A Point of View: In defence of obscure words

We chase “fast culture” at our peril – unusual words and difficult art are good for us, says Will Self. We are living in a risk-averse culture – there’s no doubt about that. But the risk that people seem most reluctant taking is not a physical but a mental one: just as the concrete in [...]

The Liberal Arts as Guideposts in the 21st Century – Chronicle of Higher Education

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 But it would be wrong to assume that because it has such ancient roots, this kind of education is outdated, stale, fusty, or irrelevant.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 [...]

New approach to defend the value of the humanities | Inside Higher Ed

“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 [...]

Kimberly Peirce: A Grounding in Aristotle

After receiving her AB in English at UChicago, Peirce pursued an MFA in filmmaking at Columbia University. But she emphasized to the students that a grounding in Aristotle is as helpful as any technical training in learning to tell a story. “If you want to go into film or drama, I would [suggest you] go [...]

Literary Review – John Sutherland on The World of Others: From Quotations to Culture

Some lines are born quotations, some are made quotations, and some have “quotation” thrust upon them. These differences in origin raise questions that have bedeviled experts. If a quotation, as usually quoted and as found in anthologies, is discovered to differ from its source, is it necessarily a misquotation? From The World of Others: From [...]

How the Great Books seminar turned a radical poet into a philosopher and priest

Father Benedict Ashley, AM’37, lives in a modest, one-room home in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. Surrounded by books—he has written 16 himself—he wears the black-and-white habit that Dominican priests and brothers have worn since the Middle Ages. The setting is apt for a priest who is also an influential American Catholic philosopher. It’s only a few [...]

The Value of a Humanities Degree

Amid the clamor this past year surrounding the crisis in the humanities, the voices of two groups—colleges and professors—have dominated the debate. Some say the humanities are saving students; others say humanities students are wasting their time and money on their degrees. Only occasionally mentioned in those arguments are the students themselves. So what do [...]

Liberal Arts I: They Keep Chugging Along – Inside Higher Ed

Mark Twain once remarked that reports of his death were greatly exaggerated. The liberal arts disciplines, it seems, can say the same thing. The on-the-ground stories back up the statistics and reinforce the idea that the liberal arts are not dying, despite the soft job market and the recent recession. Majors are steady, enrollments are [...]

Liberal Arts II: The Economy Requires Them – Inside Higher Ed

Many of us committed to the liberal arts have been defensive for as long as we can remember. We have all cringed when we have heard a version of the following joke: The graduate with a science degree asks, “Why does it work?”; the graduate with an engineering degree asks, “How does it work?”; the [...]

Kafka’s Last Trial

During his lifetime, Franz Kafka burned an estimated 90 percent of his work. After his death at age 41, in 1924, a letter was discovered in his desk in Prague, addressed to his friend Max Brod. “Dearest Max,” it began. “My last request: Everything I leave behind me . . . in the way of [...]

Next Page »