Just as comedians generally don’t laugh at their own jokes, Shakespeare doesn’t call too much attention to his own linguistic cleverness, which is one reason his work rewards close scrutiny. It’s not that he was being deliberately obscure or flowery — though some of his obsequious characters definitely exhibit such speech patterns. One line of…
I remember being fascinated with and challenged by The Waste Land in high school, though it wasn’t until I read some of Eliot’s essays in college that it all sunk in. The same man who could write such clear, sensible prose when he wanted to explain could also construct densely packed, layered, gnostic verse. What…
Does the world need another working definition of digital humanities? Do you have one? Here’s mine. Digital Humanities is the deliberate, critical application of emerging technology to the study of traditional subjects such as literature, art, philosophy, and language, often (but not always) with a focus on how those traditional fields are now using emerging…
Not a day goes by without The Girl reminding us that everyone else her age has a phone — but she also compares her desire for a phone to Gollum’s desire for The Ring. Many adults have told her she’s lucky not to carry around the burden of social media updates, though part of her…
This fall I will be teaching Shakespeare again; but thereafter, as part of a curriculum redesign, Shakespeare will be rolled into a “Shakespeare in Context” course that will also need to address Beowulf, medieval drama, Arthurian legend, Chaucer, Marlowe, etc. I intend to do this by teaching five different Shakespeare plays, focusing on one play…
An interesting piece. Easy-to-learn hypertext authoring tools like Twine and TextureWriter have encouraged many of my students to give this kind of storytelling a try. As longtime experimenters and scholars in interactive narrative who are now building a new academic discipline we call “computational media,” we are working to create new forms of interactive storytelling,…
Adolescence took a long time to be invented at all, and it took an even longer time to become a somewhat stable archetype. It’s only in recent human history that people a) live long enough for adolescence to be a different physical experience than adulthood; and b) live in a society that indulges an extended…
Analyzing humor, as E.B. White famously said, is like dissecting a frog; few people are interested and the frog dies of it. Nonetheless, writing humor is a highly logical exercise — fit idea X into form Y for humorous result Z — and can therefore be broken down in ways that more slippery kinds of…
Art conveys significance; however, much of that significance is constructed by the receiver. That’s why I care less about what a work of art “means” and more about what it “does.” Understanding what a work of art does requires interpretation. The context of a work of art can contribute to the significance of the artwork in surprising…
Similar:Senior Tech #1: How To Master TextingIt’s funny because it’s true. http://…AmusingJohn Dewey: Portrait of a Progressive Thinker: His ideas altered the education of children…“You can concentrate the history of all …AcademiaiMovie Glitch: Unplug Removable Media before Using iMovieI spent a few hours today working on a v…CybercultureShrek Image Mashup (Musical Theatre Promo)Hey, Tony. See…
Similar:Your Students Learn by Doing, Not by ListeningToday one of my students gave a final pr…AcademiaSurprise sidewalk encounter with my man Hopkins outside the Admin shuttle stop this mornin… Spring and Fall Gerard Manley Hop…AestheticsAn English professor tries to help ChatGPT write and revise a sonnetShortly after my online AmLit survey beg…AcademiaIs College Worth It?…
Journey with Seton Hill University teachers who publish novels, stories and poetry. Similar:Communities of Play: The Social Construction of Identity in Persistent Online Game WorldsI played the open-source version of Uru …CultureJournalism Tips: Newsworthy vs SnoozeworthyA newsworthy story is recent (rather tha…CultureThe Mystery of Charles Dickens by Joyce Carol OatesDickens is so brilliant a stylist,…
I swore I would wield my powers only for good. Witness my latest faculty service project. Similar:Seeing Lyle Kessler's "Orphans" with the girl.PersonalTurnitin.com UI Woes: One-click, No-confirmation Deletion of QuickMark SetsIn general, I find Turnitin.com’s GradeM…AcademiaMSU asks faculty & staff to volunteer in short-staffed dining halls; @MSU_Football tweets …MSU, instead of asking your profs to…
Similar:The Rhetoric of Anthems and the Drama of KneelingI don’t follow sports, so I don’t feel f…CultureClicking, collaborating, and talking in the libraryOur local paper did a story on how libra…AcademiaCarolyn's Theater Bio for Prime Stage's The Outsiders (Mar 6-15) Actor biography sample Program bi…BooksReuben Klamer, designer of Trek's "phaser rifle" and Milton-Bradley's "The Game…
When committee work is fun… making memes to support the English program. Similar:North Sea cod: Is it true there are only 100 left?A spokesperson for the Sunday Times told…BusinessSeton Hill Supports "Man of La Mancha" Student Outing (Feb 17 and 19)Seton Hill University students can atten…CultureMargaret Atwood: English lessons teach us to miss the true…
I’m very happy that several students in my “World Drama” class chose to write about The Merchant of Venice in their latest paper. Almost as many also write about Nine. And several chose to write about both. The assignment asked students to make an intertextual argument — that is, I asked them to write an…
Fairy tales are transmitted through language, and the shoots and branches of the Indo-European language tree are well-defined, so the scientists could trace a tale’s history back up the tree—and thus back in time. If both Slavic languages and Celtic languages had a version of Jack and the Beanstalk (and the analysis revealed they might),…
Michael Henninger took this wonderful photo of Carolyn and the boy she tied with, CAPA’s Logan Schiller. Both had been in the same coaching session with Ken Bolden Saturday morning. (Thank you, Ken!) Pittsburgh Public Theater’s 23rd annual Shakespeare Monologue & Scene Contest that began Feb. 6 with more than 1,000 student participants culminated Monday…
Similar:Don’t patronize older adults by calling them ‘the elderly’In English grammar, we use the definite …CultureWe Tried to Do Vanlife Right. It Broke Us Down.Shortly before I got married, my sister …CultureChess tournament.PersonalMicrosoft “lobotomized” AI-powered Bing Chat, and its fans aren’t happyMicrosoft limits long conversations to a…Current_EventsThe annual patriotic showing of #1776 has begun.CultureCompleted uniforms…
Another digital artifact lives. The York Corpus Christi Pageant Simulator was my first serious accomplishment in digital humanities. After I learned all the medieval drama content from a class with Andrea Johnston at the University of Toronto, I made the computer program as part of a humanities computing course with Willard McCarthy in 1994, and…