Category Think Piece
by contributing editor Brooke Palmieri The debate over whether reading is good or bad for your health is as old as the habit itself. In The Anatomy of Melancholy reading and scholarship sometimes cause, sometimes cure, Robert Burton’s depression; the… Continue Reading →
by guest contributor David Kearns Since his death on 13 February 2016, much has been written on Antonin Scalia’s legacy as a Supreme Court justice. A significant strand within this literature has focused on Scalia’s enduring fascination—both in his judgments… Continue Reading →
by contributing editor Erin McGuirl “What is the I Ching?” was the title of Eliot Weinberger’s recent review of two new translations of the I Ching. It’s an excellent question, and in his review he expertly summarizes the history of… Continue Reading →
by guest contributor Yung In Chae We all know the story of Man the Hunter: thousands of years ago, cavemen went out and hunted food for cavewomen and cavechildren, who sat idly at home and depended on this masculine feat… Continue Reading →
by guest contributor Mike Rottmann Almost one year after the end of war, on July 20, 1946, a leading executive of the Department of Education in the State of Baden sent a letter to the President of Heidelberg University: With… Continue Reading →
By guest contributor Barbara Heritage Reading—how we read, what we read, and where we read—has attracted a great deal of attention during the last decade. From the pages of The New York Times to those of specialized scholarly journals, we… Continue Reading →
By guest contributor Daniel Rinn There seems to be a dualism at work in the way intellectual historians think about the history of environmental thought. The history of environmental ethics is presented as a continuous conflict between two competing systems,… Continue Reading →
By guest contributor Alison Bumke While John Donne (1572-1631) was writing verse letters and elegies in the early 1590s, London was experiencing a major plague epidemic. His lyrics trace everyday life in a plague-stricken city, describing efforts to identify sources… Continue Reading →
by Emily Rutherford Working my way through my most recent archival findings, it’s tempting to conclude that, in early-twentieth-century England, men’s visions for the future of higher education revolved entirely around conservative retrenchment, while women’s embraced exciting new progressive ideas… Continue Reading →
