Understanding Literacy
September 9, 2019
Beth Barton Schweiger— The power of literacy’s hold on the modern imagination cannot easily be measured. One way to begin to comprehend it is to pose a question: who is… READ MORE
Category: Social Science
Why We Read
August 8, 2019
Azar Nafisi— Reading is like Alice running after that white rabbit, because she is curious; she wants to know more about a talking rabbit. She is prepared to take the… READ MORE
Horse Thieves and the Bandit Tradition
July 30, 2019
Mark Galeotti— Periodic epidemics, crop failure and other disaster cannot compare with the harm that horse thieves bring to the countryside. The horse thief holds peasants in perpetual, uninterrupted fear…. READ MORE
Out of Joint
July 22, 2019
Nomi Claire Lazar— The importance of genericism to the primitivist frame is evident from its reliance on abstraction. This becomes clear in contrast with an Aristotelian perspective on development. For… READ MORE
African Americans and Africa
July 19, 2019
Nemata Amelia Ibitayo Blyden— My father, born in Sierra Leone, used to tell us stories about being a student at Lincoln University in the 1940s. A historically black college, Lincoln… READ MORE
Israel and the Conundrums of the Left
July 16, 2019
Susie Linfield— Both the Democratic Party in the U.S. and the Labour Party in Britain are in a tizzy over issues relating to Israel and anti-Semitism. Stateside, Rep. Ilhan Omar’s… READ MORE
Espionage and the I Ching
June 8, 2019
Michael Harrington— The study of espionage has a long history in China. The classic known as The Art of War, dating from a period of strife between the states of… READ MORE
How Many Trails of Tears Were There?
May 31, 2019
Jeffrey Ostler— When Donald Trump recently tweeted that he looked forward to seeing Elizabeth Warren “on the trail,” everyone knew he was mocking Warren’s claim to Cherokee ancestry by making… READ MORE
What happened after the Crusades?
May 23, 2019
Christopher Tyerman— We all know about the Crusades, don’t we? They were wars fought by western European Christians against Muslim control of Jerusalem and the Holy Land of Palestine. They… READ MORE
Ep. 74 – The Importance of Learning Multiple Languages
May 2, 2019
A look at how we acquire language and the importance of learning more than one language at any age. Subscribe:Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | Soundcloud
A Conversation with Trudier Harris on Bigger: A Literary Life