Shock value: The life and death story of electricity November 22, 2021 It is an irony of our age that while electricity increasingly drives nearly every aspect of our daily lives, we continue to view it as some kind of mysterious external physical force that powers our appliances rather than an internal and vital biological force that animates our bodies. Read More
Bob Dylan’s “Murder Most Foul” and National Memory November 22, 2021 This week marks the 58th anniversary of the assassination of JFK. Last year’s anniversary went nearly unnoticed in the press. Read More
Rediscovering friendship November 12, 2021 Plagues and pandemics are nothing new in history with the classical world of ancient Greece and Rome certainly having their share. Read More
Educating citizens November 11, 2021 The presidential election of 2016 prompted many academic leaders and faculty members to ponder the implications for their own institution. Read More
Collaborative innovations in support of diverse voices November 10, 2021 A few weeks ago, I sat in a Zoom room with our social science team, in awe (again) of my colleagues’ commitment and their embrace of change. Read More
Margaret Jacobs on After One Hundred Winters November 09, 2021 After One Hundred Winters confronts the harsh truth that the United States was founded on the violent dispossession of Indigenous people and asks what reconciliation might mean in light of this haunted history. Read More
Humanities to the rescue November 08, 2021 Environmentally speaking, it might be said that Western culture backed the wrong horse with both Christianity and capitalism. Each ingrained a self-centeredness—respectively, inter- and intra-species—that has proven disastrous for the planet. Read More
Stepping into A Dog’s World November 05, 2021 As I write these words, Bella is napping on the floor next to my desk, curled into herself like a large hairy black bean. Every so often, following an inner cue that remains mysterious to me, she stretches out and arches onto her back, feet to the sky, exposing a soft white belly. Read More
So what’s new? Innovation in ancient Greek experience October 29, 2021 When I worked in business in the 1980s I was struck by the constant demand for the new. The company I worked in produced and stocked a wide range of well-designed products for a varied international market, but customers would regularly pass over existing designs—even the most recent ones—and ask “What’s new?” Read More
Roger Luckhurst on Gothic: An Illustrated History October 28, 2021 How can you hope to navigate a genre that starts with a bunch of gloomy British poets brooding in crepuscular graveyards in the 1740s and ended up recently delivering us the sixth film in the Sharknado franchise (where killer sharks get hurled around by tornados, obviously)? Read More
Edgar Allan Poe’s suburban dream October 27, 2021 If there were ever an American writer you would not associate with the suburbs, it’s Edgar Allan Poe. His popular image tends to be that of an isolated figure, oblivious to his surroundings. Read More
Judith Barringer on Olympia: A Cultural History October 26, 2021 The memory of ancient Olympia lives on in the form of the modern Olympic Games. But in the ancient era, Olympia was renowned for far more than its athletic contests. Read More
Shannon Lee Dawdy on American Afterlives October 25, 2021 Death in the United States is undergoing a quiet revolution. You can have your body frozen, dissected, composted, dissolved, or tanned. Read More
Up close and circular October 22, 2021 Over the past year, if you were a bird in the habit of soaring over the suburban neighborhood in which I live, you would have seen me walking. Read More
Conspiracy theories and the value of philosophy October 20, 2021 When you hear a claim that runs counter to mainstream thinking, like that the Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax, or that close contact with a person who has been vaccinated against COVID-19 can make you sterile, or that the Holocaust never occurred, what should you think about in order to evaluate the claim? Read More
