Building to Inspire
Some of the most important spaces on campuses are the spaces in between the buildings, the walkways, plazas, green spaces. For the buildings within the Athenaeum to be successful, they need to be connected to these exterior spaces.
The Dragon’s Pearl
Unlike the dragons of the West, the dragons of East Asia are benevolent, compassionate creatures, combining the best attributes of several animals: the talon of the eagle, the head of the lion, and the body of the serpent.
Diamonds in the Rough: Synthetic Gems from Pliny to Lightbox
By the first century CE, the Roman author and natural philosopher Pliny the Elder took on the question of “rampant” fake gems in ancient Rome’s markets in the mineralogy section of his famous Historia Naturalis.
Archaeology’s Cutting Edge: Far Beyond the Science of Rubbish
Alone among all students of humanity, archaeologists study human biological and cultural change over the entire span of human existence. Our research extends from 2.5 million-year-old hominin camps in East Africa’s Rift Valley to a 19th-century pickle factory in Victorian London.
Does Turner Still Live? Considerations on the Popular Afterlife of the American Frontier
Turner began by noting a fact: that the official report of the results of the 1890 U.S. Census observed that it was no longer possible to draw a “frontier line” between the Canadian and Mexican borders, east of which was settled territory and west of which was unsettled. The “frontier line” had, up to then, demarcated the two regions.
The Modern Memory Hole: Cyberethics Unchained
Should society move toward the goal of “efficiency,” driven by transhumanist considerations and technological changes in the mechanical storage of information—at the expense of the ability to express a wide variety of thoughts and retain them in some form from which they can be retrieved by succeeding generations?
A Somewhat Reassuring Defense of Populism
Is any defense of populism, even a modest consoling one, an apology for demagoguery, xenophobia, racism, paranoia, and other evils associated with the term? This question goes to a deeper question: is populism a destructive force in a democracy, one that leads to dictatorship, messianic leadership, and uncontrolled passions of citizens willing to relinquish their liberties for social stability?
Managing Our Darkest Hatreds and Fears: Witchcraft from the Middle Ages to Brett Kavanaugh
As more and more of us live in vast conurbations, we have forgotten and are able to forget our own ultimate ends. It’s this sense of taboo and apprehension that modern paganism wants to omit. Instead of reuniting us with the dead and helping us to manage our fear of death, modern paganism proves to be another form of denial; this in itself makes its claims to historical revival hollow.
Immigration and Decency
We are looking for the right vocabulary to think about DACA children. The language of rights does not fit the bill. Neither does the dominant language in political theory for the last half-century, the language of justice, as derived from John Rawls’s book, A Theory of Justice.
Mythremembering: Memory and its Fictions
Given the fallible—or creative—nature of remembering, every story based on memories will inevitably depart from a superficially accurate description of “what happened,” that is, portray an alternate reality. Shaping the memory into a story exerts pressure to change and augment it.
Exile At Home, or At Home in Exile
In my thirty years of life, my time has been split among one year in New York, eleven years in São Paulo, and nineteen years in Dallas. After this experience visiting Brazil, I finally understood that I feel most at home not in a physical location, but when I’m surrounded by people who have accents in English.
Blinded
The sunshine of Tel Aviv never reached the Hausmans’ grocery store on Sirkin Street. Even though our rented apartment shared a courtyard with their shop, our place was sun-filled in the mornings, while the Hausmans’ store stayed perpetually dark.
A Tale of Two Memorials: Dallas and New York
The “twin voids” possessed the most concentrated form of emptiness I had ever experienced. They made the night sky with its planes, planets, stars, planets, and city light, seem abuzz with life by comparison. Even Rothko’s furry blacks or Reinhardt’s all-over pictorial blackness seem friendlier and less empty than these did.
Berlin, Intersecting Traumas
The preponderance of overlapping historical markers of the city is not new. Wim Wenders’ film Wings of Desire (1987) narrates the visible and invisible coexistences of different layers of time. Different pasts and presents intertwine in the celebrated movie.
The Problem With Happiness
If we are to make our lives meaningful, we must live for values beyond happiness, values that may conflict with happiness.
Did Robert E. Lee Commit Treason?
By the time of the Civil War, only five convictions for treason had ever emerged from the federal courts, and all of those had occurred in the administrations of Washington and John Adams.
Will Civilizations Clash?
In his 1996 book The Clash of Civilizations, Samuel Huntington said that wars of the future would not be fought by nation against nation, but by cultures and religions from different civilizations, one against the other.
