How do we describe what we are experiencing now, in the times of self-isolation? Are we suffering from loneliness and striving for solitude? Can we even speak of a shared experience when what we share is absences? What becomes of politics in this time, and most important, how can we think?

The New School for Social Research welcomes The New Yorker contributor and author, Masha Gessen, for the Spring 2020 William Phillips Lecture.

Gessen is the author of ten books, including “The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia,” which won the National Book Award in 2017, and “The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin.” Gessen has written about Russia, autocracy, L.G.B.T. rights, Vladimir Putin, and Donald Trump, among others, for The New York Review of Books and The New York Times. Gessen has also worked as a science journalist, writing about AIDS, medical genetics, and mathematics.

Gessen is a visiting professor at Amherst College and the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, a Nieman Fellowship, the Hitchens Prize, and the Overseas Press Club Award for Best Commentary.

Presented by The New School for Social Research, this lecture is moderated by Simon Critchley, Hans Jonas Professor Of Philosophy at The New School.