Muscat, December 1992
October 7, 2021
Sonallah Ibrahim— As Fathy pulled the seat belt across his chest he said, “Please fasten your seat belt or we’re doomed. Traffic cops here are tough, nothing like in your… READ MORE
Category: Humanities
Jews in the Greek and Roman Periods
October 4, 2021
Lawrence M. Wills— The books of the Hebrew Bible were likely composed in the ninth through second centuries BCE, under a range of very different political conditions. Israel was established… READ MORE
Presentations of the Self
September 28, 2021
Desiree C. Bailey— I was once invited to write a poem based on photographs of self-presentation housed at the International Center for Photography. One photograph stood out to me perhaps… READ MORE
The Strange Speech of Sultan Valad
September 27, 2021
Michael Pifer— Sometime in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century, a Sufi poet named Sultan Valad was trying his hardest to get out of delivering a public sermon. He… READ MORE
“Napalm Girl”
September 20, 2021
Tarleton Gillespie— Titled The Terror of War but more commonly known as “Napalm Girl,” the 1972 Pulitzer Prize–winning photo by Associated Press photographer Nick Ut is perhaps the most indelible… READ MORE
Nineteenth-Century Smartphones?
September 17, 2021
Laura Forsberg— It is a truism, by this point, that smartphones have revolutionized our lives. In less than fifteen years, we have developed new ways of communicating with friends and… READ MORE
The Romans and Intellectual Disciplines
September 16, 2021
Peter Burke— In Rome, unlike Greece, we find not only the praises of outstanding intellectual all-rounders but also recommendations to students of particular disciplines to acquire a wide knowledge, perhaps… READ MORE
People of the Blog
September 10, 2021
Nathaniel Deutsch and Michael Casper— When the Yiddish-language Hasidic online chat forum Kave Shtibel (Coffee House) began a thread about our book, A Fortress in Brooklyn, less than two weeks… READ MORE
“Beam Us Up, Mr. Scott”
September 8, 2021
Fred R. Shapiro— The New Yale Book of Quotations uses pioneering research methods to trace famous quotations to their true origins. In particular, extensive searching of online historical books and newspapers… READ MORE
How Trees Became Human
September 2, 2021
Sumana Roy— In How I Became a Tree, I was looking for people who had wanted to become or live like a tree. Since then, I’ve been trying to speculate in… READ MORE
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