Distributaries
About
Ongoing print and online publication series of collaborative and creative work in the humanities at CUNY.
Distributaries is a print and online publication series documenting collaborative and creative public scholarship at CUNY. The diverse forms of knowledge emerging from publicly engaged projects derived from working directly with and for communities requires more dynamic publishing solutions. Distributaries is part of an engaged publishing neighborhood that strives to produce materials salient to frontline-led research projects in novel forms to more nimbly reach the diverse publics they address. Distributaries is an online blog, updated with irregular regularity, and a book publisher whose catalog prioritizes critical inquiry with public impact.
Featured
Between Delivery: Letter Threads After the Theresa Hak Kyung Cha Archive (Part I)
May 13, 2025
This series of letters emerged from Ju Ly Ban’s work as a Fellow for Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative from the Center for the Humanities at the CUNY Graduate Center, grounded in archival engagement with the work and life of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. Attuned to the fragments of her presence in the archive, the letters imagine otherwise by rethinking how she has been approached, interpreted, and held in relation. The letters are part of an exchange among Ju Ly Ban, Isabelle Utzinger-Son, and Cici Wu. For the past two years, the three friends have written to one another about Theresa, her life, her art, and the traces of both they have found within and beyond the archive.
Recent
Between Delivery: Letter Threads After the Theresa Hak Kyung Cha Archive (Part I)
Monday, May 12, 2025
This series of letters emerged from Ju Ly Ban’s work as a Fellow for Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative, grounded in archival engagement with the work and life of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. Attuned to the fragments of her presence in the archive, the letters between Ju Ly Ban, Isabelle Utzinger-Son, and Cici Wu imagine otherwise by rethinking how Cha has been approached, interpreted, and held in relation. For the past two years, the three friends have written to one another about Theresa, her life, her art, and the traces of both they have found within and beyond the archive.
The Urban Politics of Climate Change: a conversation with Naomi Schiller
Monday, August 7, 2023
The vanguard of the climate struggle is not solely in areas we designate as “rural,” “remote” or “natural.” In fact, the popular assumption that it is—the myth of wilderness—might be part of our problem. The historian William Cronon argued this in his great essay, “The Trouble with Wilderness: Or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature,”...
Exploring the Liminal Space of Inter-Rituals by Three Chinese Female Artists
Thursday, May 25, 2023
On the 30th of March, the exhibition, “Inter-Rituals: Between Materiality and Performances” took place at the Caelum Gallery in Chelsea. Curated by Jin Wang, Ph.D. student in Art History at the CUNY Graduate Center, the exhibition featured works by three Chinese female artists working in the US, Kun Hong, Yin Zhang, and Yinglun Zhang. Hui...
On The Letters of Rosemary and Bernadette Mayer, 1976–1980: An Interview with Gillian Sneed and Marie Warsh
Wednesday, May 24, 2023
It’s astonishing to me that there is so much in Memory, yet so much is left out: emotions, thoughts, sex, the relationship between poetry and light, storytelling, walking, and voyaging to name a few. I thought by using both sound and image, I could include everything, but so far, that is not so.—Bernadette Mayer, November...
Books
The Children of the People: Writings by and about CUNY Students on Race and Social Justice
Disruptive Engagement: An Organizer’s Guide to Building Community Power for Justice in Land Use and Housing in New York City
Las Hermanas de la Milpa: Comienza con la Calabaza / The Sisters of the Milpa: It Begins with the Squash by chef Natalia Mendez of La Morada restaurant
