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BBC News – TS Eliot’s widow Valerie dies aged 86

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She guarded her late husband’s literary legacy following his death in 1965.

Valerie Eliot also allowed Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Cats to be based on TS Eliot’s whimsical verses, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.

The stage show became a global hit that brought in huge sums for the Eliot estate, [...]

Culture | Essays | Humanities | Literature | Rhetoric | Writing

Open Letters: An Open Letter to the Phrase “Having Said That.”

I’m talking about you, Havingsaidthat. You have wriggled your way into the mouths of every Letterman, every shiny-tied anchorman, every political pundit who can now read one poll every way but sideways, every Fox News body language “expert,” and every reality talent show judge. Even the humble weathermen and subway station apocalypto (2013 end of [...]

Culture | Drama | Humanities | Literature | Personal

The Tempest, According to My 9yo Daughter

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She’s 10 now, but here is her response to seeing The Tempest at Seton Hill University last year.

Culture | Drama | Humanities | Literature

Canada’s Stratford Festival losing ‘Shakespeare’ from its name

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Attending this was one of the handful of cultural treats my wife and I splurged on during our grad student days.

LA Times – Canada's Stratford Festival losing 'Shakespeare' from its name.

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FDR in Annie

FDR with dog and Annie clone.

I’ve accepted the role of FDR in the upcoming Stage Right! Production of Annie. Auditions for the little ‘uns are Friday afternoon. My 10yo daughter and her tweeny friends are sticking out their chins and grinning and singing “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow / Creeps in this petty pace from day to day” or whatever [...]

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Literature Is Not Data: Against Digital Humanities

Mean technology. Mean, mean technology.

The legal case brought by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers against Google was a revelation, as important, if not as celebrated, as the obscenity trial of D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover. In the face of the openness and honest labor of engineers, the priestly class closed [...]

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After e-literature, there’s no going back

What is with the five-year-old photo illustrating this story that was published yesterday? That Kindle is ancient.

Born digital describes works that are created with a computer and are meant to be read on the computer. They’re not works that you print out. The computational aspect of the work is part of its aesthetic and [...]

Books | Culture | Humanities | Literature

‘Exploring J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit’: A Reminder To Tolkien Fans Of Their First Love : NPR

Yet though it’s widely celebrated, The Hobbit’s always kind of existed in the shadow of Tolkien’s other great work, The Lord of the Rings. Corey Olsen, self-described “Tolkien professor,” tells Guy Raz, host of weekends on All Things Considered, that Tolkien fans tend to fall in love with The Hobbit as children, then move [...]

Academia | Culture | Drama | Humanities | Literature | Science

Mathematics and What It Means to Be Human

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A humanities faculty member and a math faculty member collaborate on a course about the meaning of math.

“Don’t worry;” I told them. “You can’t find this more frightening than I do.”

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Code? Not So Much

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I teach my journalism students to write CSS and HTML by hand, to make simple games in Scratch, and to write text adventure games in Inform 7 not because I expect them to get jobs doing any of those activities, but because a fundamental coding literacy, on top of their liberal arts education, will help [...]