The Genealogies of Modernity Journal
Newman’s “Idea of a University” as a Foundation for Interdisciplinary Liberal Arts Programs: Part II
Newman’s model of liberal arts study provides an ideal roadmap for how to create a program that would encourage focused, meaningful interdisciplinary learning.
Gina Elia on the application of Newman’s ideals
Newman’s “Idea of a University” as a Foundation for Interdisciplinary Liberal Arts Programs: Part I
To showcase the ongoing relevance of a liberal arts education to students, programs should emphasize the roles of generalists, as opposed to specialists, in a society’s infrastructure.
Gina Elia on the ongoing urgency of John Henry Newman
Sympathy for the Devil: Hacks and the Struggle for Intergenerational Approval
The popularity of Hacks speaks to our moment, in which adult child estrangement is fairly common.
Elizabeth Stice on modern intergenerational humor
David Foster Wallace’s Super-Sized World
[A]n enlarged sense of self in the universe is in demand.
Elizabeth Stice on eating habits in The Broom of the System
To Sing the Body: Art and the Personalistic Norm
"Yet the human person, standing at the crux of reality, calls the artist to the limit of his creative powers."
Daniel Fitzpatrick on "seeing" as a theological enterprise
Xbox as Time Machine: Exploring Ancient Egypt
Concerns that video game players confuse the game world and the real world, manifesting virtual into real violence, contain echoes of Cervantes’ Don Quixote.
Jacob Martin on video games as time travel
Frederic Goudy, Modern Typography, and Critical Traditionalism
“Our times have fallen out of tune with simplicity.”
Michael Golec on typographical modernity
Hit Man and Modern Humans
Murder is a real conundrum for modern humans. Officially, we are against it.
Elizabeth Stice on the violence at the heart of modern life
Abundance and Loss in Cheever and Porter: Part II
“I was right not to be afraid of any thief but myself, who will end by leaving me nothing.”
Ayman Hareez Muhammad Adib on the modern subject’s self-theft
Abundance and Loss in Cheever and Porter: Part I
On his journey home, Merrill adapts to the conventions of the upper-class in hopes of carving his own place within it.
Ayman Hareez Muhammad Adib on an eight-mile journey through backyard swimming pools
“My Fingers are like Cauliflowers:” the Material Productions of the Hogarth Press
On Virginia Woolf’s thirty-third birthday, she and Leonard Woolf made three significant decisions over tea: they would purchase a house in Richmond, acquire a bulldog named John, and buy a printing press.
Reanna Brooks on The Hogarth Press
Somebody Loves Us All: Hemingway and the Via Crucis
For all its parallels to Christ’s passion, The Old Man and the Sea is no allegory but something deeper, a tale which reveals how suffering may be spun into wisdom.
Daniel Fitzpatrick on Paschal elements in Hemingway
Uncomfortable Truths about Our Times: Beef & Notes from the Underground, Part II
Though Beef does not end with a “born again” moment, it points us to the hunger for one.
Elizabeth Stice on two artistic windows into ourselves and our times
Uncomfortable Truths about Our Times: Beef & Notes from the Underground, Part I
Beef draws attention to the hamster wheel of our America today.
Elizabeth Stice on two artistic windows into ourselves and our times
A “Mei Lan Fang aestheticism:” Marianne Moore and the Famous Chinese Dan Performer
Like many of her contemporaries, Marianne Moore became fascinated by all things Chinese as a young adult and sought to incorporate Chinese imagery, ideals, and philosophy into her own work.
Xiamara Hohman on Mei Lanfang’s effect on Marianne Moore
Stained Glass: The Aims of Education at the University of Chicago
[T]rue liberal education aims at a holistic understanding of truth, a universal knowledge in which, as Saint John Henry Newman puts it, all branches of learning connect.
Kate Whitaker on her liberal arts education
“But all the fun’s in how you say a thing”: Robert Frost’s Risky Readings
[Frost’s] theories of “sentence sounds” and “sound-posture” insisted that tone and spoken vocal inflection–how words sound when we say them–should be the material of poetry, a poetic paradigm which was perfectly suited to performance.
Isabelle Stuart on the history of modern poetry recordings
Reading Voices: What Can We Learn from Modernist Poetry Recordings?
There have been drastic changes in how poetry sounds to readers over the last hundred and fifty years, troubling the illusion that reading silently can offer us access to the poem as it sounded to the writer.
Isabelle Stuart on the history of modern poetry recordings
Who Needs a Horse That Flies? Pt. III
The absence of poetry from our daily discourse and our public life leaves a total vacuum because there is no substitute for it.
Samuel Hazo on the relevance of poetry for modern life
Who Needs a Horse That Flies? Pt. II
It is in the world of the incarnate word that we find our true selves, and it is the imagination that takes us there.
Samuel Hazo on the relevance of poetry for modern life