By Monica Osborne. Literary and philosophical studies have long been the symbolic refuge for the broken, the oppressed, the silenced. But the most powerful literature blurs distinctions between the dichotomous categories of right and wrong. More...
By Joe Karaganis. In late January, I was part of a group of scholars at Columbia and Stanford Universities who unveiled the Open Syllabus Explorer — an online tool that aggregates data from over one million syllabi collected from college and university websites. More...
By Ken Leichter. This month Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce released a study showing that African-American students are underrepresented in the college majors that tend to lead to higher-income occupations and overrepresented in majors that tend to lead to lower salaries. More...
By . The engineering field is booming these days. Society regards it as an essential part of innovation, and colleges promote a degree in it as an entry into a fruitful, sustaining career. The humanities, by contrast, are in peril, with fewer students each year. More...
By Marc Parry. The selling of sociology’s next great hope began with a long talk between a literary agent and her potential client. Jill Kneerim was a veteran dealmaker known for helping Boston-area academics publish trade books. More...
By . Why should we believe what scientists have to say? Unlike a lot of people who raise this question, I do believe what scientists have to say — and I am firmly convinced that you should, too. More...
By Jennifer Michael Hecht. Bernie Sanders recently told The Washington Post that he is not actively involved with a religion, and that his idea of God is that "we’re all in this together." He added that we live better lives when we are compassionate and fair. More...
By Nakul Krishna. It was the last day of summer. A bumpkin from the tropics, I’d never seen an autumn before. I watched the first leaves falling outside my tutor’s window and heard the 18th-century staircase creaking with the weight of suitcases being heaved into new rooms. More...
By . It’s easy to sneer at academic journals. But they make even the best general-interest magazines look like thin gruel. More...
By . In 1956, Yvor Winters, a poet, critic, and professor at Stanford, published an essay (later collected in a slim, quarrelsome book called The Function of Criticism) addressing "Problems for the Modern Critic of Literature." The first of these, he wrote, "is to find a mode of living which will enable him to develop his mind, practice his art, and support his family. The universities offer the obvious solution, but the matter is worth at least brief discussion." More...
/https%3A%2F%2Fprofilepics.canalblog.com%2Fprofilepics%2F1%2F0%2F1076071.jpg)
