I n 2002, the Modern Language Association Annual Conference had 10,500 attendees. By 2019, that number had fallen to 4,500. While this decline partially reflects the tendency of English departments ...

Adults need to relax and do nothing together, just like kids do. By Jancee Dunn For the past few weeks, I’ve been running an experiment: inviting friends to simply hang out and do nothing, or close to ...

Back in the day, you could turn on your television, tune to any number of channels and see a group of four to six beautiful and quirky friends lounging around, talking about their lives, sharing the ...

It was time to consider calling it a night. Sheila Liming and I had talked all day—at a taco joint for lunch, and walking around Burlington, Vermont, running errands, and at dinner at a restaurant in ...

Sheila Liming, the author of “Hanging Out,” argues that unstructured time is essential to our cultural vitality. Down with calendar invites; long live the bocce league. By Maggie Lange Hanging out: It ...