21 octobre 2015

Amid the Amidsts

http://chronicle.com/img/photos/biz/linguafranca-45.pngBy . First-year undergraduate writing leaves so much to be desired that it seems silly to get stuck on two letters. But as I grade my first set of papers, I’m struck by the sudden ubiquity of –st:

  • It is interesting to note that whilst the character is dreaming …
  • The true nature of his actions is unbeknownst to the reader.
  • Amongst his peers, Melville was the best at this.
  • Whilst we should not overly concern ourselves with that here …

What’s going on? Most language mavens see the –st forms of these works as archaic and attribute their use to formal-sounding hypercorrection. To some extent, that must be true. Some -st forms came from the adverbial genitive addition of –es in the 14th century — the same formation that gave us besides rather than beside. Some sort of confusion with the –est ending of superlatives left us with amongst, amidst, whilst — and, in fact, against, the only one that remains current in common American usage. More...

Posté par pcassuto à 23:59 - - Permalien [#]


Stanford's Hoover Institution Attracts a Leading Economic Historian

After more than a decade of visiting the Hoover Institution at Stanford University as an adjunct senior fellow, the prominent historian Niall Ferguson will leave Harvard University to work full time at Hoover next July. More...

Posté par pcassuto à 23:49 - - Permalien [#]

Most Students Need to Learn Skills That Microcredentials Can’t Provide

To the Editor:
After reading “The Desire for Credentials in an Age of Anxiety” by Alain de Botton, (The Chronicle, September 14) I was discouraged by the consistent inability to see the forest for the trees. More...

Posté par pcassuto à 23:48 - - Permalien [#]

Privilege and Merit at Yale

To the Editor:
Readers can judge for themselves whether Michael Kazin ("New Ivy League, Same Old Elitism," September 11) is correct that our books describe "the changes that took place during the ’60s in almost entirely rosy and self-congratulatory terms" and that we are "hardly the only scholars too besotted with ‘transition’ for their own good." But readers may well wish to know about what our books actually set out to accomplish. More...

Posté par pcassuto à 23:47 - - Permalien [#]

Don’t Make Me Part of Your Gun Culture

By Linda Van Ingen. We have an "active shooter" defense training class coming up, and I am just not interested. I resent how the burden of gun violence is being placed on educators. I feel like I’m being pushed into a gun culture that I want no part of. More...

Posté par pcassuto à 23:45 - - Permalien [#]


Finding a Way Forward, Together

By . The students flinch. The sound of the projector shutting down is a crisp little beep. The power light flashes once, and the entire class looks to me with huge pupils. More...

Posté par pcassuto à 23:44 - - Permalien [#]

How Fear Might Affect Grades

By Margaret Olin. In the second meeting of my first graduate seminar at the art school in Chicago where I taught for more than two decades, the students became so enraged with one another over the interpretation of a story by Franz Kafka that bits of wadded-up paper began to fly about the room while I watched blissfully. More...

Posté par pcassuto à 23:43 - - Permalien [#]

Executive Deception: Four Fallacies About Divestment, and One Big Mistake

By Kathleen Dean Moore. It pains this old logic professor to read university officials’ arguments against divesting their institutions of investments in fossil fuels, not because their refusal to divest is wrong-headed, although I believe it is, but because their logic is so awful. More...

Posté par pcassuto à 23:34 - - Permalien [#]

The Future of History

By Robert Zaretsky. "NO PHD."
So announced a license plate I glimpsed the other day — nestled, it so happened, in the rear end of a sinister, black Lamborghini. More...

Posté par pcassuto à 23:31 - - Permalien [#]

Alternate Realities

By . The philosopher Markus Gabriel is something of a wunderkind. Six years ago, at the tender age of 29, he was appointed to his current position as a professor of philosophy and chair of epistemology at the University of Bonn, making him the youngest holder of a philosophy chair in Germany. He is also at the forefront of an innovative, transnational philosophical current known as the new realism (loosely affiliated with speculative realism, whose foremost representative is the French philosopher Quentin Meillassoux). With the English translation of his provocatively titled recent book, Why the World Does Not Exist, it won’t be long before his nimble mind makes a distinct imprint on North American philosophical circles. More...

Posté par pcassuto à 23:22 - - Permalien [#]