. . . while the majority of students adhered to a ‘norm of silence’ – not perceiving themselves as obligated to participate in the conversation (50). Jay R. Howard, a sociologist, calls this the norm of “the consolidation of responsibility,” which tends to be the default setting in the college … Read More
Month: March 2017
“What’s past is prologue”
At first glance, this line from Shakespeare’s play “The Tempest” suggests that history repeats itself. This view is written in stone – literally – on the base of the National Archives’ sculpture. The Harvard Gazette and the University of Chicago Magazine use this quote in articles about the ways … Read More
“Always do what you are afraid to do.”
This famous assertion from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “Heroism,” published in 1841, floated to the top of my mind while – of all things! – attending a technology conference. The keynote speaker, author of the upcoming book Strive: How Doing the Things Most Uncomfortable Leads to Success, made … Read More
“My call is the call of battle, I nourish active rebellion.”
That the poet Walt Whitman was a rebel who celebrated democracy, nature, love and friendship is well known. What isn’t well known is that Gavrilo Princip, the Bosnian Serb who assassinated the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, felt inspired by Whitman. Let’s think about that. Could it be that poetry played a … Read More
“It was impossibly large and full of beauty and danger in equal parts – and we wanted it all.”
Paula McLain’s novel The Paris Wife describes Hemingway’s earliest years as a novelist writing in Paris after WWI from the perspective of his wife, Hadley. It’s a wonderful novel, set in one of the most dynamic literary periods, where James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, and Hemingway … Read More