Mutability and Mortality
Perhaps my favorite in this set of personal homages is “Ode to the Arts and Humanities Staff” which sings the praises of the otherwise unseen and unsung heroes, the clerical and support staffs that keep universities and academic departments running.
Translating the Chinese Diaspora
For many of the characters in Yan’s stories, particularly those who find themselves alone in a foreign land, the feeling of always wishing to be elsewhere captures a state of longing that appears to be the most permanent fixture of their interrupted lives.
The Last Call
Provocations is the last call to a society that “can barely survive the anxieties of freedom.”
The Best Books on British Romanticism
The Romantics were the first artists to truly have to grapple with the role of art in the face of the growth of systematic scientific knowledge as we know recognize it.
A Philosophical Friendship
David Hume and Adam Smith, both individually and through their joint attempt to create a new, all-inclusive “science of man,” can be seen to have lit fires that still kindle vigorously.
Womb and Doom: Frankenstein as Mother and Maker
The moral power of nature was waning in Shelley’s time. It diminished in proportion to the increase of the studies of physical power – lightning, Leyden jars, Voltaic piles, and most poignantly, electric eggs.
The Aesthetics Of The Axe
It says much about our fascination for everything prehistoric that the stone tools and shaped rocks recently exhibited in First Sculpture: From Handaxe to Figure Stone at the Nasher Sculpture Center did not seem out of place there.
Poetic Misprision in Art and Science
The relationship between art and biology is in flux, as is that of the humanities and natural sciences, and of art history and neuroscience.
The Palate of Nations
However little we control, food is an area where we can exercise our wills and our desires, and also grab a little piece of our family history, our ethnic history, our planetary history.
The Best Books on Finding Home in American Storytelling
American literature has always reflected a shared hope of finding home; the impulse to stake out a better life by moving to a new place is a recurring focus in our communal storytelling.
The Best Books on Athenian Democracy
When Grote published his monumental history, almost nobody believed that the ancient Athenian system was anything more than mob rule.
The Best Books in Christian Historical Fiction
Johnny Cash’s drug-addled soul identified with the troubled Saul; and Cash often described his own Damascene experience, in Nickajack Cave on the Tennessee River, in Pauline terms.
The Best Books by Joseph Conrad
For Marlow, meaning for human existence can only come from confronting an empty universe and in the face of that knowledge maintaining an “inner strength.”
Memories Written on the Body
Ernaux has landed on a narrative form that captures not only the workings of memory (the “thousands of notes” we keep to ourselves) but also the manic mood and mechanics of our digital age.
Between Nature and History
If all principles of right are contingent upon history, then nihilism must result, for history is unstable and indeterminate.
Francesca Brunetti: Home, Un-homey Home
This new show takes the form of a series of screen-paintings displaying women and their families, often in states of sadness or frustration.
The Untimely Lesson of Coco
The new Disney film Coco looks at a timeless dilemma in an untimely way.
