Essay Prompts: Arts and Entertainment | 50 Essay Topics for EmSAT Achieve PDF Download

Music

Essay 13: What Songs Are on Your Favorite Playlist?

Note to teachers: You might not consider all of the songs on the playlist appropriate for your students. Please preview first.

The New York Times Magazine put together a playlist of 25 songs that “tell us where music is going.” The selections include “Sorry” by Justin Bieber, “Say No to This” from the “Hamilton” soundtrack and “Consideration” by Rihanna, and they range from hip-hop to hard country to electronic.

What songs are on your current favorite playlist?

Nitsuh Abebe writes in the special feature’s introduction:

It’s not as if I made some principled choice not to listen to it. It’s just that Beyoncé released “Formation” on a Saturday, and then performed it at the Super Bowl on Sunday, and as of Monday I hadn’t gotten around to it, for reasons that are incredibly uninteresting: I happened to have been doing other stuff, which seems as if it’s probably among my rights as an American.

By then, though, the song had become such an intense focus of discussion at the digital water cooler — to the point where it felt difficult to turn on a computer without someone’s views about “Formation” and its various sociopolitical valences reaching out and grasping for your throat — that my not having heard it acquired some kind of political dimension. A decision had to be made. Either I needed to dutifully consume this object of conversation and develop an opinion about it or I needed to develop a defense of why I hadn’t yet done so.

The point being: Here, for a moment, was music that actively dragooned me into paying attention to it, based not primarily on sound, performance or composition, but on the rolling snowball of perspectives, close readings and ideological disputes accreting around it.

It’s songs that do this now; individual songs and mass opinion, working in tandem. This wasn’t always the case. We’ve spent the past century or so trying, in creaky and convulsive ways, to figure out what music is even for, and how we intend to use it. When and where will we listen to it? Will other people be there? Should people own music? Who should write it — the performers? What’s a normal amount to release at once? How will we find out about it? Will there be pictures? Are you absolutely, definitely sure we have to pay money for it? For the moment, there’s only one answer to these questions that seems to connect strangers in a truly monocultural way: We shall gather in huge, fawning riots around towering pop singles to trade politicized takes on them.

She concludes:

We’ve found a way to collect around the handful of songs we all have in common, yoke them with our opinions and make a (mostly) joyful noise. I don’t begrudge Beyoncé or the world one second of it. But it does throw into stark relief the things we have a much harder time talking about, at least with strangers: the way songs make us feel, the things we discover in them that aren’t already on other people’s minds, the obscure pleasures we’re willing to risk trying to explain from the darkness. The ever-larger private life of music. How do we talk about that?

Go ahead, scroll through the interactive, and be sure to have the volume turned up. Maybe you’ll discover something new for your own playlist.

Students: Read the whole article, then answer the questions below:

• What songs are on your current playlist?

• How does your playlist make you feel? What mood does the music evoke? What do you hear in your favorite songs that maybe other people don’t?

• What, if anything, does your playlist say about you? How is the music you listen to part of your identity?

• Look through The Times Magazine’s playlist, and listen to anything you’re not familiar with. Do any of the songs appeal to you? Anything you would consider adding to your own playlist?

Essay 14: What Are You Listening To?

If Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky” is already starting to seem like the “song of summer” to you, you’re not alone. The group’s new album is also No. 1 on the Billboard charts, while the rap duo Macklemore & Ryan Lewis extends its run with the top single.

What are you listening to these days? Why?

In “Daft Punk Holds On at No. 1,” the ArtsBeat blog reports:

Daft Punk’s “Random Access Memories” (Daft Life/Columbia), featuring the hit single “Get Lucky,” had 93,000 sales in its second week out, according to Nielsen SoundScan. That is a 73 percent drop from its opening week, but it was enough keep the album on top, beating out a handful of new releases.

Alice in Chains’ new release, “The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here” (Capitol) — the grunge-era group’s second album since reuniting with a new singer, William DuVall — opened at No. 2 with 61,000 sales. John Fogerty’s “Wrote a Song for Everyone” (Vanguard), featuring Creedence Clearwater Revival and other of his songs recorded with stars like Kid Rock, Keith Urban and Jennifer Hudson, sold 51,000 copies to open at No. 3. Also this week, the British group Little Mix bows at No. 4 with 50,000 sales of “DNA” (Syco/Columbia).

On the singles chart, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’s “Can’t Hold Us” stays at No. 1 for a fifth week, with 184,000 downloads and five million streams in the United States on services like Spotify and YouTube. Earlier this year, the group’s “Thrift Shop” spent six weeks as the top single.

Students: Tell us …

• What are you listening to right now? Do you find your playlist changes with the seasons?

• If so, what do you think of the concept of a “song of summer“? What songs do you associate with previous summers? What do you think will be this summer’s song?

• How much do you tend to follow pop music? Are your favorite songs ones everyone knows, or more obscure music?

• If you want to find new music, you might try the new “Press Play” music blog. What songs there do you like? Why?

Teachers: We have a related lesson plan, “Puttin’ On the Hits.”

Television

Essay 15: What Are Your Favorite TV Shows?

What shows are you watching right now? Would you recommend them? Are they binge-worthy?

Sometimes it’s good to get advice on what to watch next since there is so much good TV being made these days — in what David Carr called “TV’s New Golden Age.” If you’re looking for inspiration, The New York Times has a what-to-watch guide, Watching, that can help you find new shows according to your mood.

Looking for a witty teen comedy streaming on Netflix? Here is a Times recommendation:

• Freaks and Geeks
  Watch ... if you want a painfully earnest and bitingly humorous teen drama. “Freaks and Geeks” is perhaps the reason the “brilliant but canceled” label exists: It was too good to last. The teen protagonists, ranging from nerdy to cool to bullied to burned out and everything in between, feel real, and the parents are actually treated fairly, too....

Want to find a dark, suspenseful documentary on Hulu? Here’s another Times recommendation:

• O.J.: Made in America
  Watch ... for a revealing look at justice, fame and race relations in America. Director Ezra Edelman doesn’t just focus on the deaths of Ronald L. Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson — and the subsequent murder trial of her ex-husband, O.J. Instead, Edelman widens his scope to consider decades of racially insensitive policing in Los Angeles, while observing how the rich and famous get treated differently than the rest of us in the criminal justice system....

Students: Tell us:

• What are your favorite TV shows ever? What’s so great about them?
• What shows are you watching now?
• Do you find yourself looking forward to the TV shows you watch? Is TV watching an important part of your life?
• How do you normally decide what TV shows to watch?
• Try your luck on Watching. Pick categories at the top of the page based on your mood. What shows does the guide recommend for you?

Students 13 and older are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.

Essay 16: What Are the Best Things You’ve Watched, Read, Heard or Played This Year?

In December each year, The Times publishes its critics’ “best of” lists, which compile their favorite books, movies, music, television shows, video games and more. For instance, over the weekend, the Book Review published its 100 Notable Books list, as well as its Notable Children’s Books list.

What would go on your list? What were the best things you read, watched, heard or played this year? Why?

Here are the seven books Times editors chose as the best Young Adult fiction of 2013. Have you read any? Do you agree?

• “Boxers and Saints”
  Written and illustrated by Gene Luen Yang. (First Second, $18.99 and $15.99.)
  In these companion graphic novels, Yang, a Michael L. Printz Award winner, tackles the complicated history of China’s Boxer Rebellion, using characters with opposing perspectives to explore the era’s politics and religion.

• “Eleanor & Park”
  By Rainbow Rowell. (St. Martin’s Griffin, $18.99.)
  A misfit girl from an abusive home and a Korean-American boy from a happy one bond over music and comics on the school bus in this novel, which our reviewer, John Green, said “reminded me not just what it’s like to be young and in love with a girl, but also what it’s like to be young and in love with a book.”

• “Fangirl”
  By Rainbow Rowell. (St. Martin’s Griffin, $18.99.)
  In her second Y.A. novel published in 2013, Rowell cleverly interweaves the story of an introverted girl’s freshman year in college — and first romance — with the “Harry Potter”-like fan fiction she writes in her spare time.

• “The 5th Wave”
  By Rick Yancey. (Putnam, $18.99.)
  Yancey’s wildly entertaining novel, in which aliens come to Earth, manages the elusive trick of appealing to young readers and adults alike.

• “Picture Me Gone”
  By Meg Rosoff. (Putnam, $17.99.)
  Mila, a young Londoner with an uncanny gift for empathy, accompanies her father to upstate New York to search for his best friend. Questions of honesty and trust are central to this novel, a ­National Book Award finalist.

• “The Rithmatist”
  By Brandon Sanderson. Illustrated by Ben McSweeney. (Tor/Tom Doherty, $17.99.)
  A boy longs to join a magical cadre defending humanity against merciless “chalklings” in this fantasy, set in an alternate version of ­America.

• “Rose Under Fire”
  By Elizabeth Wein. (Hyperion, $17.99.)
  In Wein’s second World War II adventure novel — the first, “Code Name Verity,” was highly praised last year — Rose, 18, an American transport pilot and aspiring poet, struggles to survive in a women’s concentration camp after her plane is grounded in Germany.

Students: Tell us ...

• Which Times culture category most interests you — books, movies, television, theater, music, art & design, dance or video games?
• What would you put on your list that came out in 2013 in any of those categories? For instance, you might list movies you loved, television shows that were especially good this year, books you’d recommend, albums you listened to over and over, and an art show you saw at a local museum.

Video Games

Essay 17: Should Video Games Be Considered a Sport?

Players compete in huge arenas, cheered on by thousands of screaming fans, with millions of dollars in prize money at stake. Top competitors must endure grueling training regimens, but also enjoy soaring salaries and corporate endorsement deals.

We’re not talking about basketball or football here, but the elite world of professional gaming. Isn’t it time we called video games a sport?

In “Grooming the Champions of the Keyboard,” Alan Feuer writes about professional video game players who have joined forces in a team:

On a picture-perfect East Bay afternoon — 75 and a clear blue sky — a few top players for the Evil Geniuses were holed up in the Lair.

Preparing for a qualifying match, a StarCraft prodigy named HuK was sitting in one of the gaming rooms, communing with his monitor and limbering his fingers on a keyboard. Down the hallway, his teammate DeMusliM was running through a replay of his own last match and working on his manual dexterity, swirling a pair of worry balls in his hand.

It was 3 p.m. and the California sunlight was beating at the windows, but the Lair’s front shutters were drawn tight, leaving the gamers to focus in the darkness on their training, which meant playing video games from dawn to dusk each day, or from dusk to dawn each night. Their physical needs had been seen to: the kitchen refrigerator was stocked with bagels, the living room cooler with caffeinated sports drinks. At their flashing terminals, the four young men were immersed enough in work that they hardly noticed the two maids feather-dusting everything around them — and occasionally poking a vacuum cleaner between their legs.

Like sports stars everywhere, professional-level video gamers need a place to practice, and for the high-tech athletes of the Evil Geniuses — the Yankees of the video gaming world — that place is the Lair, a sock-strewn tract house on an ordinary side street in this breezy island city east of San Francisco. With its redundant Internet connections and eight-to-a-toilet dormitory rooms, the Lair is a clubhouse and a crash pad: a residential exercise space where digital Derek Jeters can roll out of bed and stumble downstairs for workouts in the gym.

Students: Tell us …

• Should video games be considered a sport?
• What is the essence of a sport? Is it the competition? The physical activity? The complex skill level required?
• Does it matter if we call video gaming a sport? Does the term “sport” or “e-sport” validate the activity in some way, beyond just a hobby or form of entertainment? Or is the debate trivial?
• Do you play video games? Which ones? Would you want to be a professional gamer?

Essay 18: What Have You Learned Playing Video Games?

What are your favorite video games? What do you think they have taught you?

Do you think video games can help inspire social change? Have you ever played one that helped you understand a serious global problem?

In “Not Just Playing Around Anymore: Games for Change Uses Video Games for Social Projects” Laura Parker writes:

This year, a United Nations program devoted to urban planning in countries affected by poverty or natural disasters began developing a sports field in the slums of Kibera, Kenya, designing it in the popular sandbox video game Minecraft. The game, which allows players to build entire worlds out of cubes in a 3-D environment, helped the project leaders create a visual representation of the field that could be easily understood by the neighborhood’s residents.

“The game makes everything transparent,” said Pontus Westerberg, a digital projects officer at the program, UN-Habitat. “It gives the communities we work with more agency and helps everyone see what’s going on.”

The project, known as Block by Block, is among the highlights this week at the Games for Change Festival in New York, an annual event that promotes video games that seek social change. These efforts — known as serious games — once focused on education, to entice students to learn through digital play. But attention has shifted to more ambitious efforts like Block by Block, and a large part of that push has come from Games for Change, a nonprofit organization founded in 2004 that has worked with Google, NASA, the United Nations, the Rockefeller Foundation and TEDx.

Far removed from the military battles, zombie attacks and alien uprisings that dominate the multibillion-dollar video game industry, Games for Change is focused on lesser-known titles that treat the medium as something more than entertainment. The organization’s festival has become a platform to introduce video games with altruistic goals. …

One speaker at this year’s festival is Zoran Popovic, the director of the Center for Game Science at the University of Washington, in Seattle. He led the team of researchers responsible for the puzzle game Foldit, which sought to crowdsource a solution to a scientific problem. Foldit asked players to take on the role of a biochemist and map out how proteins might be folded in nature. The game provided scores based on how well they performed. Three papers in the journal Nature have been published, based on Foldit discoveries, since the game’s release in 2008; the most famous, in 2011, explained how Foldit players had helped to decipher the structure of an AIDS-related enzyme, a problem that scientists had been trying to solve for years.

Mr. Popovic plans to unveil a new project this week, a synthetic-biology game called NanoCrafter, whose goal is to discover molecular structures that could benefit vaccine and cancer research.

Students: Read the entire article, then tell us …

• What are your favorite video games? What games did you play when you were younger? Looking back, what do you think they taught you — whether physical or mental skills or something more intangible? How have they enriched your life?
• Have you ever played a video game like the ones at Games for Change, in which the goal is “more than entertainment”? What did you think of it? What did you learn?
• Do you think video games can be effective tools for learning? Do you think playing them might actually help “change the world”? Why or why not?
• If your school were to invest in a “video game for change” that was, like the examples in this article, fun to play, intellectually enriching and altruistically focused, what would you like it to be about? How might it work?

Movies & Theater 

Essay 19: What Are Your Favorite Movies Ever?

The nominations for this year’s Academy Awards were announced on Thursday, and the films “Birdman,” “Grand Budapest Hotel,” “The Imitation Game” and “Boyhood” earned the most nods.

What are your favorite movies ever? What were the best movies you saw in the past year?

In “Oscar Nominations 2015: ‘Birdman’ and ‘Grand Budapest Hotel’ Lead the Pack,” Michael Cieply and Brooks Barnes write:

Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s “Birdman” and Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood” were showered with honors Thursday as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences confirmed what’s been whispered for months: Those are the films to beat at the 87th Oscar show, set for Feb. 22.

But several films with as many or more nominations — including “The Grand Budapest Hotel” and “The Imitation Game” — showed perhaps enough strength to beat them, after all.

Both “Birdman” — whose full title is “Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)” — and “Boyhood” took nominations for best director and best picture. In all, Oscar voters named eight best picture nominees, including Clint Eastwood’s “American Sniper,” Wes Anderson’s “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” Morten Tyldum’s “The Imitation Game,” Ava DuVernay’s “Selma,” James Marsh’s “The Theory of Everything,” Damien Chazelle’s “Whiplash.”

“Selma” and “Whiplash” have ceased to be surprises, as both have popped up with awards and nominations through the season. But each comes from a relatively new director, making their best picture nominations notable.

Students: Read the article, then tell us …

• What are your favorite movies ever? What are the best movies you saw in the past year?
• Why did you like them so much? What makes for a great movie in your opinion?
• What do you think about the Oscar nominees this year? Did you see any of the films nominated?
• Who or what, in your opinion, deserves to win an Oscar?

If you want to cast your own votes, to compare with the winners when they are announced in late February, you can use this Oscar ballot.

Essay 20: What Were the Best Movies You Saw in the Past Year?

The nominations for this year’s Academy Awards were announced on Thursday, and the three films with the most nominations are “American Hustle,” “Gravity” and “12 Years a Slave.”

What were the best movies you saw in the past year?

In the article “Oscar Nominations 2014: ‘American Hustle’ and ‘Gravity’ Lead Field,” Brooks Barnes and Michael Cieply write:

Conventional wisdom held true on Thursday for the 86th annual Academy Awards as the comedic drama “American Hustle,” the space adventure “Gravity” and the searing historical drama “12 Years a Slave” received the most nominations.

“American Hustle” received 10 nods, including best picture, best director, for David O. Russell, and for four of its actors: Christian Bale (best actor), Amy Adams (best actress), Bradley Cooper (best supporting actor) and Jennifer Lawrence (best supporting actress).

“Gravity,” also a best picture nominee, tied with 10, including for best direction and best actress, but more of its overall attention came from some of the more technical categories.

“12 Years a Slave” was right behind with nine nominations, including Steve McQueen as director, Chiwetel Ejiofor as best actor and Michael Fassbender and Lupita Nyong’o in supporting acting categories.

In all, nine films received best picture nominations in a field that can include as many as 10 or as few as 5, depending on how voters from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences spread their hand. Rounding out the field are “Captain Phillips,” “Dallas Buyers Club,” “Her,” “Nebraska,” “Philomena” and “The Wolf of Wall Street.”

Students: Read the entire article, then tell us …

• What were the best movies you saw in the past year? Why did you like them so much?
• What are the qualities that you look for in a great movie?
• What do you think about the Oscar nominees this year? Did you see any of the films nominated?
• Who or what, in your opinion, deserves to win an Oscar?

If you want to cast your own votes, to compare with the winners when they are announced in early March, you can use this Oscar ballot.

 Books & Reading

Essay 21: What Are the Best Books You’ve Read?

As we near the end of the calendar year, The Times Book Review section has been rounding up its lists of best books of 2015.

What are the best books you’ve read in the past year?

In addition to its “The 10 Best Books of 2015” and “100 Notable Books of 2015” lists, The Times has also compiled a list of notable children’s books for the year.

Here are the picks for young adults:

• THE HIRED GIRL. By Laura Amy Schlitz.
  Set in 1911, this transcendent novel features a literature-loving teenage narrator, raised poor and Catholic, who flees an abusive home and gains acceptance and worldly knowledge working as a servant for a Jewish family.

• SHADOWSHAPER. By Daniel José Older.
  “Magnificent,” our reviewer, Holly Black, called this sharp urban fantasy set in Brooklyn, about a young muralist — a shadowshaper, able to channel friendly spirits into art — facing an assortment of dangers.

• SYMPHONY FOR THE CITY OF THE DEAD: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad. By M. T. Anderson.
  A gripping, thoroughly researched biography of the Russian composer that illuminates the horrors of World War II along with the eternal hope music can provide.

• SIX OF CROWS. By Leigh Bardugo.
  This crackling first book in a new series by the author of the Grisha Trilogy assembles a team of outcasts who must band together to pull off a heist in order to save the Grisha, a tribe with magical powers.

• BECOMING MARIA. Love and Chaos in the South Bronx. By Sonia Manzano.
  In prose that shines brightly, the “Sesame Street” star recounts her path from a poor Nuyorican family ravaged by her father’s alcoholism to a scholarship at a prestigious college theater program.

Students: Read the entire article, then tell us …

• What are the best books you’ve read in the past year?
• How much do you read for pleasure? What are your favorite kinds of books?
• What are some of your all-time favorite books?
• How do you find new books to read? Do you use “Best of” lists like the ones above? Do you have a community of fellow readers with whom you share recommendations — whether among friends or online?

Essay 22: Read Any Good Books Lately?

Do you read for pleasure? What are some of your favorite books? Do you have a community of fellow readers with whom you share recommendations?

In “Read Any Good Web Sites Lately? Book Lovers Talk Online,” Leslie Kaufman writes about Goodreads.com:

Goodreads.com, a social media site for finding and sharing titles that has 15 million members, is exploding in popularity and rivaling Amazon.com as a platform for promoting new books.

The site allows passionate readers to share what they are reading, rate books they have already read and list what they are considering next. They can do this publicly or among only a self-selected network of online friends. The site is also host to roughly 20,000 organically occurring online book clubs for every preference — from people interested in only Proust to those who prefer history and Tudor-period fiction. There are 314 clubs for paranormal romance fans alone.

Goodreads and smaller similar sites are addressing what publishers call the “discoverability” problem: How do you guide consumers to books they might want to read? The digital age has created online retail sites that are overflowing with new books, leaving readers awash in unknown titles.

Students: Tell us …

• How much do you read for pleasure? What are your favorite genres?
• What have you read lately that’s good?
• What are some of your all-time favorites?
• How do you find new books to read? What’s on your “to read” list now?
• Do you use online communities like Goodreads? If so, which ones? What do you like about them, and what do you dislike?
• How else do you find good books to read? (If you are stuck, you might be interested in the hundreds of recommendations students gave us in 2011.)

NOTE: Please use only your first name. For privacy policy reasons, we will not publish student comments that include a last name.

Writing

Essay 23: What Purpose Does Writing Serve in Your Life?

Do you like to write in a journal, or a blog? Do you have a play or a novel in the making tucked away in a drawer somewhere? Do you like to write poems, stories or songs — or to simply make lists?

What do you like to write about, and why?

In “Winston Churchill Wrote of Alien Life in a Lost Essay,” Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura writes:

Even as he was preparing for the biggest struggle of his life, leading Britain in its fight against Nazi Germany, Winston Churchill had something else on his mind: extraterrestrials.

In a newly unearthed essay sent to his publisher on Oct. 16, 1939 — just weeks after Britain entered World War II and Churchill became part of the wartime cabinet — and later revised, he was pondering the likelihood of life on other planets.

Churchill, who went on to become prime minister during much of World War II and again from 1951 to 1955, was so enthralled by the subject that he even ordered a suspected sighting of an unidentified flying object by the Royal Air Force to be kept a secret for 50 years to avoid “mass panic.”

In an 11-page essay titled “Are We Alone in the Universe?” the statesman showed powers of reason “like a scientist,” said Mario Livio, an astrophysicist who read the rarely seen draft and wrote about it in an article published on Wednesday in Nature magazine.

Students: Read the entire article, then tell us:

• What purpose did writing serve for Winston Churchill, and how did it help him?
• How does writing distract, calm, energize, entertain, educate or even heal us, as human beings? What do you think it is about writing that makes it so?
• What purpose does writing serve in your life, and why?

Students 13 and older are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.

Essay 24: Why Do You Write?

This question is a little different from the previous 400-plus Student Opinion questions we’ve asked, because this question is in honor of the National Day on Writing, and we’re asking the whole world to answer it.

Tell us here, post it on Twitter with the hashtag #whyIwrite, or submit a fuller essay to the special “Why I Write” page created by one of our partners, Figment.

Here’s an excerpt from our post about how and why we’re celebrating:

Why do you write?

Because I am a spider and words are my silk. This morning I balloon into your feeds
2 get 10 years worth of stories out of my head.

Because I sound smarter when I write than when I speak.

I write because writing is crack, and I’m an addict.

We fished the answers above out of the Twitter stream of contributors to the hashtag #whyIwrite, and on Thursday, Oct. 20, the National Day on Writing, we’re inviting you to post your answers there as well.

On that day, we’re teaming up with the National Writing Project, Figment and Edutopia to encourage everyone everywhere — students and teachers, scientists and sports heroes, pop stars, politicians and poets — to tell the world #whyIwrite.

Students: Tell us when, how and why you write. What does writing do for you? How has it played a role in your life?

Use this space as a rough draft of your answer, then consider posting a fuller essay on the Figment, where, as of now, more than 200 young people have contributed.

Or, if you’re on Twitter, boil your thoughts down to a short message and add it with the hashtag #whyIwrite so that your reason can become a part of the public record.

The Arts

Essay 25: What Is Your Favorite Type of Art?

Why type of art do you like most? For example, do you tend to like painting, sculpture, photography, ceramics, textiles or other kinds of art? Why?

Look through the images of art in this article and pick your favorites. What do you like about them?

In “30 Must-See Artists at the Armory Show,” Martha Schwendener writes:

The Armory Show, one of the city’s top fairs for 20th- and 21st-century art, had a shake-up in the last year: one director replaced following accusations of sexual harassment, and a shift in focus under its new director, Nicole Berry. There is a notable drive toward streamlining, with fewer galleries this year — a total of 198 from 31 countries at Piers 92/94, the contiguous exhibition space. The timeline is being tightened, as well, to create less of a divide between the past and the present, between post-World War II art (usually found on the sleepier Pier 92) and newer work. It’s a smart move, since much “historical” art from the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s is now being shown in contemporary galleries anyway.

The impulse is toward slow looking and away from flashier displays. There are live discussions with artists: Carolee Schneemann at 1 p.m. on Saturday, and JR with the gallerist Jeffrey Deitch at 2:30 p.m. on Sunday. There is plenty of historical work here that has not been seen before — or seen much — as well as commissioned projects and a very good mix of international, emerging and blue-chip galleries. Here are some currents I saw running through the fair.

Fiber and Textile

There has been a strong interest in fiber and textile art in the last half-decade, circling back to the ’50s and ’60s, as well as newer work. Textiles also honor traditions outside or alongside the Western painting canon. Jeffrey Gibson is a painter, but he also makes ceremonial-style garments, inspired by Native American Ghost Dance shirts. Several wonderful examples, presented by the gallery Kavi Gupta (Booth 611) and Roberts Projects (Booth 714), are suspended from the ceiling in Pier 94.

She continues:

Digital

A range of digital art and video, both historical and recent, is here. A small survey of Nam June Paik at Gagosian (800) has a 2005 television sculpture with lions and Merce Cunningham dancing on the screens, as well as never-before-seen drawings by Paik. Another Korean video artist, Hyun-Ki Park, is on view at Gallery Hyundai (519, F14), with an installation of televisions nestled amid boulders and photographs of Mr. Park hefting a television.

Students: Read the entire article, then tell us:

• Have you ever been “wowed” by a piece of art or an exhibit? What was it, and why?
• What are your best museum memories or experiences? Why do you like to go see or experience art? For inspiration, look through the Times’s Museums: A Special Section that covers the latest trends in museums across the world.

Students 13 and older are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.

Essay 26: What Are Your Favorite Works of Art?

This was a big week for the world of art, including a bidding war over an Andy Warhol painting and the Museum of Modern Art’s annual Party in the Garden, which raised $4 million for the museum, thanks in part to a performance by Kanye West and Jay-Z. When was the last time you went to an art museum? Why do you think people go to look at works of art? What are your favorite works of art, even if you’ve never seen them in person?

In “Kanye West Turns Melodious and Moody at MoMA,” Jon Caramanica writes:

After a roaring take on “Runaway,” during which he pounded on his MPC, he began addressing, well, everyone. “Thank you for loving me when they told you not to love me,” he half-sang, through an Auto-Tunelike effect, rendering him an emotional cyborg. “I’m sorry about anybody out there that had to fight for me. Do you know what it feels like to be hated, do you know what it feels like to be degraded?” There was more, about his alleged racism, about branding and marketing, about his late mother: “I know she’s smiling down.”

It’s likely that the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden had never seen such twisted pain. It was filled with a crowd of more than 1,000 — largely men in expensive suits and women in more expensive dresses — and some of its more delicate pieces were roped off, for their own safety. A smattering of well-known faces worked the room: Nick Zinner of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs; the actor Aziz Ansari in a slim suit, cutting through the crowd at warp speed, trailed by a similarly outfitted entourage.

Students: Tell us about your favorite works of art, even if you’ve never seen them in person.

• What about them appeals to you?
• What works of art that you’ve never seen in person would you most like to visit? Why?
• How often do you go to art museums or galleries in general?

Language & Speech 

Essay 27: What Words Do You Hate?

Moist. Luggage. Crevice. Stroke. Slacks. Phlegm.

How did those words make you feel?

So begins a recent article about the science behind our aversion to certain words, which The Times followed up with a piece on the everyday words that readers said made them “go ‘ew.’ ”

What words disgust or bother you? Why?
(Please leave out words with explicit sexual, scatological, racial or taboo connotations.)

In “We Know You Hate ‘Moist.’ What Other Words Repel You?,” Jonah Bromwich writes:

Certain everyday words drive some people crazy, a phenomenon experts call “word aversion.” But one word appears to rise above all others: “moist.” For that reason, a recent paper in the journal PLOS One used the word as a stand-in to explore why people find some terms repellent.

“It doesn’t really fit into a lot of existing categories for how people think about the psychology of language,” the study’s author, Paul Thibodeau, a professor of psychology at Oberlin College, said of moist. “It’s not a taboo word, it’s not profanity, but it elicits this very visceral disgust reaction.”

A little less than a quarter of the approximately 2,500 unique subjects tested in Mr. Thibodeau’s five experiments over four years had trouble dealing with any appearance of the word.

When asked to react to moist in a free-association task, about one-third of those people responded with “an expression of disgust,” Mr. Thibodeau said. Almost two-thirds of those who later reported an aversion were so bothered by “moist” that they could recall its inclusion among a set of 63 other words — an unusually high rate.

The peer-reviewed study attempted to explain why moist had become the linguistic equivalent of nails on a chalkboard for some people.

Words that sound similar — including hoist, foist and rejoiced — did not put off participants in the same way, suggesting that aversion to the word was not based on the way it sounds. But people who were bothered by moist also found that words for bodily fluids — vomit, puke and phlegm — largely struck a nerve. That led Mr. Thibodeau to conclude that for those people moist had taken on the connotations of a bodily function.

Students: Read the entire article, then tell us:

• What words did you think of right away when you saw the question at the top of this post? Why do you think they bother you so much? Was moist on your list?

• Now that you’ve read the article, can you add to your list? Are words for or suggestive of bodily fluids on your list? Are there any words on your list that don’t sound as if they belong in English, as the scientists in this piece suggest could lead to an emotional reaction?

• The Times invited readers to write in with words that repel them. Read the results. Which of those words would go on your list? Why? What words are on your list that aren’t mentioned in any of these articles?

Essay 28: What Words or Phrases Do You Think Are Overused?

The Times TV critic Neil Genzlinger is disgusted that a snarky use of the one-word response “Really?” is popping up everywhere on television these days. Because TV influences how we speak, he notes that that same use of “Really?” is spreading to everyday life. Have you noticed this?

What word or phrase do you overuse when you speak? What words or phrases do you think are overused in general?

In “The ‘R’ Word: Really, Really Overused,” Mr. Genzlinger writes:

Civilization crumbles a little bit almost every time I turn on the television, and a single word-and-punctuation-mark combination is inflicting the damage.

You’ve heard it too, no doubt, and if you’re a person who values grace and urbanity and eating with utensils rather than burying your face in the plate, you’ve winced whenever some TV character has spewed it. It’s the snarky “Really?,” and it’s undoing 2,000 years’ worth of human progress.

I’m not talking about “Really?” as a request for more information or an expression of surprise. I’m referring to the more recent, faddish use of it: delivered with a high-pitched sneer to indicate a contempt so complete that it requires no clarification.

Say a co-worker shows up for a pivotal meeting wearing a plaid blouse and a polka-dot skirt. In the old days you might have said: “Well, that is certainly an interesting fashion choice. Myself, I prefer something more subdued when sitting down with a client.” Now, though, if you’ve succumbed to the loathsome trend, you will simply aim as withering a look as you can at your colleague, say “Really?” and walk away.

Students: Tell us how you feel about this. Do you think civilization is threatened by this particular use of this word?

• What words or phrases do you overuse when you speak?
• What words or phrases do you hear others use that you wish would just go away?
• Why do you think these words are overused, unnecessary or just plain annoying?
• What’s your opinion about the overuse of the word “Really?” The comedian Jerry Seinfeld strongly disagrees with Mr. Genzlinger, for instance. In a letter to the editor, he argues that “Really?” is a fine word to use in conversation. He thinks it’s funny. What do you think? Really.