Why did Ann Romney put Anna Karenina on her Pinterest board?
At this point in an election season, a campaign’s every utterance shimmers with significance. At the same time, this time around, the campaigns have embraced social media. And the social networks, like whiskey, promote disinhibition. (Just ask Anthony Weiner.) Services like Twitter, Facebook and, more recently, the photo-sharing site Pinterest require that we let our [...]
Ingratitude by Charlotte Bronte – LRB
Charlotte Brontë’s ‘L’Ingratitude’, a story written in French for her teacher Constantin Heger, has just been found by Brian Bracken at a museum in Charleroi. A rat, weary of the life of cities, and of courts (for he had played his part in the palaces of kings and in the salons of great lords), a [...]
The Liberal Arts as Guideposts in the 21st Century – Chronicle of Higher Education
February 27, 2012 by admin
Filed under Articles, Why the Humanities?
The very broad, capacious form of education that we call the liberal arts is rooted in a specific curriculum in classical and medieval times. But it would be wrong to assume that because it has such ancient roots, this kind of education is outdated, stale, fusty, or irrelevant. In fact, quite the contrary. A liberal-arts [...]
An Intellectual Pas de Deux on the Meaning of Life, Death and Boxing
A star-studded panel at the University of Chicago Law School featured Joyce Carol Oates and Richard A. Posner in opposite corners of the ring. Imagine going to a karaoke bar and having an academic conference break out. It’s almost how I felt last week as a very attractive woman, attired in a tight and very [...]
Jane Austen signed up for Facebook game – The Guardian
February 24, 2012 by admin
Filed under Articles, Books, Jane Austen
Continuing the vogue for modern updates of her fiction, a new Jane Austen game is set to launch on Facebook. Whether players who make their way through a virtual Regency society will suffer the indignity of the social network’s trademark courtship signal of “poking” remains to be seen. The Rogues and Romance game, developed by [...]
Homer Inc.
At the beginning of January, in the bookshop of Terminal 2 at San Francisco airport, I looked for a translation of the Iliad – not that I really expected to find one. But there were ten: one succinct W.H.D. Rouse prose translation and one Robert Graves, in prose and song, both in paperback; two blank [...]
George Anastaplo and Leo de Alvarez
The Anastaplo Lecture Plutarch’s Lives: On the Decline, Fall, and Attempted Restoration of Republics Leo Paul S. de Alvarez, Professor, Politics Department, the University of Dallas Sunday, November 13, 2011
New approach to defend the value of the humanities | Inside Higher Ed
February 14, 2012 by admin
Filed under Articles, Why the Humanities?
“When the going gets tough, the tough take accounting.” With those succinct words in a June 2010 op ed, New York Times columnist David Brooks summed up the conventional wisdom on the current crisis of the humanities. In an age when a higher education is increasingly about moving quickly through a curriculum streamlined to prepare [...]
Oriental Institute exhibit shows seeing isn’t always believing | UChicago News
The way people think about life in the ancient Middle East is largely based on the pictures, paintings and images they see in books and museums. But in many cases, the preconceptions or limited knowledge of the people creating the images may result in representations that may be more illusionary than real, shows a new [...]
Oriental Institute exhibit shows seeing isn’t always believing | UChicago News
The way people think about life in the ancient Middle East is largely based on the pictures, paintings and images they see in books and museums. But in many cases, the preconceptions or limited knowledge of the people creating the images may result in representations that may be more illusionary than real, shows a new [...]
