Arts & Sciences

What's New

Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice in the Middle East

Day 4: 30 days of Austen Leave it to Turkish soap operas to conquer hearts and minds. As a result of the popular soaps (which by the way are watched not only by women but entire households), Turkey has carved out a strong place for itself on the Arab street. Thousands of rich Gulf Arabs flock to Turkey on every occasion, as Istanbul has lately rivaled... Read more of this review

Beautiful Minds: Jane Austen’s Heroines

Day 3: 30 days of Austen Jay McInerney, novelist and ladies’ man, describes his serial crushes on Jane Austen’s heroines – and how they shaped his romantic life. We love Jane Austen through her heroines. Knowing so little about her, we worship her surrogates. And generally speaking, unless we are cranky scholars or celibate critics,... Read more of this review

The Great House: Chawton House Library

Day 2: 30 days of Austen On 14 June 1814 Jane Austen, who was in Chawton, wrote to her sister Cassandra and included the following snippet of family news: “It appeared so likely to be a wet eveng that I went up to the Gt House between 3 & 4, & dawdled away an hour very comfortably, tho’ Edwd was not very brisk. The air was clearer... Read more of this review

Roger Ebert: No Longer an Eater, Still a Cook

After losing his lower jaw to cancer, the film critic, who can’t eat, has written a cookbook that is an ode to the rice cooker. In those first few moments at the table, you try not to look at the empty place where his jaw used to be. You wonder how it feels to receive your nourishment through a tube directly into your stomach. You cringe when the... Read more of this review

Elisabeth Lenckos talk at Chicago Humanities Festival

Day 1: 30 days of Austen Jane Austen and the Body This program is presented in partnership with the Jane Austen Society of North America / Greater Chicago Region. Two Jane Austen aficionados join forces to plumb the many themes, undercurrents, and references to the body in Austen’s novels. Medical doctor Cheryl Kinney diagnoses “Austen-itis” as... Read more of this review

The Humanities for Love, Not Money

Continuing education programs across the country are finding students increasingly focused on the arts and humanities, whether for new careers or to re-explore great authors. WHEN the renowned educators Mortimer J. Adler and Robert Maynard Hutchins first decided to expand their Great Books course beyond the University of Chicago’s walls, they recruited... Read more of this review

Original Sin on Wall Street – The Atlantic

John C. Bogle is a huge fan of the Classics. Bogle, the founder of the Vanguard Group mutual fund company, is one of the dozen or so “Wall Street Elders” (as a New York Times article called them) who have backed Paul Volcker’s proposal to re-regulate the financial industry, even as their younger peers have argued against more restrictions. I... Read more of this review

How to Live: a Life of Montaigne

Before he was famous, the essayist Michel Eyquem de Montaigne brushed shoulders with death on a bridle path, some time in 1569 or early 1570. He was 36 and he liked to ride to get away from his inherited and elected ­responsibilities: a chateau and estate in the ­Dordogne and a seat in the Bordeaux parliament (or high court). He was on a placid horse... Read more of this review

Reports from Hell

The damned make for interesting reading, and the underworld has occasioned remarkable travelogues whose vividness has impressed itself deeply into our imagination. This course is an opportunity to compare famous accounts from the two traditions that shaped Western civilization as we know it: Athens and Jerusalem. How are these traditions related, and... Read more of this review

Orlando Does Not Fade: Revisiting Tilda Swinton’s legendary “nonperformance”

When Sally Potter’s free-wheeling Orlando came to the Sundance film festival in 1993, it didn’t exactly fit the profile of a festival breakout. It wasn’t a regional character drama like Gas Food Lodging or Mississippi Masala. It wasn’t handmade and idiosyncratic like sex, lies, and videotape or Slacker. It wasn’t a blood-spattered... Read more of this review

Compare reviews of Inception: Filmspotting, Ebert, Wilmington, Phillips & Mozaffar

Sometimes the first adjective spoken in a movie speaks volumes. The first one you hear in the new thriller Inception is “delirious,” describing the psychological state of a man, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, who has washed up (or awakened) on a beach and is brought into the home of a wealthy man he has known in other circumstances, somewhere... Read more of this review

Read More Posts From This Category