I was watching Guillermo del Toro’s excellent dark fantasy realism flick, El laberinto del fauno (Pan’s Labyrinth) the other day, and it reminded of an excellent blog article I read on Emma Goldman and dieselpunk late last year. Huh, you ask? Yes, like a Third Stage Guild Navigator, my mind “moves in strange directions.” Stay with me, and I’ll connect the dots….
A quick word on my choice of header art. The piece is called “The Moorish Warrior,” by William Merritt Chase (1844-1916). I first came across the painting while strolling through the Brooklyn Museum of Art several years ago. I wasn’t familiar with the artist, but I knew the style–part of what was known as the Orientalist movement, which created picturesque paintings of the Near East. Like every other graduate student in the social sciences, I had the pleasure of reading Edward Said’s groundbreaking work, Orientalism.
Phenderson Djèlí Clark 