The Art of Cultural Criticism is a yearlong series of conversations featuring some of the most innovative and incisive writers on culture in its various forms — including visual art, film, old and new media, music, and literature.

Jeff Chang is executive director of the Institute for Diversity in the Arts and author of Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, Who We Be: The Colorization of America, and We Gon’ Be Alright: Notes on Race and Resegregation.

Hua Hsu is a contributing writer for the New Yorker, where he covers music, culture, and politics. An associate professor of English at Vassar College, he is the author of A Floating Chinaman: Fantasy and Failure Across the Pacific.

Sponsored by the Townsend Center for the Humanities, the Arts+Design Initiative, the Arts Research Center, and the Art of Writing.