Project MUSE®: Virginia Quarterly Review - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/647
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Virginia Quarterly Review.daily12026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 90 (2014) through current issueLatest Articles: Virginia Quarterly ReviewTWOProject MUSE®Virginia Quarterly Review2154-69320042-675XLatest articles in Virginia Quarterly Review. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Ghost Stories
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985637
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The dead, the missing, harbingers, the unfulfilled: They're all here. We conceived this issue around a story that ultimately never materialized, though, fittingly, its anticipated presence attracted other pieces that fell into place—from the nervy to the mournful to the bizarre. The future barged in; rather, we began to recognize the ways in which anxiety over the future complements the emotional frequencies of conventional ghost stories. An agitated suspicion of Big Tech dominates this subset of the larger theme—in particular, over the woefully underregulated mission to create machines that think for themselves. I'm certainly haunted by the pace at which artificial intelligence is accelerating to ensure human
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/647/image/coversmallGhost Stories2026-03-25text/htmlen-USGhost Stories2026-03-252026TWOProject MUSE®70852026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-25Way Off the Record
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985639
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capitol hill, washington, dc, 2023 – 2025.This is the latest installment of "Seeing Political," Louie Palu's #VQRTrueStory column for VQR, produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center. Follow us at @vqreview to read more.I've often wondered what gets whispered in a politician's ear. Arguably the most iconic whisper in American politics was from White House Chief of Staff Andy Card to President George W. Bush in an elementary-school classroom about the 9/11 attacks. Whispering can also refer to a whisper campaign, a political tool that uses rumors to damage someone's reputation. In congressional settings, the whisperers tend to be behind-the-scenes operators or staff delivering two kinds of information: what to
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/647/image/coversmallWay Off the Record2026-03-25text/htmlen-USWay Off the Record2026-03-252026TWOProject MUSE®44292026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-25The Accidental Seeker
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985640
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Continued healing, I said to myself, silently, each time I bowed my head in front of the fountain, each time I dunked my head in its waters. I said it again as I splashed my face and touched the water to my lips. I did these things three times in a row, repeating the mantra, at each of fourteen fountains. One hundred sixty-eight wishes.At Tirta Empul Temple for this purification ceremony, my guide prepared an offering, lighting incense. We sat and said nothing before entering the pools. As he explained the ritual, telling me I should think of a wish or hope to repeat silently to myself, "continued healing" leapt into my head—for my hips, my frozen shoulder, my perimenopausal body; for my friend's cancer diagnosis;
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/647/image/coversmallThe Accidental Seeker2026-03-25text/htmlen-USThe Accidental Seeker2026-03-252026TWOProject MUSE®33892026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-25How to Be Afraid in America: Reading the Zeitgeist in a Horror Classic
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985641
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Photographs by anna beekeIF you grew up in the 1980s, you know Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. You remember the book being passed around like contraband during recess, smuggled from backpack to backpack to bedroom where you'd read it, if brave, at night by flashlight. You remember stories that were frightening enough for their merciless plots full of doomed teenagers and vengeful spirits; but, when paired with Stephen Gammell's veined illustrations of black-and-white netherworlds populated by ghouls that hovered like ghastly balloons over the text, this book became the stuff of legend. Children loved it. Meanwhile, there was no shortage of adults drunk on Tipper Gore–style heroics who conspired to keep kids safe
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/647/image/coversmallHow to Be Afraid in America: Reading the Zeitgeist in a Horror Classic2026-03-25text/htmlen-USHow to Be Afraid in America: Reading the Zeitgeist in a Horror Classic2026-03-252026TWOProject MUSE®357762026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-25My Mother's Body: The Mysteries of a Loved One's Case File
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985643
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Art by amy friendA few years ago, I traveled to Skovsbostrand on the island of Funen in my native Denmark to write in a solitary residence by the sea. It was winter, too cold to sit in the garden among the priestly Eranthis and flocks of snowdrops, their heads bent toward the earth. My days were spent in a corner room, writing and watching gullible-looking ferries plow white furrows in the dark-green sea. Over the decades, many writers have found refuge in this whitewashed, half-timbered cottage—one hundred or so miles from Copenhagen, where I was born—among them the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht and his friend the essayist Walter Benjamin. A photograph of the two playing chess in the garden hung on the wall. I
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/647/image/coversmallMy Mother's Body: The Mysteries of a Loved One's Case File2026-03-25text/htmlen-USMy Mother's Body: The Mysteries of a Loved One's Case File2026-03-252026TWOProject MUSE®402872026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-25Reading The Machine in the Garden While Billy Mows the Lawn, and: Paros, Paradise, and: Nocturne
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985644
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with debts to Leo Marx, Isaac Rosenberg, and Wilfred
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/647/image/coversmallReading The Machine in the Garden While Billy Mows the Lawn, and: Paros, Paradise, and: Nocturne2026-03-25text/htmlen-USReading The Machine in the Garden While Billy Mows the Lawn, and: Paros, Paradise, and: Nocturne2026-03-252026TWOProject MUSE®163732026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-25Silent Hero
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985645
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Family archival portrait of Grigoriy (l) and Naum Lipkin (r). 1941.Volgograd Region, Russia 49°02′46.8″ N, 44°08′08.6″ E January 31, 2022My grandfather never spoke about his experiences in World War II. After he died, I set out to reimagine them.Recruits on their way to take an oath to the Russian Armed Forces at The Motherland Calls war memorial sculpture. Volgograd, Russia, February 2, 2022.Naum Lipkin's last known position was thirty miles northwest of Stalingrad, where his unit defended a strategic section of railroad from the invading Axis forces.Volgograd Region, Russia 49°02′44.9″ N, 44°08′10.7″ E January 31, 2022Volgograd Region, Russia 49°02′48.8″ N, 44°08′13.6″ E January 30, 2022A grid of early results
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/647/image/coversmallSilent Hero2026-03-25text/htmlen-USSilent Hero2026-03-252026TWOProject MUSE®213002026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-25The Summer Kitchen
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985647
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When Marg lived in the house, there was a whole other house in the basement where her grandparents lived in the summer. They were from Ireland, the McCabes. They were royalty, Marg thought. That's how she felt about them.That summer, she treaded lightly on the first floor when the McCabes were in their rooms. Pap McCabe had a thick accent, and she could hardly understand him. But recently, he'd said to her, "Oh, Marg, you're bright as a penny." He'd said it for no reason she could point to. She'd been standing out in the backyard, jumping up and down trying to get her mother's attention on the upstairs porch.Until he'd said that, Marg was never sure Pap McCabe quite knew who she was. She had one sister, Elsie; one
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/647/image/coversmallThe Summer Kitchen2026-03-25text/htmlen-USThe Summer Kitchen2026-03-252026TWOProject MUSE®517332026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-25The Vermilion Sea
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985648
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Uffa had been given the boat for free. It was an unlikely story but true nevertheless. Here was the situation: As a kid, he had made a deal with his friend Aaron that the first person to make a million dollars would buy the other one a boat. The friend had gone on to make tons of money, Berg wasn't exactly sure how—something to do with finance—and had followed through on his side of the agreement. He bought Uffa a forty-nine-foot French sailboat, fully outfitted for cruising, which Uffa took to Mexico right after Berg's wedding. He had been down there for a year now, cruising, and making enough to live on by doing telehealth therapy sessions via Starlink. But he was done cruising for the time being, and basically
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/647/image/coversmallThe Vermilion Sea2026-03-25text/htmlen-USThe Vermilion Sea2026-03-252026TWOProject MUSE®441862026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-25Snowlight
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985649
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Not an uncommon winter tale. It goes different ways but always starts the same: Two men, friends since childhood, still young and strong, lose their way in a snowstorm that they believed they could out-ski. Night falls; they don't return to camp when expected. When the storm abates, friends and strangers band together to look for them.Sometimes they find them, sometimes they don't.This time they do, the men huddled against the collapse of an igloo they had attempted to make. Only one is still alive. The other has been gone for hours, his chest too frozen to attempt CPR. Severe hypothermia has rendered the survivor insensible; later, in the hospital, he will say he remembers nothing whatever of the incident—not the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/647/image/coversmallSnowlight2026-03-25text/htmlen-USSnowlight2026-03-252026TWOProject MUSE®76342026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-25Message to the Skeletal Earth Goddess, and: Message to the Young Goddess of the Moon, and: Message to the Goddess of Running Water, and: Message to Rabbit in the Moon, and: Xibalbá :: Shape
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985650
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Lorca saw the Duende separate from the muse & the angel. Bodily. Inheritance. Tlazoltéotl, all passages through you. What passes. Chest cracked open. Your delicate keep. Your riotous discard. What stirs you. Sours each jagged seam. I obsess with interiority. Rattles: Ribs separate in hollowed-out breastbone. I, in your cage—low crepitus of bone on bone. What if descent is a lie? Only cracks into other dimensions. Portals. Flesh & terrestrial alike. Duende shaken loose. Another form of energy. Form of elegy. Busting open. Reconfigures inside out.image taken from the codex yoalli ehēcatl (codex borgia), loubat 1898, plate 44. (courtesy of ancient americas at lacma.)No thoughts to say about the moon. The novelist
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/647/image/coversmallMessage to the Skeletal Earth Goddess, and: Message to the Young Goddess of the Moon, and: Message to the Goddess of Running Water, and: Message to Rabbit in the Moon, and: Xibalbá :: Shape2026-03-25text/htmlen-USMessage to the Skeletal Earth Goddess, and: Message to the Young Goddess of the Moon, and: Message to the Goddess of Running Water, and: Message to Rabbit in the Moon, and: Xibalbá :: Shape2026-03-252026TWOProject MUSE®67522026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-25The Devil's Crown
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985651
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The third time I go to meet the devil, I pay better attention to the legend and visit on Halloween. The day is either cliché or the deep human instinct that there are times in the year when it is wise to fear. The air has finally turned cold and the windshield fogs as I drive, wending past unhaunted cemeteries and political yard signs, aiming in the dark for the small-town cemetery in Stull, Kansas, that has grown from a minor curiosity for me to a compulsion. Although I doubt the rumors, a slight lick of fear in my chest tells me I might believe the devil will visit the grave of his son tonight.Although I've never come in the dark before, I know the pastures and the road's difficult curves, and as the signs for
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/647/image/coversmallThe Devil's Crown2026-03-25text/htmlen-USThe Devil's Crown2026-03-252026TWOProject MUSE®176802026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-25The Art of Haunting: What My Doppelgänger Taught Me
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985652
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The email was innocuous enough. A woman wrote to me explaining how her partner had been talking about my work and how much he'd enjoyed it—in particular, he'd remembered me giving a TEDx talk about ghosts and hauntings. He'd tried to show her the video, but the two of them couldn't find it online. Did I have a link I could send them?I wrote back confused; after thanking them for the kind words, I told them I'd never given a TEDx talk. I thought that would be the end of it. Instead, her partner wrote back to say that he was still looking for the video, and in the meantime he wanted to send a description of the TEDx talk I had given. Perhaps he thought that seeing the description of my talk would jog my memory, or
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/647/image/coversmallThe Art of Haunting: What My Doppelgänger Taught Me2026-03-25text/htmlen-USThe Art of Haunting: What My Doppelgänger Taught Me2026-03-252026TWOProject MUSE®265312026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-25Objects out of the Ashes: What Remains of Brazil's Oldest Museum
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985653
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Paleolithic Skull (Luzia)11,243–11,710 years, Minas Gerais, Brazil Archival inkjet print, 40 × 30 in.TitanossauroArchival inkjet print, 30 × 40.25 in.ON September 2, 2018, a fire tore through the National Museum of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro. Budget cuts had led to the building's disrepair, which had led to improper wiring. The fire was brutally thorough: The country's first and oldest museum lost most of its twenty-million-item collection. Among the damaged relics was Luzia, one of the oldest human skeletons found in the Americas, dated to about 11,500 years ago. The entomology collection, with more than five million specimens, was also destroyed, along with the museum's storied African collection and two hundred
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/647/image/coversmallObjects out of the Ashes: What Remains of Brazil's Oldest Museum2026-03-25text/htmlen-USObjects out of the Ashes: What Remains of Brazil's Oldest Museum2026-03-252026TWOProject MUSE®106952026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-25A Specter of Both Directions: We Turned to ChatGPT for a Quick Answer, Which Then Turned Into an Existential Puzzle
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985654
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Alexander Brock: I need some help with an upcoming issue of VQR.ChatGPT: Of course—happy to help.Who do you think we should interview about how the world has largely caught up with speculative fiction? Say, your top three recommendations.Here are three high-impact, intellectually rich interview targets who can speak authoritatively—and in very different registers—about how the contemporary world has "caught up" with speculative fiction. Each would give you a distinct angle and a strong VQR-appropriate conversation.Ted ChiangWhy him:Arguably the most philosophically rigorous speculative writer alive.His fiction already lives at the boundary of what is technologically and ethically imminent.His essays explicitly
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/647/image/coversmallA Specter of Both Directions: We Turned to ChatGPT for a Quick Answer, Which Then Turned Into an Existential Puzzle2026-03-25text/htmlen-USA Specter of Both Directions: We Turned to ChatGPT for a Quick Answer, Which Then Turned Into an Existential Puzzle2026-03-252026TWOProject MUSE®288982026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-25Live Alone Death: Residing in the Afterworld of Memory
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985655
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…even a skeleton must be formally declared no longer living.In Tokyo, Miyu Kojima angles an adjustable lamp to flood the scene with light.Before her: a scaled-down replica of someone else's life; the interior of a room on display, with the art of diorama as an exercise in stillness. Miyu leans in, steady, contained, her breathing gone slow in the body—so as not to disturb the moment she's sculpted piece by piece over the course of the past month. She breathes in the invisible, which her body metabolizes before exhaling the invisible, though it has changed in ways that can only be measured at the level of the atom. Miyu studies the miniature refrigerator, which is small enough to fit in the palm of her hand; the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-16T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/647/image/coversmallLive Alone Death: Residing in the Afterworld of Memory2026-03-25text/htmlen-USLive Alone Death: Residing in the Afterworld of Memory2026-03-252026TWOProject MUSE®198152026-05-16T00:00:00-05:002026-03-25