own marriage, opening a long-overdue conversation about the institution as it truly is: not the happy ending of a love story or a relic doomed by high divorce rates, but the beginning of a challenging new chapter of which ‘the first twenty years are the hardest.'”

How to Write an Autobiographical Novel: Essays  by Alexander Chee

“ How to Write an Autobiographical Novel  is the author’s manifesto on the entangling of life, literature, and politics, and how the lessons learned from a life spent reading and writing fiction have changed him. In these essays, he grows from student to teacher, reader to writer, and reckons with his identities as a son, a gay man, a Korean American, an artist, an activist, a lover, and a friend. He examines some of the most formative experiences of his life and the nation’s history, including his father’s death, the AIDS crisis, 9/11, the jobs that supported his writing—Tarot-reading, bookselling, cater-waiting for William F. Buckley—the writing of his first novel,  Edinburgh , and the election of Donald Trump.”

Too Much and Not the Mood: Essays  by Durga Chew-Bose

“ Too Much and Not the Mood is a beautiful and surprising exploration of what it means to be a first-generation, creative young woman working today. On April 11, 1931, Virginia Woolf ended her entry in A Writer’s Diary with the words ‘too much and not the mood’ to describe her frustration with placating her readers, what she described as the ‘cramming in and the cutting out.’ She wondered if she had anything at all that was truly worth saying. The attitude of that sentiment inspired Durga Chew-Bose to gather own writing in this lyrical collection of poetic essays that examine personhood and artistic growth. Drawing inspiration from a diverse group of incisive and inquiring female authors, Chew-Bose captures the inner restlessness that keeps her always on the brink of creative expression.”

We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy  by Ta-Nehisi Coates

“‘We were eight years in power’ was the lament of Reconstruction-era black politicians as the American experiment in multiracial democracy ended with the return of white supremacist rule in the South. In this sweeping collection of new and selected essays, Ta-Nehisi Coates explores the tragic echoes of that history in our own time: the unprecedented election of a black president followed by a vicious backlash that fueled the election of the man Coates argues is America’s ‘first white president.'”

Look Alive Out There: Essays by Sloane Crosley

“In  Look Alive Out There,  whether it’s scaling active volcanoes, crashing shivas, playing herself on  Gossip Girl,  befriending swingers, or squinting down the barrel of the fertility gun, Crosley continues to rise to the occasion with unmatchable nerve and electric one-liners. And as her subjects become more serious, her essays deliver not just laughs but lasting emotional heft and insight. Crosley has taken up the gauntlets thrown by her predecessors—Dorothy Parker, Nora Ephron, David Sedaris—and crafted something rare, affecting, and true.”

Fl â neuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London  by Lauren Elkin

“Part cultural meander, part memoir,  Flâneuse  takes us on a distinctly cosmopolitan jaunt that begins in New York, where Elkin grew up, and transports us to Paris via Venice, Tokyo, and London, all cities in which she’s lived. We are shown the paths beaten by such  flâneuses  as the cross-dressing nineteenth-century novelist George Sand, the Parisian artist Sophie Calle, the wartime correspondent Martha Gellhorn, and the writer Jean Rhys. With tenacity and insight, Elkin creates a mosaic of what urban settings have meant to women, charting through literature, art, history, and film the sometimes exhilarating, sometimes fraught relationship that women have with the metropolis.”

Idiophone  by Amy Fusselman

“Leaping from ballet to quiltmaking, from the The Nutcracker to an Annie-B Parson interview,  Idiophone  is a strikingly original meditation on risk-taking and provocation in art and a unabashedly honest, funny, and intimate consideration of art-making in the context of motherhood, and motherhood in the context of addiction. Amy Fusselman’s compact, beautifully digressive essay feels both surprising and effortless, fueled by broad-ranging curiosity, and, fundamentally, joy.”

Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture  by Roxane Gay

“In this valuable and revealing anthology, cultural critic and bestselling author Roxane Gay collects original and previously published pieces that address what it means to live in a world where women have to measure the harassment, violence, and aggression they face, and where they are ‘routinely second-guessed, blown off, discredited, denigrated, besmirched, belittled, patronized, mocked, shamed, gaslit, insulted, bullied’ for speaking out.”

Sunshine State: Essays  by Sarah Gerard

“With the personal insight of  The Empathy Exams , the societal exposal of  Nickel and Dimed , and the stylistic innovation and intensity of her own break-out debut novel  Binary Star , Sarah Gerard’s  Sunshine State  uses the intimately personal to unearth the deep reservoirs of humanity buried in the corners of our world often hardest to face.”

The Art of the Wasted Day  by Patricia Hampl

“ The Art of the Wasted Day  is a picaresque travelogue of leisure written from a lifelong enchantment with solitude. Patricia Hampl visits the homes of historic exemplars of ease who made repose a goal, even an art form. She begins with two celebrated eighteenth-century Irish ladies who ran off to live a life of ‘retirement’ in rural Wales. Her search then leads to Moravia to consider the monk-geneticist, Gregor Mendel, and finally to Bordeaux for Michel Montaigne—the hero of this book—who retreated from court life to sit in his chateau tower and write about whatever passed through his mind, thus inventing the personal essay.”

A Really Big Lunch: The Roving Gourmand on Food and Life  by Jim Harrison

“Jim Harrison’s legendary gourmandise is on full display in  A Really Big Lunch . From the titular  New Yorker  piece about a French lunch that went to thirty-seven courses, to pieces from  Brick ,  Playboy , Kermit Lynch Newsletter, and more on the relationship between hunter and prey, or the obscure language of wine reviews,  A Really Big Lunch  is shot through with Harrison’s pointed aperçus and keen delight in the pleasures of the senses. And between the lines the pieces give glimpses of Harrison’s life over the last three decades.  A Really Big Lunch  is a literary delight that will satisfy every appetite.”

Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me  by Bill Hayes

“Bill Hayes came to New York City in 2009 with a one-way ticket and only the vaguest idea of how he would get by. But, at forty-eight years old, having spent decades in San Francisco, he craved change. Grieving over the death of his partner, he quickly discovered the profound consolations of the city’s incessant rhythms, the sight of the Empire State Building against the night sky, and New Yorkers themselves, kindred souls that Hayes, a lifelong insomniac, encountered on late-night strolls with his camera.”

Would You Rather?: A Memoir of Growing Up and Coming Out  by Katie Heaney

“Here, for the first time, Katie opens up about realizing at the age of twenty-eight that she is gay. In these poignant, funny essays, she wrestles with her shifting sexuality and identity, and describes what it was like coming out to everyone she knows (and everyone she doesn’t). As she revisits her past, looking for any ‘clues’ that might have predicted this outcome, Katie reveals that life doesn’t always move directly from point A to point B—no matter how much we would like it to.”

Tonight I’m Someone Else: Essays  by Chelsea Hodson

“From graffiti gangs and  Grand Theft Auto  to sugar daddies, Schopenhauer, and a deadly game of Russian roulette, in these essays, Chelsea Hodson probes her own desires to examine where the physical and the proprietary collide. She asks what our privacy, our intimacy, and our own bodies are worth in the increasingly digital world of liking, linking, and sharing.”

We Are Never Meeting in Real Life.: Essays  by Samantha Irby

“With  We Are Never Meeting in Real Life. , ‘bitches gotta eat’ blogger and comedian Samantha Irby turns the serio-comic essay into an art form. Whether talking about how her difficult childhood has led to a problem in making ‘adult’ budgets, explaining why she should be the new Bachelorette—she’s ’35-ish, but could easily pass for 60-something’—detailing a disastrous pilgrimage-slash-romantic-vacation to Nashville to scatter her estranged father’s ashes, sharing awkward sexual encounters, or dispensing advice on how to navigate friendships with former drinking buddies who are now suburban moms—hang in there for the Costco loot—she’s as deft at poking fun at the ghosts of her past self as she is at capturing powerful emotional truths.”

This Will Be My Undoing: Living at the Intersection of Black, Female, and Feminist in (White) America  by Morgan Jerkins

“Doubly disenfranchised by race and gender, often deprived of a place within the mostly white mainstream feminist movement, black women are objectified, silenced, and marginalized with devastating consequences, in ways both obvious and subtle, that are rarely acknowledged in our country’s larger discussion about inequality. In  This Will Be My Undoing , Jerkins becomes both narrator and subject to expose the social, cultural, and historical story of black female oppression that influences the black community as well as the white, male-dominated world at large.”

Everywhere Home: A Life in Essays  by Fenton Johnson

“Part retrospective, part memoir, Fenton Johnson’s collection  Everywhere Home: A Life in Essays  explores sexuality, religion, geography, the AIDS crisis, and more. Johnson’s wanderings take him from the hills of Kentucky to those of San Francisco, from the streets of Paris to the sidewalks of Calcutta. Along the way, he investigates questions large and small: What’s the relationship between artists and museums, illuminated in a New Guinean display of shrunken heads? What’s the difference between empiricism and intuition?”

One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter: Essays  by Scaachi Koul

“In  One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter , Scaachi Koul deploys her razor-sharp humor to share all the fears, outrages, and mortifying moments of her life. She learned from an early age what made her miserable, and for Scaachi anything can be cause for despair. Whether it’s a shopping trip gone awry; enduring awkward conversations with her bikini waxer; overcoming her fear of flying while vacationing halfway around the world; dealing with Internet trolls, or navigating the fears and anxieties of her parents. Alongside these personal stories are pointed observations about life as a woman of color: where every aspect of her appearance is open for critique, derision, or outright scorn; where strict gender rules bind in both Western and Indian cultures, leaving little room for a woman not solely focused on marriage and children to have a career (and a life) for herself.”

Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in 40 Questions  by Valeria Luiselli and jon lee anderson (translator)

“A damning confrontation between the American dream and the reality of undocumented children seeking a new life in the U.S. Structured around the 40 questions Luiselli translates and asks undocumented Latin American children facing deportation,  Tell Me How It Ends  (an expansion of her 2016 Freeman’s essay of the same name) humanizes these young migrants and highlights the contradiction between the idea of America as a fiction for immigrants and the reality of racism and fear—both here and back home.”

All the Lives I Want: Essays About My Best Friends Who Happen to Be Famous Strangers  by Alana Massey

“Mixing Didion’s affected cool with moments of giddy celebrity worship, Massey examines the lives of the women who reflect our greatest aspirations and darkest fears back onto us. These essays are personal without being confessional and clever in a way that invites readers into the joke. A cultural critique and a finely wrought fan letter, interwoven with stories that are achingly personal, All the Lives I Want is also an exploration of mental illness, the sex industry, and the dangers of loving too hard.”

Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish: Essays  by Tom McCarthy

“Certain points of reference recur with dreamlike insistence—among them the artist Ed Ruscha’s  Royal Road Test , a photographic documentation of the roadside debris of a Royal typewriter hurled from the window of a traveling car; the great blooms of jellyfish that are filling the oceans and gumming up the machinery of commerce and military domination—and the question throughout is: How can art explode the restraining conventions of so-called realism, whether aesthetic or political, to engage in the active reinvention of the world?”

Nasty Women: Feminism, Resistance, and Revolution in Trump’s America  by Samhita Mukhopadhyay and Kate Harding

“When 53 percent of white women voted for Donald Trump and 94 percent of black women voted for Hillary Clinton, how can women unite in Trump’s America? Nasty Women includes inspiring essays from a diverse group of talented women writers who seek to provide a broad look at how we got here and what we need to do to move forward.”

Don’t Call Me Princess: Essays on Girls, Women, Sex, and Life  by Peggy Orenstein

“Named one of the ’40 women who changed the media business in the last 40 years’ by  Columbia Journalism Review , Peggy Orenstein is one of the most prominent, unflinching feminist voices of our time. Her writing has broken ground and broken silences on topics as wide-ranging as miscarriage, motherhood, breast cancer, princess culture and the importance of girls’ sexual pleasure. Her unique blend of investigative reporting, personal revelation and unexpected humor has made her books bestselling classics.”

When You Find Out the World Is Against You: And Other Funny Memories About Awful Moments  by Kelly Oxford

“Kelly Oxford likes to blow up the internet. Whether it is with the kind of Tweets that lead  Rolling Stone  to name her one of the Funniest People on Twitter or with pictures of her hilariously adorable family (human and animal) or with something much more serious, like creating the hashtag #NotOkay, where millions of women came together to share their stories of sexual assault, Kelly has a unique, razor-sharp perspective on modern life. As a screen writer, professional sh*t disturber, wife and mother of three, Kelly is about everything but the status quo.”

Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman  by Anne Helen Petersen

“You know the type: the woman who won’t shut up, who’s too brazen, too opinionated—too much. She’s the unruly woman, and she embodies one of the most provocative and powerful forms of womanhood today. In  Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud , Anne Helen Petersen uses the lens of ‘unruliness’ to explore the ascension of pop culture powerhouses like Lena Dunham, Nicki Minaj, and Kim Kardashian, exploring why the public loves to love (and hate) these controversial figures. With its brisk, incisive analysis,  Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud  will be a conversation-starting book on what makes and breaks celebrity today.”

Well, That Escalated Quickly: Memoirs and Mistakes of an Accidental Activist  by Franchesca Ramsey

“In her first book, Ramsey uses her own experiences as an accidental activist to explore the many ways we communicate with each other—from the highs of bridging gaps and making connections to the many pitfalls that accompany talking about race, power, sexuality, and gender in an unpredictable public space…the internet.”

Shrewed: A Wry and Closely Observed Look at the Lives of Women and Girls  by Elizabeth Renzetti

“Drawing upon Renzetti’s decades of reporting on feminist issues,  Shrewed  is a book about feminism’s crossroads. From Hillary Clinton’s failed campaign to the quest for equal pay, from the lessons we can learn from old ladies to the future of feminism in a turbulent world, Renzetti takes a pointed, witty look at how far we’ve come—and how far we have to go.”

What Are We Doing Here?: Essays  by Marilynne Robinson

“In this new essay collection she trains her incisive mind on our modern political climate and the mysteries of faith. Whether she is investigating how the work of great thinkers about America like Emerson and Tocqueville inform our political consciousness or discussing the way that beauty informs and disciplines daily life, Robinson’s peerless prose and boundless humanity are on full display.”

Double Bind: Women on Ambition  by Robin Romm

“‘A work of courage and ferocious honesty’ (Diana Abu-Jaber),  Double Bind  could not come at a more urgent time. Even as major figures from Gloria Steinem to Beyoncé embrace the word ‘feminism,’ the word ‘ambition’ remains loaded with ambivalence. Many women see it as synonymous with strident or aggressive, yet most feel compelled to strive and achieve—the seeming contradiction leaving them in a perpetual double bind. Ayana Mathis, Molly Ringwald, Roxane Gay, and a constellation of ‘nimble thinkers . . . dismantle this maddening paradox’ ( O, The Oprah Magazine ) with candor, wit, and rage. Women who have made landmark achievements in fields as diverse as law, dog sledding, and butchery weigh in, breaking the last feminist taboo once and for all.”

The Destiny Thief: Essays on Writing, Writers and Life  by Richard Russo

“In these nine essays, Richard Russo provides insight into his life as a writer, teacher, friend, and reader. From a commencement speech he gave at Colby College, to the story of how an oddly placed toilet made him reevaluate the purpose of humor in art and life, to a comprehensive analysis of Mark Twain’s value, to his harrowing journey accompanying a dear friend as she pursued gender-reassignment surgery,  The Destiny Thief  reflects the broad interests and experiences of one of America’s most beloved authors. Warm, funny, wise, and poignant, the essays included here traverse Russo’s writing life, expanding our understanding of who he is and how his singular, incredibly generous mind works. An utter joy to read, they give deep insight into the creative process from the prospective of one of our greatest writers.”

Curry: Eating, Reading, and Race by Naben Ruthnum

“Curry is a dish that doesn’t quite exist, but, as this wildly funny and sharp essay points out, a dish that doesn’t properly exist can have infinite, equally authentic variations. By grappling with novels, recipes, travelogues, pop culture, and his own upbringing, Naben Ruthnum depicts how the distinctive taste of curry has often become maladroit shorthand for brown identity. With the sardonic wit of Gita Mehta’s  Karma Cola  and the refined, obsessive palette of Bill Buford’s  Heat , Ruthnum sinks his teeth into the story of how the beloved flavor calcified into an aesthetic genre that limits the imaginations of writers, readers, and eaters.”

The River of Consciousness  by Oliver Sacks

“Sacks, an Oxford-educated polymath, had a deep familiarity not only with literature and medicine but with botany, animal anatomy, chemistry, the history of science, philosophy, and psychology.  The River of Consciousness  is one of two books Sacks was working on up to his death, and it reveals his ability to make unexpected connections, his sheer joy in knowledge, and his unceasing, timeless project to understand what makes us human.”

All the Women in My Family Sing: Women Write the World: Essays on Equality, Justice, and Freedom (Nothing But the Truth So Help Me God)  by Deborah Santana and America Ferrera

“ All the Women in My Family Sing  is an anthology documenting the experiences of women of color at the dawn of the twenty-first century. It is a vital collection of prose and poetry whose topics range from the pressures of being the vice-president of a Fortune 500 Company, to escaping the killing fields of Cambodia, to the struggles inside immigration, identity, romance, and self-worth. These brief, trenchant essays capture the aspirations and wisdom of women of color as they exercise autonomy, creativity, and dignity and build bridges to heal the brokenness in today’s turbulent world.”

We Wear the Mask: 15 True Stories of Passing in America  by Brando Skyhorse and Lisa Page

“For some, ‘passing’ means opportunity, access, or safety. Others don’t willingly pass but are ‘passed’ in specific situations by someone else.  We Wear the Mask , edited by  Brando Skyhorse  and  Lisa Page , is an illuminating and timely anthology that examines the complex reality of passing in America. Skyhorse, a Mexican American, writes about how his mother passed him as an American Indian before he learned who he really is. Page shares how her white mother didn’t tell friends about her black ex-husband or that her children were, in fact, biracial.”

Feel Free: Essays by Zadie Smith

“Since she burst spectacularly into view with her debut novel almost two decades ago, Zadie Smith has established herself not just as one of the world’s preeminent fiction writers, but also a brilliant and singular essayist. She contributes regularly to  The New Yorker  and the  New York Review of Books  on a range of subjects, and each piece of hers is a literary event in its own right.”

The Mother of All Questions: Further Reports from the Feminist Revolutions  by Rebecca Solnit

“In a timely follow-up to her national bestseller  Men Explain Things to Me , Rebecca Solnit offers indispensable commentary on women who refuse to be silenced, misogynistic violence, the fragile masculinity of the literary canon, the gender binary, the recent history of rape jokes, and much more. In characteristic style, Solnit mixes humor, keen analysis, and powerful insight in these essays.”

The Wrong Way to Save Your Life: Essays  by Megan Stielstra

“Whether she’s imagining the implications of open-carry laws on college campuses, recounting the story of going underwater on the mortgage of her first home, or revealing the unexpected pains and joys of marriage and motherhood, Stielstra’s work informs, impels, enlightens, and embraces us all. The result is something beautiful—this story, her courage, and, potentially, our own.”

Against Memoir: Complaints, Confessions & Criticisms  by Michelle Tea

“Delivered with her signature honesty and dark humor, this is Tea’s first-ever collection of journalistic writing. As she blurs the line between telling other people’s stories and her own, she turns an investigative eye to the genre that’s nurtured her entire career—memoir—and considers the price that art demands be paid from life.”

A Twenty Minute Silence Followed by Applause  by Shawn Wen

“In precise, jewel-like scenes and vignettes,  A Twenty Minute Silence Followed by Applause  pays homage to the singular genius of a mostly-forgotten art form. Drawing on interviews, archival research, and meticulously observed performances, Wen translates the gestural language of mime into a lyric written portrait by turns whimsical, melancholic, and haunting.”

Acid West: Essays  by Joshua Wheeler

“The radical evolution of American identity, from cowboys to drone warriors to space explorers, is a story rooted in southern New Mexico.  Acid West  illuminates this history, clawing at the bounds of genre to reveal a place that is, for better or worse, home. By turns intimate, absurd, and frightening,  Acid West  is an enlightening deep-dive into a prophetic desert at the bottom of America.”

Sexographies  by Gabriela Wiener and Lucy Greaves And jennifer adcock (Translators)

“In fierce and sumptuous first-person accounts, renowned Peruvian journalist Gabriela Wiener records infiltrating the most dangerous Peruvian prison, participating in sexual exchanges in swingers clubs, traveling the dark paths of the Bois de Boulogne in Paris in the company of transvestites and prostitutes, undergoing a complicated process of egg donation, and participating in a ritual of ayahuasca ingestion in the Amazon jungle—all while taking us on inward journeys that explore immigration, maternity, fear of death, ugliness, and threesomes. Fortunately, our eagle-eyed voyeur emerges from her narrative forays unscathed and ready to take on the kinks, obsessions, and messiness of our lives.  Sexographies  is an eye-opening, kamikaze journey across the contours of the human body and mind.”

The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative  by Florence Williams

“From forest trails in Korea, to islands in Finland, to eucalyptus groves in California, Florence Williams investigates the science behind nature’s positive effects on the brain. Delving into brand-new research, she uncovers the powers of the natural world to improve health, promote reflection and innovation, and strengthen our relationships. As our modern lives shift dramatically indoors, these ideas—and the answers they yield—are more urgent than ever.”

Can You Tolerate This?: Essays  by Ashleigh Young

“ Can You Tolerate This?  presents a vivid self-portrait of an introspective yet widely curious young woman, the colorful, isolated community in which she comes of age, and the uneasy tensions—between safety and risk, love and solitude, the catharsis of grief and the ecstasy of creation—that define our lives.”

What are your favorite contemporary essay collections?

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10 Contemporary American Essayists You Should Be Reading Right Now

Today marks the release of celebrated novelist and essayist Marilynne Robinson’s newest collection of essays, When I Was a Child I Read Books . We’ve been excited about this book for a while now, so if you’ve been reading our books coverage with any regularity you probably already know we think it’s something worth picking up. Great as it is, Robinson’s collection only whet our appetites for more essays by contemporary writers, so in case it does the same for you, we’ve put together a list of contemporary essayists we think everyone should be reading right now (or, you know, whenever you finish watching Downton Abbey ). We’ve tried to stick to authors who are still alive — so David Foster Wallace and Christopher Hitchens are off the table, though they both would have made this list with flying colors were they still with us — and limited ourselves to American writers, but even with those caveats, there is enough in these writers’ oeuvres to keep you up and thinking for weeks on end. Click through to read our list, and please do add your own suggestions for top-notch essayists we should all be reading in the comments.

Marilynne Robinson

Though Robinson is much lauded for her fiction (she won the Pulitzer Prize for her second novel, Gilead ), she is equally adored for her incisive essays, which often take hard looks at Americanism and the social political system writ both large and very small. Dorris Lessing called her 1998 collection, The Death of Adam , “a useful antidote to the increasingly crude and slogan-loving culture we inhabit,” and we’re comfortable expanding that statement to Robinson’s work at large — always challenging, always thought provoking, always making us want to be better.

John Jeremiah Sullivan

Sullivan’s recent collection, Pulphead , has had everyone raving since it hit shelves in October — and with good reason. With exacting, witty prose, Sullivan tackles pop culture and history with equal ability, writing about everything from Real World alumni to Christian rock festivals in the Ozarks to Constantine Rafinesque, a nineteenth-century genius struggling for a foothold. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll wonder about modern existence — and what else are essays for?

Cynthia Ozick

Though David Foster Wallace was disqualified from this list, he lives on in Ozick, whom he listed (alongside Cormac McCarthy and Don DeLillo) as one of the country’s best living fiction writers. From the king of the contemporary essay, that’s a ringing endorsement. Not that she really needs it, however — Ozick has no less than seven essay collections to her name, alongside a host of novels and short fiction, and writes on almost every subject, though she tends to favor the Jewish American lens. Her prose is perfectly self-conscious, sharp and crystal clear, she is witty and definitely smarter than you. Which is really never bad.

John D’Agata

D’Agata, already a celebrated essayist, has been in the news recently due to the release of The Lifespan of a Fact , a years-long conversation between D’Agata and his fact checker about the very nature of essay-writing. The book must itself, of course, be a semi-fiction, proving its own point, in a way — but that just makes the whole thing all the more interesting. But if for no other reason, you should read D’Agata because he’s tackling questions that have long stumped both readers and writers, and will probably continue to for some time. Better get acquainted.

An important social equality activist and scholar, bell hooks’ writings are must-reads for anyone. Incredibly prolific both in the academic and essay format (and in many other types of media as well), hooks writes about race, gender, feminism, class, art, and the world at large, often through a postmodern lens. She is fiery and unabashed about her beliefs, as every intelligent woman should be, and though this has of course caused some to criticize her, it has caused many more to love her. Obviously, we’re in the latter camp.

Sarah Vowell

The author of six nonfiction books on American history and culture as well as many essays, Vowell is practiced at cultural criticism. A frequent contributor to This American Life , where many of her essays get their starts, she comes at the contemporary social world with a supreme understanding of our country’s past. After all, she does write a lot about assassinated presidents. Fun fact: she’s also a voice actor, best known for her portrayal as Violet Parr in The Incredibles . Though she doesn’t really need it, we admit that makes us like her more.

Elif Batuman

Elif Batuman’s first collection of essays, The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them , published last year, reveals her to be a complete nerd — in the best of ways, of course. Unpretentiously in love with literature and blessed with a relentlessly charming voice, almost everything we read by Batuman sends us scrambling back to our bookshelves for that novel she’s reminded us we’re dying to dive into. And that, friends, is always a good thing.

Touré sort of has a hand in everything — he writes essays and short stories, has a novel under his belt, is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and hosts hip-hop shows on Fuse. Constant through all his mediums, however, are his insightful, intimate — and often hilarious — observations about race, class, and the wild and crazy world of pop culture. In his most recent book, Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness?: What It Means to Be Black Now , he explores race as “a completely liquid shape-shifter that can take any form” and aims “to attack and destroy the idea that there is a correct or legitimate way of doing blackness.” Provocative and brilliant, we think this is a guy who’ll keep changing the cultural landscape for years to come.

David Shields

Like D’Agata, Shields is concerned with probing the edges of what makes an essay an essay — or if we should even have terms like “essay” at all. In his 2010 book Reality Hunger , Shields argues that the “lyric essay” is contemporary culture’s premier literary form — but that such terms don’t really matter, as all of culture is in the midst of getting mixed up in a huge intellectual blender. While we had our issues with the book, he makes some fascinating points, all worth reading in this age of mash-ups and DIY and shifting intellectual property rights.

Sloane Crosley

Crosley’s hilarious personal essays are smart and observant and relentlessly sly. Like a lady Sedaris, she wins you over with self-deprecating humor and indignant reactions to the weirdness of the everyday world. Though her essays are no intellectual slog, they will make you smile, commiserate, and perhaps enjoy your day just a little bit more.

612 Culture Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

If you are writing a culture essay, topics are easy to find. However, their abundance can quickly become overwhelming – so we prepared this handy list of culture title ideas, along with writing tips and examples.

🤫 Culture Essays: Topics and Writing Tips

🏆 best culture topic ideas & essay examples, 👍 good essay topics about culture, 🎓 simple & easy culture title ideas, 📌 cultural topics and writing prompts, 🥇 most interesting culture topics to write about, ❓ research questions about culture.

Describing culture is a challenging task. You have probably stumbled across the concept if you study sociology, media, or a variety of other subjects. There are many cultural differences across the Earth. Each nation, community, and subgroup of people have its own values, vocabulary, and customs. In the 21st century, we can document and share them thanks to cross-cultural communication.

Since there is an almost infinite number of things to consider about this broad topic, our team has collected 582 topics about culture. Check them out on this page!

Culture essays present excellent opportunities for conducting extensive research. They allow students to analyze acute global problems and investigate the topic of diversity, customs, and traditions, as well as the significance of individuals’ cultural backgrounds. You can choose one of the many topics for your culture essay. You can find culture essay ideas online or ask your professor.

We suggest the following culture essay topics and titles:

• The significance of cultural identity in an individual
• Culture as a political instrument in the modern world
• The differences between the Eastern and the Western culture
• The role of culture in people from mixed origins
• The impact of religious views on culture
• Cultural diversity in the workplace
• Are there similarities among different cultures?
• The link between culture and gender roles

After selecting culture essay questions for discussion, you can start working on your paper. Here are some secrets of the powerful paper on the topic:

• Conduct preliminary research on the selected issue. Remember that you should find as much relevant information as possible while presenting a multifaceted perspective on the issue. Ask your professor about the sources you can use and stick to the instructions. Avoid using personal blogs or Wikipedia as the primary sources of information. Do not make a statement if you cannot support it with evidence.
• If you are writing a paper about a particular culture, think about whether you can talk to someone coming from this background. Such an approach can help you to include all the relevant information in your paper and avoid possible crucial mistakes.
• Remember that a well-organized culture essay outline is key for your paper. Think of the main points you want to discuss and decide how you structure your paper. Remember that each topic or subtopic should be stated in a separate paragraph, if possible.
• If it is necessary, check out essay examples online to see how you can organize the information. In addition, this step can help you to evaluate the relevance of the issue you want to discuss. Remember to include an introductory and concluding paragraph in which you will state the main points and findings of your paper.
• Avoid discriminating against some cultures in your essay. Remember that even if you do not understand the causes of some behaviors or norms, you should not criticize them in your paper. Instead, help the reader to understand them better and provide insight into important differences between cultures.
• Be accepting and try to be as accurate as possible. Support your claims with evidence from your preliminary research.
• If relevant, include graphs and charts to represent significant information. For example, you can visualize the presence of diversity in the workplace in different countries.
• Remember that the reader should understand the goal and idea of your paper clearly. Define all terms and avoid using overly complex sentences. Be concise but provide enough relevant information on the topic.
• Make sure that you use correct grammar and sentence structures in your essay. Even an excellent essay can look bad with grammatical mistakes. Grammar-free papers allow the reader to see that your opinion is credible. Check the essay several times before sending it to your instructor.

Do not forget to find a free sample in our collection that will help you get the best ideas for your writing!

• How Does Media Influence Culture and Society? The media has been instrumental in trying to explain to the people the meaning of culture and in the end enabling them to have a cultural identity.
• The Advantages of Living in a Multicultural City Living in a multicultural city provides one with multiple benefits such as having opportunities to learn about other cultures, developing a better understanding of different cultures, and having more chances to improve one’s personality.
• How Do Celebrities Influence Society? Celebrity Culture Positive Effects Introduction Negative Effects Positive Effects Conclusion Student Name Professor Name Course Date
• Is Culture Essential? The Role of Culture in Human Life Culture is an integral part of human life, and its significance may be observed from several perspectives: as a powerful means for people to adapt to the environment they have to live in, as a […]
• Impact of Culture on Communication Reflective Essay And also the differential consideration by the society to men and women, the approach of people in the lower strata of the society towards the social difference and the attitude of people to avoid uncertainty […]
• What Is Popular Culture? Definition and Analysis Therefore, Storey observes that the incorporation of the true meaning of the word culture as a way of life and culture should be in the form of ‘signifying practices’ named above.
• There Is No Place for Traditional Values in Modern Society Essay The value of culture in society is rapidly fading away as people continue to adjust to the patterns of modernisation. Modernisation, on the other hand, is the process of adopting new trends of life in […]
• Raymond Williams’ “Culture Is Ordinary” Williams discusses the Marxist’s ideas on the interpretation and discussion of the culture and disagrees with some of the raised views.
• Filipino Food Essay However, because of the Spanish and American influence, meat, especially pork and chicken, are also served. So, Philippines is a country of festivals and a diversity of traditional dishes and beverages.
• Culture in Human Behavior Essay The act of changing a culture can only be minimal because of the complexities of the study complexity Culture, serving as a categorical idea of people, is a school of thought that has anthropologists all […]
• Relationship Between Language and Culture Essay The purpose of the essay is to clearly highlight the issue of intercultural communication with reference to language. Language is the first element that helps an individual to distinguish the cultural orientations of individuals.
• Food Habits and Culture: Factors Influence The food habits of a group of people/community can be described as the reasons for eating, the methods used while eating, the types of food eaten, and the mode of storage.
• 6 Barriers of Intercultural Communication Essay Cross cultural or intercultural communication is a part of the interaction of different people from different backgrounds and heritages. In this way, prejudice is inevitable blockage of cross-cultural communication as it is a source to […]
• James Rachels’ The Challenge of Cultural Relativism Essay The article “The Challenge of Cultural Relativism” by Rachels explores the issue of ethics. According to Rachels, cultural relativism fails to support the existence of universal moral standards.
• The Origin of Organizational Culture The rapid changes in the organization reduce the confidence of managers in meeting the future needs of the business. Participation or the presence of the human personnel in an organization is a source of uncertainty […]
• Heritage Tourism and Cultural Tourism In the preservation of the sites for tourism purposes, it is clear that what is termed as the “culture of today” becomes the heritage of the future. There is a need to unveil the complexity […]
• Birthing Traditions and Practices Among Russian-Speaking Cultural Group Many things about Russia, its people, and its traditions remain a mystery for the average American, as a history of geopolitical and military confrontation, as well as the distance between the two countries, cause many […]
• Festivals and Their Importance for Modern Culture Thematic festivals are trendy and vital for today’s culture: different music festivals, art and design festivals, and even sex festivals. Modern-day festivals are widespread around the Earth, and they often combine the elements of local […]
• Attend a Cultural Event: Different Ethnic Communities’ Identities The warm and incredible welcome of the Turkish citizens adds spice to this event and helps the visitors to be more enthusiastic throughout the festival.
• Importance of Cultural Diversity Campaigns such as the Black Lives Matter may be attributed to lack of inclusion and appreciation of different cultures. For instance, the discussion of inclusivity in the 1970s focused on primary and secondary dimensions of […]
• Zara: Corporate Structure and Culture In Luthans, due to the large size and diversity of the organization, Zara has departmentalized itself in terms of the services and products it offers in the market.
• Japan vs. Germany: Cultural Differences The first aspect of the matter is people’s activity in Japan and Germany within businesses as determined by culture and their habits and preferences in terms of distinguishing their work time and families.
• Indian Custom and Culture Community For example, there were various activities used to illustrate this marking, and these would include invitation and welcoming of the bridegroom, exchange of flower garlands, presentation of the would-be wife, the ceremony of the sacred […]
• Culture and Development in Nigeria The following are some of the organizations that are concerned with cultural developments in Nigeria:- The African development bank is involved in major activities in the water sector and in sanitation projects across Nigeria.
• Cultural Competence: Indian Culture and Healthcare They also believed that, the disease was heredity and that if one member of the family suffered from one of the diseases, chances that somebody from the same family would contract the disease are high.
• Social Cultural Impacts of Tourism The tourist-host relationship and thus the social cultural impact of tourism is affected by the differences between tourists and hosts, the type of contact between tourists and hosts, the importance of tourism in a community, […]
• Pakistan: Culture and History Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a large culturally diverse country located at the crossroads of the strategically significant expanses of South Asia, Central Asia and Western Asia, and borders Afghanistan and Iran […]
• The Influence of Ramayana on the Indian Culture If one considers the image provided in the work with the work itself, one notices the detailed depiction of the life and activities of the protagonist.
• Reasons for Not Appreciating Different Cultural Point of View One of the reasons why people may not appreciate the cultural point of view of others is because of the differences in cultural values.
• Campinha-Bacote’s Model of Cultural Competence It is valid to specify that the original title of the model is the Process of Cultural Competence in the Delivery of Healthcare Services.
• Intercultural Communication Essay: Differences in Cultural, Religious, and Ethnic Backgrounds Identity management theories are also a form of intercultural communication theory developed to explain the cross-cultural aspect of communication where intercultural communication under this theory is seen to originate from the intercultural and intracultural types […]
• McDonald’s Cultural Issues in India Some of the issues which are discussed include Mcdonald’s historical background, the cultural and ethical issues at the organization’s operations, and the social responsibility issues in different regions where the organization has operations.
• Nok Culture’s Main Characteristic Features One of the most significant pieces of art is the Nok art, a testament of the Nok culture. Discovery of the sculptures in 1943 indicate the use of iron, the practice of smelting for tools […]
• Culture and Anarchy by Mathew Arnold This is due to the lack of awareness to the new culture. The entire book of Arnold takes culture as collection of everything what is the best and perfect in the world.
• UAE and Culture UAE’s society is multicultural. UAE culture has been defined by the Islamic religion as it is the most dominant in the region.
• Pashtun Culture: Cultural Presentation This presentation will overview one of such groups – the Pashtun culture and the challenges a nurse may face working with its representatives.
• The Luo Culture of Kenya The Luo people are the indigenous people of Kenya living around lake Victoria, which lies in the western part of the country.
• Food Culture and Obesity The marketers pass a message to the consumers that they need to eat the fast foods to experience the goodness and the refreshing memory that cannot be found in any other food.
• Egypt’s History, Culture, Religion, and Economy Over the next three millennia, Egypt would see the rise and fall of several civilizations, including the Old Kingdom, the Middle Kingdom, and the New Kingdom.
• Cultural Influences on Students Academic Performance Indeed as the definition is rightly put, practicing our culture is akin to cultivating our lives, with the help of tools and symbols that the society has bestowed on us. Others are of the opinion […]
• Cancel Culture: The Adverse Impacts Only recently, Gen Z created the term cancel culture to refer to the modern form of public shaming. Topic Sentence: The increased awareness of cancel culture has promoted sudden judgments and simplified complex problems.
• The Kikuyu Community: Religion and Culture The community speaks the Kikuyu language. Kenya’s Kikuyu people are the most popular and largest ethnic group.
• The United States of America’s Culture These are however just general views on what the American culture really is, the next section of this paper will go to the specifics, and zero in into the following factors that determine the true […]
• Concept of Globalisation and Cultural Diversity The Concept of Globalisation Globalisation can be defined as the minimisation of the differences between people of the world and the maximisation of their similarities through interactions, cooperation and communication.
• The Literature of the Renaissance Period The main features of the Renaissance culture which also determine the elements of the Renaissance literature are the philosophy of humanism, the secular character of the art pieces, and the orientation on the antique patterns.
• Culture in Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe I also kill a cock at the shrine of Ifejioku, the god of yams” Ibo culture is shown through the world look of the Western society that is why the aspect of behavioral brutality was […]
• Power and Culture: Relationship and Effects The relational determination in a particular society is a product of the role and function of power in a designated society.
• The Jarawa People and Their Culture One of the most interesting areas of study not only to the anthropologists but also to the modern and contemporary human race is culture.
• The Nature of People and Culture The first key point is the understanding that culture is the framework of life and influences the aspects of life for every individual.
• Celebrity Culture Is Harmful to Society In this paper, it is argued that celebrity culture is harmful to society because of its effects on childhood development and the glorification of wrong behaviors based on its tendency to nurture bad role models.
• Four Types of Corporate Management Culture After studying such aspects of the work of large organizations as the relationship between employees, the subordination system in the company, and employees’ attitudes and views on the development of the MNCs, Trompenaars states that […]
• Wal-Mart Company’s Cross Cultural Communication This system of operation has resulted in one of the labor activists called Wang Shishu led demonstrations in order to convince the management not to cut the pay of the employees.
• The Bhagavad Gita: The Role of Religion in Relation to the Hindu Culture From this point, it is important to focus on the Bhagavad Gita and its role for the Hindu culture in the context of the role of religion in the Hindu society because the scripture contains […]
• Existential Therapy and Multicultural Perspective Paying attention to the entire idea of existential therapy, the exploring meaning and values of the issue will be considered referencing to the authenticity of the ideas, priorities, and values.
• Coca-Cola Company’s Cross-Cultural Management The company also possesses a vision, which is a guiding factor to the units of the business, which is achieved by laying out whatever they need to achieve in order to sustain their progress and […]
• Subjectivism and Cultural Relativism: Objections and Differences The key difference is that relativism relates the human experience to the influence of culture, while subjectivism states that right and wrong is a matter of personal opinion.
• Cross-Cultural Management Major Theories The study of different languages helps one in comprehending what people have in common and also assist in comprehending the diversity that underlies languages, methods of creating and organizing knowledge and the several different realities […]
• USA And Nigeria: Hofstede’s Six Cultural Dimensions Comparison Considering the Hofstede’s cultural dimensions theory, the U.S.and Nigeria are similar in terms of masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, and long- term orientation, the half of all the suggested factors by Baack.
• Convergence vs. Divergence of Culture and Literature – Examples The notion of culture emerged for the first time in the course of the 18th century. It was used to identify the culture of the people.
• Cultural Norms: Fair and Lovely and Advertising Is the advertising of Fair & Lovely demeaning to women or is it portraying a product not too similar to cosmetics in general?
• Servant Leadership in Indian Culture and Hindu Religion The basis of this approach is the reorientation of the values of the leader, who considers the empowerment of followers as a means and goal of his activity.
• Muriel’s Wedding as a Representation of Australian Culture The cultural identity of an individual is formed through the perceptions and traditions of the whole country. Muriel admires the typical glamorous girls and wants to be part of the community and bear a group […]
• Globalization and Food Culture Essay The interviewee gave the examples of France, America, and China in her description of how food can affect the culture of a place and vice versa.
• Comparison of US and Germany Cultural Differences Power distance is the degree to which power is shared evenly in a community as well as the extent in which the community recognize and accepts this variation in power distribution among itself; this is […]
• Religion and Cultural Belonging: “The Flea Palace” by Elif Shafak The old and the new, the Christianity and Islam, the East and the West are shown closely interconnected for example in the description of the two ancient cemeteries in Istanbul and in the development of […]
• Celebrity Culture and Its Influence on Society Before discussing the way Angelina Jolie and other celebrities affect modern society, it is necessary to identify the origins of the celebrity culture.
• The Mughal Empire: Culture and Heritage The combination of the regions’ economic independence, the tensions between Hindus and Muslims, and the penetration of the subcontinent by the European economic powers led to the decline of the Mughal Empire.
• Ramen Culture as a Vital Part of the Traditions in Japan Studying the history of the transformation of ramen culture and the role it plays in modern Japanese popular culture helps to explore the uniqueness of the phenomenon and understand the origins of its immense popularity.
• Cultural Identity in “White Teeth” by Zadie Smith Exploring the thematic significance of the novels title “White Teeth” it would be instrumental to argue that the title touches on the aspects of cultural identity.
• Philippines Dressing Culture and Customs The country borders South China Sea to the North and West, the Sulu Sea and Celebs Sea to the southwest, and the Philippines Sea to the east.
• Tolerance and Respect for Cultural Differences The author concludes the essay in the third section by revisiting the thesis statement and highlighting the various approaches used to develop attitudes that promote respect and tolerance.
• The Importance of Organizational Culture Essay Organizational culture and change is most valuable to an aspiring manager because it they form the basis of organizational success. It is imperative for managers to introduce change in the organization to encourage innovation and […]
• Chinese Traditional Festivals and Culture Of all the Chinese festivals, the Spring Festival has the greatest value to the Chinese people with its value equated to the value of the Westerners attachment to Christmas.
• Japanese Animations’ Effects on the Japanese Economy and Their Cultural Influence on Foreign Countries These artists incorporate the characteristic anime stylizations, gags and methodology in their piece of work to produce animations that are a bit similar to Japanese anime. The growing interest among foreign artists in anime is […]
• Comparison of the Australian and Indonesian Culture On the other hand, Indonesia is one of the countries with the largest population in the world and it has over two hundred ethnic groups who use different languages. Marriage is also important in the […]
• Cross-Cultural Environment Negotiations: Japan and America Based on this understanding, this paper shows that understanding the need for neutrality, cultural sensitivity, and flexibility is the key to having a positive outcome in a cross-cultural business negotiation. To have a proper understanding […]
• Exploring the Human Culture In order to achieve this, one should engross himself/herself in a given culture, reside with the inhabitants, participate and learn their way of living in the best way possible. This creates a desire in every […]
• The Zulu Nation’s History and Culture The Zulu people live on the continent of Africa, in the southern part of it, which is known as KwaZulu-Natal. In this family, the husband stands for the chief, and institution of marriage is hallowed.
• Culture and Health Correlation People’s culture influences the type of food they purchase and the way they prepare it, which is a vital determinant of health.
• Ethnicity Essay: Cultural Background in the Daily Lives of Children and Young People The idea of a child according to Montgomery and Kellett refers to a representation of a whole category of young people that are identified by their age and intellectual development and also their social maturity […]
• The Effect of Globalization on a World Culture The net result is a global culture; the effect and extent that global culture has gone in the world varied among nations and continents; developed countries have their culture more diffused and uniformity can be […]
• Diverse Contexts and Intercultural Communication at Work As the world moves to the global environment, the modern workplace becomes more and more diverse. When individuals are educated about intercultural differences are more likely to alter their communication styles to suit the needs […]
• Arab Culture and Teenagers With this approach, the parents have managed to mould their teenagers into the right path that is to stick to their culture.
• Verbal and Non-Verbal Communication Styles Across Ethnic and Cultural Backgrounds In the essay, I discuss verbal and non-verbal communication styles across ethnic and cultural background, communication styles that a counselor may come across when dealing with culturally diverse clients and how a therapist can succeed […]
• Cultural Diversity in the UAE: Social and Economic Development This view is in line with Rabah’s emphasis on the importance of respecting cultural diversity in the process of nation-building because the concept is useful in solving conflicts and developing solutions that are beneficial to […]
• African Cultural Traditions and Communication Unfortunately, there are a lot of countries with the shortest life expectancy rates and the low quality of life in Africa.
• Apple’s Cross-Cultural Problems in China In the case of Apple, the main issues have to do with employee management issues mostly associated with working conditions and compliance to Chinese labor laws.
• Gender in Cross-Cultural Perspective by Brettell & Sargent Islam accorded equal opportunities to both men and women in the society when it realized the important roles that women play in the society.
• The Impact of the Internet in Culture and Daily Habits The growth of the internet has greatly improved our culture and society today with services it offers in the enrichment of our lives at work and at home.
• Cultural Pride and Cultural Baggage One of the articles that was written by Kincaid gives her experiences in England which portrays her cultural baggage as she finds it quite hard to fit in this society and to adopt a similar […]
• Discussion: Cultural Roots and Routes My neighbors and the numerous friends I have grown up with have affected my life significantly. At the time, I did not understand why I was being penalized, but looking back, I can see that […]
• How to Avoid Ethnocentrism – Essay on Promoting Cultural Relativism In an effort to understand ethnocentrism which is defined as, the tendency to believe that one’s cultural beliefs and their culture’s ethnic values to be superior to others.
• Culture of Simping and Why One Should Stay Away From It Society seems to be heavily affected by the culture of simping due to the popularity of the term ‘simp’ and the inability of teenage individuals to draw the line between a joke and offensive behavior.
• Cultural Differences Between Turkey and USA Spanish, Polish and Greek languages are also part of the oral communication of the people in America. The use of suffixes in Turkish language is very important and we can feel the grammatical functions of […]
• The Culture Industry According to Adorno and Horkheimer, the culture industry refers to the collection of all the aspects of technology in the modern society that brings change in the lifestyles of many.
• The Effects of Modern Popular Culture on Personal Beliefs and Values I persisted with this behavior until I was admitted to the university where the modern culture dwells on wearing casually. This essay has showed that modern popular culture changes the beliefs and behaviors of people […]
• Political and Cultural Impact of Alexander the Great’s Conquests Due to many territories that he conquered, the dominion that Alexander the Great had was regarded as one of the greatest in the history of the world.
• Theory of Culture Care Diversity and Universality Madeleine Leininger was a famous American nursing theorists, whose main contribution was the creation of the theory of culture care diversity and universality in 1991.
• Cultural Comparison: The United States of America and Japan First of all, it is important to note that both the United States of America and Japan have notable similarities as far as their cultures are concerned.
• Culture and Communication: Egypt Egypt is the origin of the earliest civilizations and has taken an important position in the Middle East as the connection between the Arab and Europe regions.
• Cultural Diversity in Women and Sport Participation In the contemporary society, the participation of women in sports is one of the major areas of focus for women empowerment thereby making more women to seek knowledge regarding sports.
• Leading a Culture of Excellence in Healthcare Industry The concept of a culture of excellence is to maintain personnel’s conviction that their work is meaningful and requires to be performed with superiority and be continuously improved.
• Three Stages of Cultural Development The main goal of this paper is to describe my personal experience along the lines of the stages of cultural development.
• Cancel Culture: A Persuasive Speech Cancel culture is a phenomenon of modern society that has arisen thanks to the development of social media. However, in this situation, it is difficult to determine who sets the boundaries of the morally correct […]
• Consumerism Culture: Challenges and Solutions In order to avoid further spread of consumerism and its influence on popular culture, the government should introduce change to the education of children and their parents.
• IKEA Company’s Organizational Culture Thus, every worker is a carrier of the propagated IKEA culture, which in turn forms the basis for the success of the organization as a whole.
• Culture and Agriculture: Nature and Significance Understanding Seeing that agriculture shapes the society and defines the course of its further development, promoting the ideas of environmentalism and sustainability, it will be reasonable to assume that agriculture belongs to the domain of cultures.
• Hofstede’s Cultural Model in Negotiations It is important to include terms and conditions of the relationship as a measure of reducing conflicts where third parties are involved.
• The Influence of the Cultural Current “Modernism” on the Conception of Music in the 20th Century Modernism movement provoked composers changed their music from any possible perspective, and one of the most frequent was the change of music language and the necessity “to turn a composition into a ‘text’ constructed of […]
• Local Museums and Their Cultural Heritage Perhaps, lack of this information is to hide the miseries of the past and assist the Asian-Americans to concentrate in the positive part of history.
• Cultural Differences in International Business This paper is going to discuss how it is important for international companies to relate and adapt to the cultures of the countries that they seek to set up a business.
• Communication Culture: Hall’s High and Low-Context Model of Culture The differences in the modes and styles of communication are due to diverse cultures of the people from different countries. The aim of this report is to evaluate the concept of different communication cultures through […]
• Culture and Public Administration Relationship in Canada Organizations in Canada can be characterized as ones who base their development on the principles not of the strong hierarchy and centralization, but on the possibilities for the communication and interaction on all the levels […]
• Food Preferences and Nutrition Culture I gave my mother the recipe and nowadays, each time I visit her, she makes me a bowl of chicken noodle soup.
• Amazon Corporate Culture Issues Term Paper Problem Scenario: Amazon’s employees report about multiple cases of workplace disregard, the lack of benefits and praise as well as unfair ranking system that creates the need to analyze the corporate culture of the organization […]
• Influence of Political, Social, and Cultural Issues Political, social, and cultural factors in the world have significant influence on the economic and security status of a society. In the society, there are two types of poverty viz.the absolute poverty, and the relative […]
• Celebrations in School Culture A school culture that is student-focused can be formed by encouraging teachers to pay much attention to efficient testing and curriculum that can facilitate the making of decisions in a school.
• Technology as a Form of Material Culture Typically, the advance in technology is necessitated by the desire of human beings to perform efficiently and to make life more comfortable.
• Cultural Analysis – China and the Us In a bid to survive in such a market, it is crucial for the American investors to conduct a broad analysis of the cultural differences between China and the United States.
• Toyota’s Culture and Leadership Strategy Toyota’s Leadership and Culture Irrespective of numerous difficulties, the company is still one of the leaders of the industry. To understand the essence of the lean leadership, it is crucial to consider some peculiarities of […]
• Managing Cultural Diversity in the Hospitality Industry This is common due to confusion and the inability to interact with others in the society. This refers to the level of integration in the society.
• Social Cultural Causes of Crime There is need to highlight the social cultural factors of crime and describe the necessary positive measures to prevent the occurrences of crime.
• Jamaican Family Cultural Practices The history of the Jamaicans in the United States began in 1619 when some blacks from Jamaica, as well as from the Caribbean islands migrated to the United States.
• Hofstede and Trompenaars Theories of Culture Diversity When a hospitality company is operating in such a community, the management should ensure they deploy expatriates and people of high moral standings to facilitate good business.
• Saudi Arabian Culture In this view, observation of Islamic beliefs, norms, values, and traditions enables people to understand the Saudi Arabian culture and adopt it.
• Clothing and Culture Since different societies have different dress cultures, it is important for visitors and immigrants to adopt the dress culture of the country that they are in. This will show a degree of unity and respect […]
• Race Matters, Cancel Culture, and “Boys Go to Jupiter” The silence that the accusers in the Town Hall subject Claire to is deafening and a powerful ending to the story.
• ABC Manufacturing Company’s Organisational Structure and Culture So, the owner has vast knowledge in this sector, which helps him to contribute the company for future development; Resources: Now, the company has two brand new large and modern CNC centres with all essential […]
• Ways in Which an Organization’s Culture is Transmitted to its Members An organizational culture originates from a common understanding of the way things are done characterized by the elements of attention to detail, innovation, and people orientation, is defined in the context of commonly held values […]
• Chinese New Year Foods: Chinese Culture and Traditions This piece of work will give an in depth discussion of Chinese culture with the central focus being on the Chinese New Year Foods and its relationship with the changes that have been experienced in […]
• Principles of Effective Cross-Cultural Communication Essay Most disagreements in businesses can be attributed to lack of skills in intercultural communication, which is more common when the sender and the recipient are of different cultures.
• History of Multicultural America by Ronald Takaki The author also ties the multicultural history of people comprising American diversity with a thorough analysis of the place they are at the time of writing his book.
• The Role of Chinese Hats in Chinese Culture The culture could involve the way of life, the type of food, or even the type of clothes that the residents of the particular nation wear.
• Cultural Aspects in Different Societies For example, in some cultures, funerals represent a time of feasting and making merry whereas in majority of cultures funerals represent a time of grief and mourning. Their different cultures enable them to tolerate the […]
• Youth Culture and Globalization The focus is also on the relations that exist between the youth and the society, as well as the factors that shape youths identity in terms of culture.
• Cultural Identity and Heritage in the “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker In the broad context, Walker designs the story to underscore the conflict that African Americans faced concerning their cultural identity and heritage after the abolition of slavery.
• Cultural, Political, Economic and Legal Aspects of Doing Business in France The economy of this country is very strong, considered as the second largest in Europe, and fifth largest in the world.
• Geography, Peoples and Culture Areas of Oceania Oceania is a geographical region of the planet that is located in the central and western parts of the Pacific Ocean and is mostly composed of a large number of small islands and atolls.
• Cultural Prostitution: Okinawa, Japan, and Hawaii In the 19th century, Okinawa ceases to be the subject of the Satsuma clan and acquires the status of a Japanese prefecture as a part of the program of imperial expansion.
• Umm Al-Nar: Geoarchaeology and Cultural Heritage This report aims at revealing the essentials of the Umm al-Nar site along with its significance in the framework of cultural heritage and tourism to understand the role of this geoarchaeological complex in nowadays national […]
• Teaching Cultural Identities: A Lesson Plan Therefore, it is crucial to teach students in school the importance of their own cultural identities and explain the importance of intercultural cooperation.
• Adorno and Horkheimer ‘The Culture Industry’ Review The underlying principle of this theory was to encourage the liberation of the user from the oppression of the manufacturers by inducing the user, to subject attitudes and beliefs to questioning.
• Socialization for the Transmission of Culture Cultural transmission is one of the basic constituents of recreating cultures and passing values from one person or group to others.
• Racial and Cultural Identity Development Model At the stage of dissonance, a person is in a conflict between group-appreciating and depreciating within the attitude toward self as well as in a conflict between the emotions of shared experiences and group-depreciating views […]
• Culture, Identity, Diversity in the Sikh Tradition My history helps me to reflect on the experiences that I have encountered while growing up in both India and the US.
• Deaf in America: Voices From a Culture by Carol A. Padden, Tom L. Humphries Carol Padden and Tom Humphries, the authors of the book, “Deaf in America: voices from a culture”, state their intent in writing the book as that of presenting the culture of Deaf people in America.
• Hip-Hop and the Japanese Culture The prevalence of soul dancing in Japan in the earlier years also formed the basis for the wide acceptance of the hip-hop culture into the Japanese culture because soul dancing was common in the streets […]
• What Role Does Food Play in Cultural Identity? From the point of view of cultural studies, such a model of nutrition speaks more about the absence of global roots, the absence of deep moral guidelines, and not about the convenience of the process.
• History: Cultural Exchanges in the Medieval Period Based on an appreciation of the contribution of international trade to the growth and development of the medieval world, this paper explores the role of spice, salt, sugar, and silk as important trade commodities of […]
• Italian Culture There is no post of the vice president in Italy and in the event that the president dies, elections will have to be held.
• Culture Comparison Between China and Japan In Japan, it can be proved by the fact that the name Japan is written in the Chinese Kanji and not the Japanese Katakana or Hiragana.
• Society, Culture, and Civilization Thus, culture is a flexible feature of non-animal communities that penetrates their subsistence and helps to adjust to the surroundings. The last concept, civilization, is the consequence of the constant changes of the first two […]
• Disney and Its Impact on Popular Culture and Society A waitress who is a cast in The Princess and the Frog undertake to begin saving to fulfill her dreams and the dreams of her late father of owning a restaurant.
• Porsche’s Strategy, Structure, and Culture The change of the legal form of the company allowed other people who were not members of the Porsche family to become members of the Executive Board of the company.
• Importance of Cross-Cultural Management in International Business As earlier pointed out, a vital requirement for success in an international business setup is the ability of managers to comprehend and appreciate other cultures across the world.
• Social and Cultural Aspects of Pre-Colonial Africa in Chinua Achebe: Things Fall Apart The novel emphasize on the encounters of the pre-colonial Africa and the effect of British colonialism during the 19th century. Gender disparity is clear in this village and the crimes are identified with gender where […]
• The Renaissance and Its Cultural, Political and Economic Influence Renaissance which is also referred as the rebirth is the period that started in the 14th century and ended up in the 17th century.
• Multicultural Education Benefits: Functioning in a Pluralistic and Egalitarian Society Students are thus required to acquire knowledge and skills necessary to function effectively in a pluralistic and egalitarian society. The teacher is thus able to enhance socialization and transmission of culture while providing academic skills […]
• Handy and Schein Models in Organizational Culture The similarity between the two models is that they have noted a significant value for employees in making decisions and taking responsibilities depending on the area of specialization.
• Gang Culture in the USA: Symbols, Norms, Values The term culture refers to the norms and social behavior of a given community or group of people. Having the objects makes them feel brave and ready to act in the interest of the group […]
• The Fashion of the Hippie Culture
• eBay in Japan, Its Strategic and Cultural Missteps
• The Egyptians and the Hindu Cultural Rites Comparison
• Dubai’s Food, Dress Code and Culture
• Cultural Belief System: Experiences and Traditions
• The Overall Effects of Cultural Diversity in the Hospitality Industry
• Culture Identity: Asian Culture
• A Comparison Between Swedish and Australian Culture
• Masturbation: Societal Views and Cultural Attitudes
• Integrity in Organizational Culture and Ethical Theories
• Intercultural Relationships Importance
• Culture and Health Beliefs in Korea
• American Culture Pros & Cons
• A Discussion of Key Challenges Faced by MNCs in Developing a Cohesive & Inclusive Culture
• Qantas Airways: Cross Culture and Safety Management
• Socio-Cultural Approach of Humanity Examination
• Japanese Kimono: A Part of Cultural Heritage
• Anglo-American Culture and Healthcare Standards
• Culture, Subculture, and Their Differences
• The Erosion of Cultural Differences and Globalised Consumer Culture
• Tesco and Global Supermarket Chain in Hungary: Cultural Issues
• The Role of Ethnocentrism in Intercultural Communication
• Xaniths as a Transgender in Omani Culture
• Five Cultural Dimensions for Understanding the Values
• Cultural Competence: Jamaican Heritage
• Cross-Cultural Management and HRM in Walmart
• The Beautiful Country of Kazakhstan: Kazakh Culture
• Art, Literature, and Culture: Heritage of the XX Century
• Heritage Tourism vs. Cultural Tourism Definition
• Impacts of Culture on Consumer Behaviour
• Public Relations and Cultural Intermediation
• The Role of Culture in Gospel Communication
• Haiti History and Culture
• How Does Culture Affect the Self Identity Personal Essay
• Subculture Theories: Response to the Dominant Culture
• Western Culture Impacts on the UAE Local Lifestyle
• Sustaining a Culture in Multinational Corporations
• Heritage and Cultural Tourism
• Cultural Factors and Their Influence on Individuals
• Cultural Identity Theory: “How to Be Chinese” by Celeste Ng
• Multicultural Communication and Its Origin
• Anthropological Approach to Culture
• History of Pop Music in the World: Cultural and Social Changes
• The Cultural-Individual Dialectic and Social Nature of Intercultural Relationships
• Bahrain Fashion: Culture and Antiquities
• Porsche Brand’s Cultural Biography
• Enron Company’s Organisational Culture Problem
• Culture Influence on Intimacy and Human Relationships
• Cultural Diversity and Cultural Universals Relations: Anthropological Perspective
• Identity, Language, and Culture
• The Effects of Diverse Culture of IKEA in UAE to Impact of Cultural Diversity on IKEA
• Dance Analysis: Social and Cultural Context
• Anthropology. Nature Versus Culture Debate
• Cross-Cultural Sleeping Arrangements in Children
• Organizational Culture & Leadership: Whirlpool Corporation
• Effects of the Language Barrier on Intercultural Communication
• Selling in China: Culture-Related Concepts
• Cultural Bias in Counseling Practices
• Managing Cultural Diversity: A Case Analysis of Hilton Hotels Corporation
• Pokémon Go as a Pop Culture Phenomenon
• The Importance of Understanding National Culture
• American Culture and Indian Culture Comparison
• The History of the Hippie Cultural Movement
• Cultural Assimilation: Benefits and Challenges
• UK-Singapore Cultural Differences at Work
• Indigenous Australian Culture, History, Importance
• Cultural Identity: Problems, Coping, and Outcomes
• Cultural Hybridization: The Beliefs, Language, and Social Habits
• GLOBE Initiative: How Cross-Cultural Management Has Affected Airbus?
• Jeffrey O.G. Ogbar, Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap
• Body Ritual Among the Nacirema: Cultural Study
• Hamlet’s Renaissance Culture Conflict
• How Geography Has Impacted the Development of Ancient Cultures
• History of Children’s Literature in Western Culture
• Cultural Significance of Flynn Rider in “Tangled” by Greno
• Cultural Tools in the Education Process
• Bombas Firm’s Organizational Structure and Culture
• Henry Jenkins’ Theory of Convergence Culture
• Brazil Food Culture and Dietary Patterns
• Korean Culture: History and Principles
• Paisà (1946) by Roberto Rossellini: Style, Theme, and Cultural Value
• Columbia Under Hofstede’s Cultural Analysis
• Spanglish: Mother, Daughter and American Culture Terms
• Cultural Products in Strategic Plan Development
• School Climate and Student Culture
• Popular Culture and Art Definition, Brief History and New Opportunities
• Cultural Studies: What is Folklore?
• How Cultural Beliefs, Values, Norms and Practices Influence Communication
• Tribal Tattoos: Cultural Appropriation and Appreciation
• “Family Supper” by Ishiguro: Eastern and Western Family Attitudes Cultural Differences
• Social and Cultural Influences in Nursing Practice
• The UAE Cultural Analysis: Adherence to Traditions, Cultural Beliefs, and Values
• Cultural Differences and Ethics of International Trading
• The Concepts of Culture
• The Marriage Traditions of Wolof Culture
• Greek Culture and Traditions
• The Influence of Heavy Metal on Japanese Culture
• Organization’s Culture and Values in Nursing
• The Western Cultural Narratives
• IKEA’s and Home Depot’s Cross-Cultural Management
• Culturally Sensitive Care For Jehovah’s Witnesses
• Matthew Arnold’s and Raymond Williams’ Ideas About Culture
• Cultural Diversity and Cultural Integration in Western Societies
• British Colonialism and Its Impact on Indian Culture
• Race and Ethnicity in Three Pop Culture Artifacts
• Marriott Hotel’s Promotion of Intercultural Synergy
• British and Brazilian People: Cultural Differences
• Communication Challenges in Intercultural Interactions
• Cross Cultural Management and International Business
• Cross-cultural Comparison Between the US and Japan
• Effects of Culture on People’s Learning Styles
• Irish Culture in Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia
• Beauty and Culture
• Human Interaction and Cultural Exchange in the Sixteenth Century
• Nacirema Culture
• Cultural Event: Worship Service in World Changers Ministries
• The “Brave” Intercultural Film Analysis
• Indian Culture and Its Distinctive Qualities
• Cultural Traditions: Arranged vs. Autonomous Marriage
• Cultural Appropriation: Christina Aguilera in Braids
• Ancient Greek Culture, Philosophy and Science
• Expanding Chinese Cultural Knowledge in Health Beliefs
• The Depiction of Cultural Conformity and Moral Values in Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”
• My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) Cultural Analysis
• Assumptions, Experiences, and Lessons Learned in Cross-Cultural Communication
• Cultural Diversity in Correctional Facilities
• Linguistic Repertoire: Language Identity and Culture
• Fashion Changes in Society and Culture
• Advertising Across Different Countries and Cultural Contexts
• How Chinese Culture Influences Foreign Businesses
• Cultural Revolution and Education in China During the 1960s-1970s
• Socio-Cultural Approach to Psychology
• Primary Mode of Subsistence in the Zulu Culture
• Culture Jamming
• Non-Material and Material Culture
• Indian Culture, Food, Temples, and Clothing
• Feminism: Reflection of Cultural Feminism
• The Impact of Ancient Greek Civilization and Architecture on Modern Culture
• Value and Meaning of Culture and Religion
• Cultural Role of Crepes in France
• The Spread of European Culture
• Visual Culture Understanding in Modern Society
• The Cross-cultural Construct of Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems
• The Parthenon and the Pantheon in Their Cultural Context
• Impact of Religion and Culture on Development
• Cultural Family Assessment in “Under the Same Moon” Film
• Ecotourism vs Cultural Voyeurism: Protection of Local Communities and Cultures
• African American Family Cultural Background
• Multicultural Diversity and Performance in the Classroom
• Islamic Culture and Civilization
• The Role of Person Appearance in Western Culture
• Impact of Power on Organizational Culture
• African-American Cultural Group and the Provision of Services to African Americans
• Hookup Culture
• Cultural Diffusion: Factors and Effects
• Cultural Clash in the Board Room: An Ethical Dilemma Among Top Management in Almond China
• Cross-Cultural Marketing and Cultural Differences in Markets
• Intercultural Relations: Physical, Economic, and Linguistic
• Folk Music: A Tool for Culture Transmission
• Disney Culture in China and United States
• The Cultural Safety Concept: Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle
• Working Cross-Culturally: Forget “Business as Usual”
• Culturally Informed Psychological Assessment
• Cultural Change: Mechanisms and Examples
• Multicultural Roman Empire History
• Sports Cards, Their History and Culture
• The Preservation of Our Cultural Heritage: Music for Entertainment and Communication
• Material and Nonmaterial Culture of Middle East
• Family and Culture: Major Problems Facing Families Around the World
• Impact of Globalization on the Maasai Peoples` Culture
• Struggle to Retain Culture: McDonaldization in China
• The Epic of Gilgamesh and the Ancient Egyptian Culture
• Multicultural Education: Action Plan for Professional Development of the School’s Staff
• “Christ and Culture” the Book by H. Richard Niebuhr
• Indian vs. American Cultural Heritage and Traditions
• Food and Culture Links
• Adolf Hitler’s Cultural Theories in “Mein Kampf”
• St. John the Compassionate Company: Organizational Culture
• Mobile Culture: Texting Effects on Teenagers
• Vanilla: History, Culture and Production
• Music and Its Effects on Culture
• Food Culture in Mexican Cuisine
• Cultural Diversity in Society: Reforms to the Way a Society Is Conducted
• Hall Stuart: Questions of Cultural Identity
• Authenticity in Cultural Tourism Sites: A Critical Discussion
• Global Business Cultural Analysis: Japan
• Intercultural Awareness and Multicultural Society in a Global Village
• Comparison Between Uruguay and Argentina in Term of Economy, Culture, and Sustainable Development
• The White House as a Cultural Symbol in US
• Traditional and Non-Traditional Culture
• Juno and Political, Social, and Cultural Ideology
• Singapore Geography and Culture
• Threats of Globalization on Culture of Individual Countries
• Emerson’s, Whitman’s and Thoreau’s Cultural Impact
• LGBTQ Co-Culture: The Key Aspects
• Meaning of Culture and Its Importance
• Muslim Culture: History, Values, Notions
• Microsoft’s Culture Under Nadella and Ballmer
• Deaf Culture and Sign Language: Social Equality in Society
• Western Pop Culture and Street Fashion of Japanese Youth
• African Music Culture Overview
• Traditional Korean Music and Culture
• John Donne’s Poetry Relate to the Culture
• Cultural Anthropology. Nandi Warriors and Their Impact on East Africa
• Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Organizational Culture
• Printing Culture and the Chinese Society
• The Culture of Smartness in Education
• Cultural Assimilation in the “Spanglish” Movie
• Football Impact on England’s Culture
• Language and Culture Interaction in English Language Teaching
• Personal Development Plans: Teamwork and Culture Shock
• Characteristics of Organizational Culture
• Organizational Culture of Google Incorporation
• Indian Culture: Dances of Rajasthan
• Cross Cultural Management Strategies: Brazil vs. America
• Cultural Differences: Individualism vs. Collectivism
• Cultural Issues in China: Transformation in Social and Cultural Lifestyles
• Tourism & Cultural Change: A Critical Analysis
• Cultural Conformity: A Person’s Behavior and the Standard Determined by a Culture
• Cultural Assimilation, Acceptance and Identity in Julia Alvarez’s Poetry
• Angels and Insects: The Issue of Incest in the Pop-Culture
• Cultural Influences on Personality
• African Folktales as a Reflection of Culture
• A Scarf as a Cultural Metaphor
• Intercultural Understanding in Hala Alyan’s Poems
• Kitsch in the Popular Culture of the 20th Century
• The Nile Delta: Impact on History and Culture
• Marriott International: Analyzing Culture
• Venezuela Analysis: Economic, Political, Financial and Cultural Perspective
• Cultural Traditions. Quinceanera vs. Sweet 16
• Culture and Representation in Comic Books
• Disneyland Hong Kong Company: Cultural Adaptation
• Cultural Capital in the School Settings
• “Understanding Media and Culture” by Jack Lule
• Symbol: The Basic Element of Culture
• Intercultural Communication in “Gran Torino” Movie
• West Paw Design Company’s Culture and Performance
• Bill Campbell’s Input to Intuit Company’s Culture
• Mass Society and Popular Culture Theories
• Views of Benjamin Franklin on Indian Culture
• Print Fashion Media as a Popular Culture
• Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions: Internationalization and Globalization
• How Sociologists Understood Social and Cultural Change
• U.S. Marine Corps Culture and Values
• Cross-Cultural Management in Multinational Corporations
• Devi, the Great Goddess – Nonwestern Culture
• Culturally Responsive Teaching of Students With Disabilities
• An Academic Critique of Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions Theory
• Ideologies and Popular Culture: A Popular Television Commercial
• Monaco Cultural Analysis: One of the Smallest Independent State in the World
• The Western Culture in the Early 21st Century
• Fundamentals of Intercultural Communication
• Spain’s Geography and Culture
• Cats in Ancient Egyptian Culture: Religious, Social, and Cultural Significance
• Portuguese Language and Cultural Facts
• Poi Dance as Cultural Performance
• French Culture, Values, and Language
• Colombia’s and the US’ Cultural Dimensions
• Sushi: History, Origin and the Cultural Landscape
• Popular Culture and Social Change Across Cultures
• Scott Joplin vs. Louis Armstrong: Integration of African American Culture
• Noble Cause Corruption – A Crime-Fighting Sub-Culture
• Multicultural Diversity Conceptual Study
• Cultural Competence and Values Among Muslim Nurses
• Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: Structuralism and Post-Structuralism
• Culture of the Dominican Republic
• Distinct Lower Class Culture: An Impediment to Success
• Diversity of Jamaican Culture
• Japanese Popular Culture: Anime, Video Games, and the Film Industry
• Google Inc. Employees’ Intercultural Competencies
• Building High Performance Culture: Zappos
• Cultural Background: Personal Journey
• Managing Organisations: Cultural Web Analysis
• Broadcast Culture Development: Participatory Culture
• The Culture of the Nacirema Society
• Consumer vs. Organizational Buying and Culture
• Stephen Hawking: Visionary and Cross-Cultural Leadership
• Cultural Studies: Folklore – the Art of Telling a Story
• Orange PLC’s Organizational Culture and Structure
• Culture and Employee Management
• The Problem of Expatriate Management in Multinationals – Adaptation to Foreign Culture
• Effects of Technology on Culture
• Compare and Contrast the Political Culture of Australia and Saudi Arabia
• Punjabi: the Culture
• Social and Cultural Diversity Statement
• Cross-Cultural Communication Between the French and German Communities in Switzerland
• The Impact of Western Society on the Music Cultures of Other Societies in the World
• Language and Culture: The Honorifics (Speech or System) of Japanese and Korean
• The Impact of Cultural and Religious Tourism on Communities
• Honour Killings in the Yemeni Culture
• The Yanomami Culture and Survival
• Developing Cultural Competence & Life Roles
• Cross-Cultural Effectiveness of Ministry Engagement with the Elderly
• Cultural Views on Heroic Qualities
• Kazakhstani Culture Through Hofstede’s Theory
• The Importance of Intercultural Communication
• Japanese and American Cross-Cultural Management
• Culture Lag and Conflict Theory of Change
• Cultural Diversity in International Organizations
• Cultural Differences in Communication:Western and Eastern Cultures
• Creating a Culture of Gender Equality in the Workplace
• Multicultural Competency in Nursing: Alan’s Case Study
• Cultural Anthropology, Gender and Kinship
• Communicating Cross-Culturally: Indian and Japanese Workers
• Saudi Arabia and the Rise of the Cultural Economy
• Entertainment Types in Western Culture
• Protection of Cultural Property in Cyprus
• Utility of Cord Blood Culture in Early Onset Neonatal Sepsis
• Xerox: Organizational Culture and Change
• Cultural Effects on Health Care Choices
• Implications of Korean Culture on Health
• Cultural Factors in Health Promotion Strategies
• Comprehensive Health Assessment Based on Developmental and Cultural Factors
• A Sociology of Food and Nutrition: Unity of Traditions and Culture
• Comparison of 20th and 21st-Century Dress and Culture
• About Counseling Cross-Culturally
• Similarities and Differences Found in Each Country’s Cultural
• Culture and History: Gender Roles Over the Past 50 or So Years
• The Possibility of Modernizing Indian Culture
• Intercultural Communication Led by UNESCO
• Exploration of Popular Culture in 18th Century England
• The Effect of Global Technology on Intercultural Communication
• Ecuador: A Country Study, Culture, People and History
• Interrogating Cultural Hybridities in Jamaican Dancehall
• Korean Popular Culture: Attractiveness and Popularity
• Japanese Society: Factors Affecting the Cultural Development
• Cultural Identity: the Position in Society
• Competitiveness and Intercultural Conflict in Qatar
• The Impact of Fashion Marketing on Culture
• Cross-Cultural Differences Between the US and Pakistan
• Sioux Culture in the “Dances with Wolves” Film
• Culturally Responsive Teaching
• The News Media Role in the Culture of Fear
• The Culture of Volunteering in Saudi Arabia
• Cultural Diversity: Diversification and Integration
• International Intercultural Management: Saudi Arabia and Spain
• Conformity: Western Culture vs. Islamic Culture
• Relations Between Homosexuality and Indian Culture
• Hmong Culture Aspects
• Cultural Context of the Play “Poker” by Zora Hurston
• Cycling Culture in France
• Cultural Sensitivity and Language Use
• Can Culture Be a Hurdle to Conflict Resolution?
• Cultural Linguistic Autobiography: An Experience of a Second Language
• Organizational Culture of Walmart
• The Practice of Counseling in the US and Indian Culture
• Mi’kmaq in Culture and Religion
• Cultural Diversity Management in the Workplace
• The Cultural Life of Canadians: A Uniform Culture in Canada
• Cultural Pollution:Traditions and Historical Concepts
• Cultural Diversity in Hotel Industry
• Arab Music and Cinema Development: Western Culture Impact
• The Business and Cultural Practices of Japan
• Digital Art and Cultural Value That Underpins Art Worlds
• What Is the Relationship Between the Social Definition of Deviance and the Media’s Role in the Dissemination of Popular Culture?
• Coping With Cultural Shock and Adaptation to a New Culture
• Ways to Improve Intercultural Communication
• Cultural Myth of Education as a Pathway to Success in America
• Fashion as an Integral Aspect of Modern Culture: Identity Importance
• Ways Through Which Space Is Defined by Cultural Ornamentation
• Multicultural Psychology as a Subspecialty of Psychology
• The Concept of Cultural Relativism in Nursing
• African Art and Cultural Heritage
• Cultural Influences on Big Five Personality Traits
• Punjabi Culture and Threat to Survival
• Culture Values Expression through Humanities
• The Importance of Culture in Nursing
• Researching of Rituals in Culture
• Challenges of Adapting to Another Culture
• Cultural Assessment Models in Nursing
• Ancient Greek Civilization: Culture and Arts
• Arab American Culture and Events
• Mexican vs. American Cultural Differences in Business
• A Maslenitsa Festival as a Cultural Event
• Preserving Artifacts and Cultural Pieces at the National Ethiopian Museum
• Cultural Artifacts and the Importance of Humanities
• Cultural Anthropology: Cultural Variation Among Humans
• International Joint Ventures and Cultural Pitfalls
• Intercultural Communication: Self-Awareness’ Importance
• Socio-Cultural Issues and Health Assessment in Nursing
• Present and Past Understanding of Home: Social Mores and Culture
• The Blackfoot Indians Culture and Historical Heritage
• Language & Cultural Impact on Sports Reporting
• Appropriations, Prejudices and Cultural Cruise Control: Overview
• Organizational Culture in Educational Institution
• The Igbo Culture: Use of Proverbs, Folktales and Song
• How Hutterites of Montana Maintain Their Culture and Effect It Has on State
• Impact of Culture on Gender Identity: How Differences in Genders Are Evident in the Behavior
• Relationship beetween Religion, Culture and Gender
• Popular Culture Resistance: Causes and Goals
• Cultural Competency Quiz: Personal Reflection
• Culture in the Medical Field
• Culture and Values in Social System
• Cultural Hybridity in Cisneros’ “The House on Mango Street”
• Visit to France: Cultural Experiences Description
• Asian Community’s Cultural Values and Attitudes
• Reducing Intercultural Communication Barriers
• W.L. Gore Company’s Culture of Innovation
• Islamic Modernism and Its Culture
• Trinidad and Tobago: Socio-Cultural Issues
• Etic and Emic Culture in Communication
• Horace Miner: Body Ritual Among the Nacirema
• India’s Cultural Heritage: Individuality and Behavior
• Cross-Culture Project Cooperation
• Hotpot Concept and Cultural Value
• Taiwan and the U.S. Cultural Elements
• How to Promote Intercultural Learning Among Schools in US
• Intercultural Communication Perspectives
• Cultural Traditions and Practices in the Novel the Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
• Modes of Culture Transmission and Their Impact on Society
• Drinking Water and Culture in the Valley of Mexico
• Cultural Differences: The Embracing Cultural Diversity
• Japanese Anime and Doujin Culture
• The Controversies of Defining Culture
• Cultural Relations: Impact on Global Human Cooperation
• Pop Culture Aspects and Role in the United States
• The History and Culture of Islam & the Arabs and Their Contributions to Global Civilization and the Advancement of Human Society
• Fame and Notoriety in Contemporary Culture
• Understanding the Significance of Diwali as a Representation of Indian Culture
• Culture Clash as a Great Conflict
• Complexity of Managing Multinational Corporations: MNC Culture
• Market Culture Report on Singapore and Hong Kong
• Why Does Popular Culture Affect Us?
• Why Does Culture Have a Prominent Position in I’m Research and Practice?
• Why Culture Alone Cannot Explain Morality, and Why It Matters?
• Who Was Right About Popular Culture?
• When Does Culture Generate Local Development?
• When Age and Culture Interact in an Easy and Yet Cognitively Demanding Task?
• What Do Virtual Culture and the Information Revolution Mean?
• What Would the Society Be Like Without Culture?
• What Role Does Culture Play in Influencing Human Health?
• How Has Globalization Affected Culture?
• What Role Does Culture Play in the Definition of Mental Illness?
• What Role Does Culture Play in the Development of an Effective Leader?
• What Was the Difference Between High and Popular Culture in the Eighteenth Century?
• Whether Immigrants Should Adopt the Local Culture?
• Which Society and Culture Have the Greatest Impact on the World Past and Today, Chinese or Western?
• Why Does Culture Attract and Resists Economic Analysis?
• Why Do Eastern Culture Religions Appeal to the Western Culture?
• Why Whites Embrace Black Culture, History, and Other?
• Which Social Processes Are More Important in Shaping Individual Identity: Social Structures or Culture and Socialisation?
• Where, When, and How African Culture Became a Part of the Culture of the Americas?
• What May Culture Contribute to Urban Sustainability?
• How Does Culture Affects How Students Interact?
• How Has the Internet Changed World Culture?
• How Does Culture Shapes the Economy?
• How Harry Potter Changed the World?
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When was modernism.

Essays on Contemporary Cultural Practice in India

Geeta Kapur

Tulika Books

Pub Date: December 2020

ISBN: 9788189487249

Format: Paperback

List Price: $60.00 £50.00

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Learning to Curse

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Stephen Greenblatt argued in these celebrated essays that the art of the Renaissance could only be understood in the context of the society from which it sprang. His approach - 'New Historicism' - drew from history, anthropology, Marxist theory, post-structuralism, and psychoanalysis and in the process, blew apart the academic boundaries insul

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1 | 21  pages, introduction, chapter 2 | 30  pages, learning to curse: aspects of linguistic colonialism in the sixteenth century, chapter 3 | 25  pages, marlowe, marx, and anti-semitism, chapter 4 | 28  pages, filthy rites, chapter 5 | 27  pages, the cultivation of anxiety: king lear and his heirs, chapter 6 | 44  pages, murdering peasants: status, genre, and the representation of rebellion, chapter 7 | 20  pages, psychoanalysis and renaissance culture, chapter 8 | 20  pages, towards a poetics of culture, chapter 9 | 31  pages, resonance and wonder.

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Contemporary Popular Culture Essays

Analysis of mermaids from contemporary examples and myth legends, popular essay topics.

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Opinion Jessica Grose

Are We Happy Yet?

Credit... Stephan Dybus

Supported by

By Jessica Grose

Ms. Grose is a Times Opinion writer and the author of a Times newsletter on culture, social change and the American family.

• Aug. 8, 2024

Three times a day my phone pings with a notification telling me that I have a new happiness survey to take. The survey, from TrackYourHappiness.org , asks me a series of questions about what I was doing the moment right before I take it, whether I wanted to be doing it, how focused I was on my task, how productive I was being and how happy I felt about it all. I measure my emotional levels with a little toggle that slides from “bad” to “good.” Though the trackers’ authors offer a disclaimer that “correlation does not prove causation,” results from thousands of its users published in 2010 suggest that people are happier when they are focused.

After I took 100 surveys over about a month, that’s not what my results told me. I reported the most happiness when I was eating and the least when I was working. I was happier at home than I was outside or anywhere else.

My biggest takeaway, though, is that much of my life consists of things that I don’t particularly want to do, like folding laundry and struggling with the wording of a paragraph. Being reminded that most of my life is obligatory does not exactly spark joy.

As the weeks of survey-taking went by, I had another, more paralyzing thought: that this focus on my feelings was instilling a new kind of anxiety. Rather than just walking one of my kids home from school and contentedly listening to her chatter about sedimentary rocks, I was thinking about the survey’s infernal happiness toggle and where this experience ranked relative to the other moments I had tracked.

The survey is just one example from an increasingly crowded field of tools offering consumers the chance not just to contemplate their happiness but also to measure it, track it, schedule it and optimize it. Every app store is overflowing with offerings like the Happiness Planner, Happiness 360°, Daylio and more. Apple’s Health app has a mood tracker (with one of those damn toggles) built into all of its devices, and even my Fitbit offers mood tracking, with some fancy bonus features if I pay to upgrade to premium status.

According to Stephen Schueller, a psychologist who runs the technology and mental health lab at the University of California, Irvine, there are now thousands of these apps — so many that he used to run an entire site that reviewed their credibility, user experience and transparency. How-to books about boosting your happiness in measurable ways are mainstays on best-seller lists. And there is no end to online courses and expensive products that make similar promises.

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Essays from Contemporary Culture Paperback – January 1, 1994

• Print length 372 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Harcourt College Publishers
• Publication date January 1, 1994
• ISBN-10 0155014781
• ISBN-13 978-0155014787
• See all details

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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harcourt College Publishers; 2nd edition (January 1, 1994)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 372 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0155014781
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0155014787
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.06 pounds

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