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Academic Insights for the Thinking World
Even if you didn’t ‘read English’ at university yourself, you almost certainly know plenty of people who did, and more or less everyone has had to study English literature at school at some point or other. As a subject, ‘English’ (an adjective masquerading as a noun) has been central to educational arrangements in Britain for well over a century, seeming for much of that time to occupy a privileged place in the wider culture as well.
In honor of Women’s History Month, we are celebrating the lives and legacies of inspiring women throughout history that played path-breaking roles in shaping philosophy and literature. This reading list features five books that amplify the achievements of these women who were either overshadowed by men, or subject to hierarchical thinking.
Like the white whale itself, Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851) seems ubiquitous across time. For nearly a century, readers have turned to Captain Ahab’s search for the whale that took his leg to understand American crises. Donald Trump’s return to the presidency offers a different question about Melville, domination, and US political life: How do Americans gain power by claiming that they have been wronged?
Many of us feel disconnected, from ourselves, from others, from nature. We feel fragmented. But where are we to find a cure to our fragmentation? And how can we satisfy our longing for wholeness? The German and British romantics had a surprising answer: through mythology.
Children may have less height, vocabulary, and power than adults do. But children’s books are not a lesser art form. Consider Crockett Johnson’s Harold and the Purple Crayon. At first glance, the book looks self-explanatory. What more can be said about a boy, a crayon, and the moon?
Our environmental crisis is often described in tragic terms. Weather events shaped by global warming are deemed tragic for the communities affected. Declines in fish populations are attributed to the so-called tragedy of the commons. Mark Carney, former Governor of the Bank of England, has spoken of a “tragedy of the horizon”: that the “catastrophic […]
Coming into academia from the margins of Postcolonial Studies, when it was heroically striving to give an academic voice to indigenous cultures in the 1980-90s, I am aware that any celebration of the book is likely to be considered by some to be a subtle denigration of past traditions of oral composition and recording. What is worse, these days celebrating the book might also be resented by those who owe allegiance to futuristic forms of digital reading or what one can call visual orality—the use of mixed media, rooted in TV and film technologies, to tell stories and convey information.
We all know Poe (though Eurovision fans might ask “Who the hell is Edgar?”). We’ve all heard of M.R. James and his wide range of ghost stories (watched The Haunting of Bly Manor yet?). We all love Lovecraft (unless you’re squeamish about tentacles).
In San Francisco and Boston after the Second World War, gay and lesbian poets came together to build a new queer literature and a new queer world. They came together both as activists and as poets. When activism failed, or visibility was denied, poetry provided a through line with a deeper and longer sense of queer history, real or imagined, from Whitman to Wilde, Sappho to Gertrude Stein.
With hindsight, it’s hard to imagine a more spectacular publishing flub than the rejection of Pride and Prejudice in its first version (working title “First Impressions”) in 1797.
Ever since I first read “Che Guevara” in Olga Tokarczuk’s short story collection Playing Many Drums (2001), I have wanted to translate it. So, when I was asked to compile Warsaw Tales, it was one of the first stories to come to mind.
Discover the musical veins of James Baldwin’s 1957 short story “Sonny’s Blues” as we mark the 100th anniversary of the writer and civil rights activist’s birth and hear from Tom Jenks as he reflects on some of these key musical works.
Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) are dedicated to empowering students and alumni with the tools to drive significant civic and cultural change. Through their intentional focus on leadership, advocacy, and excellence, HBCU graduates have made remarkable strides in political, legal, cultural, and artistic fields.
Perhaps the most popular command in the Bible is to “love your friend”—or “neighbor,” as it’s commonly translated— “as yourself” (Lev 19:18). Less popular today are the preceding verses, which command friends to rebuke each other if one has sinned. In ancient Judaism, a good rebuke was a mark of friendship, although it had to be done the right way.
If I met you at a party and we started chatting and telling each other about our favourite authors, and I mentioned Colette, you might look blank.
Reading is good; rereading is better. I can’t say with certainty how many times—forty? fifty?—I’ve read James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues,” only that for more than thirty-five years I’ve been reading and teaching the story, each time with an undiminished sense of awe and appreciation for how Baldwin issues a prophetic warning about the outcome of racism while making deeply felt gestures of hope and reconciliation.