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Academic Insights for the Thinking World
In city and town meetings throughout the United States, “we need to rebuild better” has become a common refrain from progressive political leaders to communicate their response to COVID-19 and the subsequent demands for racial justice. It is shorthand for the urgency of economic recovery while acknowledging the reality of structural inequities. The pandemic’s indiscriminate […]
The ideas of generations and generational differences are ubiquitous. Millennials are characterized as job-hoppers; Baby Boomers are painted as selfish and materialistic. Media accounts blame generations for everything from changes in red meat consumption to the declining popularity of high-heeled shoes, doorbells, and paper napkins. Generations are likewise accused of disrupting normative ways of life and social institutions; these ideas are alluded to and supported […]
An astonishing array of Italy’s finest films are comedies. Some of the most memorable performances by actors like Marcello Mastroianni, Sophia Loren, Giancarlo Giannini, and Roberto Benigni have been in comic roles. The humor in these comedies harks back to the commedia dell’arte street performers of the Italian Renaissance and, before that, to the Roman […]
Marley was dead, to begin with, as all of us know. Likewise, the origin of the word Harlequin is controversial, to begin with. Henry Cecil Wyld’s excellent dictionary, to which I often refer, says that all ideas about the etymology of Harlequin are mere speculations. This is not true and was not quite true even […]
In a previous post I described topics of conversations to have with a teenager leaving home for college. Equally, if not more important, is the process of communication. Understand the positive power of a strong family foundation. The power of a supportive family is almost unlimited. Let me be clear that a family does not need to […]
Oxford Bibliographies celebrates its 10th anniversary this year; in a decade, OBO has grown from 10 subject areas to over 40, and this fall will see the introduction of a new subject area that is highly relevant to our COVID-19-afflicted times: Oxford Bibliographies in Urban Studies.
The world’s attention has been fully trained for many months on detecting a microbe that, inevitably, most people will never see for themselves: SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19. We take for granted the invisibility of this new enemy. But when scientists first ventured the hypothesis that germs were the cause of many virulent diseases, […]
Anderson Al Wazni is a white Muslim woman, Stefani Baca-Atlas is a US-born Latina, and Melissa Jenkins is a biracial Black woman; all three women are doctoral students. They experience the world in different ways and have worked together to share their perspectives on challenges and opportunities for non-Black students with marginalized statuses to work […]
As senior correspondent of the London Times, Sir Harry Perry Robinson travelled the world in search of a good story. In November 1921 he was invited by the newspaper’s proprietor, Lord Northcliffe, to make a passage to India, following the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VIII) on his nearly five-month goodwill tour of the East. For […]
Many years ago, when I was a young assistant professor of economics, I had to endure a minor hazing ritual—serving for one year on the admissions committee for the PhD program. As a newbie, I was particularly impressed by a glowing letter of recommendation that began, “This is the best student I have had in […]
The Inca Empire rose and fell over the course of a millennium, driven to its demise by internal strife and Spanish conquistadors. This timeline highlights a few key events from the rise of the Inca Empire to its apocalypse. Header image by Eliazaro via Pixabay
Jeffrey Arnett describes emerging adulthood as a distinct stage of development from the late teens through the twenties; a life stage in which explorations and instability are the norm. As they focus on their self-development, emerging adults feel in-between, on the way to adulthood but not there yet. Nevertheless, they have a high level of optimism […]
Several friendly comments urged me to continue the series on English idioms I started last week (see the post for August 12, 2020). That post was devoted to naval phrases. The comments suggested all kinds of topics, sewing and cooking among them. However, not all subjects are equally easy to tackle. Though in the shoreless […]
What impact will COVID-19 have on the world? We will be confronting the genius of COVID-19 for a long time and in many ways. At the time of writing this, coronavirus is increasing its multiple harms day on day. The world peak and many more national and regional peaks have not yet been reached. We […]
Depression has often been described as a “chemical imbalance.” This description is helpful in that it shifts the view of depression from a moralizing, personal stance into a medical model, and it can help encourage people to receive treatment. However, the “chemical imbalance” model is outdated and inaccurate. The chemical imbalance theory started in the […]
How do you reassure and prepare for college during this time of crisis? I have been treating high school and college students for over 30 years and this is a season like no other. Previously, parents were often ambivalent; melancholy about their children growing up and moving away but happy for the privilege of college […]