As we continue to post contributions from the Institute’s network, we are pleased to highlight another of our colleagues from the University of Dallas, Dr. Gregory Roper, who points us to a great Irish poet worthy of our attention. Through the #PoetryLockdown feed of a former student, Czach Zaia, I recently learned of Eavan Boland’s passing. ...
On this first day of May, we are introducing a new (and improved) feature of our blog: guest contributors from the Institute’s network of Fellows, Advisors, and Friends. To start off, we are pleased to introduce our long-time collaborator, Dr. Matthew Post of the University of Dallas, who offers us some thoughts on the relationship...
Today we are posting an interview with historian Patricia Limerick, whose research and scholarship focuses on the American West. We spoke with Professor Limerick at this year’s Symposium 2020. Limerick is a prolific award-winning author, whose scholarship is supplemented by a regular column in The Denver Post. A recognized leader within the historian’s guild, Limerick served...
“Something happens and you take it personally and get upset; something happens, you don’t take it personally and you don’t get upset. That’s 25 years worth of therapy in a sentence.” That one liner might be worth its weight in counseling fees, and you can hear it in the middle of the interview between psychologist Dr....
As we continue to review the tape from this year’s National Classical Education Symposium, we recall that historical thinking permeates the liberal arts. In particular, one of the scholarly panels included Carol Reynolds (Southern Methodist U.), David Mason (Colorado College), Paul Spears and Diane Vincent (Biola U.). Ranging across poetry, music, and great books of literature...
Romantic poet, amateur orientalist, prolific essayist and speaker (author of “Nature,” “Self-Reliance,” and “The American Scholar,” to name a few), and a leader of the Transcendentalist movement: these are but a few of the descriptors necessary to capture the contribution of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), on this anniversary of his death. Not a few schools have...
True confession: I’m feeling the failure of my fifty-two years. You see, William Shakespeare (whose birthday the world celebrated yesterday) died at fifty-two, having penned at least 40 of the world's greatest dramas. And, I haven’t composed even one! But, such is the melodrama of comparing oneself to a genius. Meanwhile, I’m taking note of the...
Today we’re posting an interview conducted at this year’s National Classical Education Symposium in Phoenix. Joining me for a few minutes is Dr. Karen Taliaferro, to discuss her scholarship and the story that led her to that research. From her Peace Corps experiences in Morocco and her quest for a deeper understanding of knowledge, Taliaferro research...
As we continue to weigh the incoming medical data on COVID-19, there remain a variety of other factors that require our consideration, not the least of which is the economic fallout of the stay-at-home quarantine. Attending to the public health, broadly understood, involves recognizing the interactions between a number of factors. At times, this seems...
For a variety of reasons, I have recently returned to C.S. Lewis’s essay “Learning In War-Time” as well as Josef Pieper’s book, Leisure, the Basis of Culture. Both have given me great satisfaction, over the years, and they seem particularly salient to our current (confined) situation. So, I was pleasantly surprised to run across an essay...