In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. @thepublicpgh Similar:A WWII Propaganda Campaign Popularized the Myth That Carrots Help You See in the DarkYet another widely held cultural myth fa…CultureIt’s been a while since something got me into a movie theater. Obviously I wasn’t in a rus… It’s been a while since something…
Even though I wrote about some of Eugene O’Neil’s earlier plays in my dissertation, I had never seen or even read this play before. I knew the basic subject matter but didn’t know the details. All the actors did a great job and the production values were top notch, as I expect from Quantum. Similar:I…
Inspiration can come to those with the humblest heart. Caedmon the Cowherd believed he had no talent for singing, but the voice in his dream encouraged him. Listen to what he does with it in, “The Cowherd Who Became a Poet,” by James Baldwin. A Production of We Are One Body® Audio Theatre. Read by…
Spring and Fall Gerard Manley Hopkins [to a young child] Márgarét, áre you gríeving Over Goldengrove unleaving? Leáves like the things of man, you With your fresh thoughts care for, can you? Ah! ás the heart grows older It will come to such sights colder By and by, nor spare a sigh Though worlds of…
The daughter was invited back to perform at this year’s Shakespeare Monologue and Scene Contest. @thepublicpgh #prouddad #amazingdaughter #shakespeare Similar:Carolyn, Easter 2017 PersonalCarolyn featured on Steel City News for The Nutcracker The credit at 0:30 should read “Caro…AestheticsThe girl’s first day on set filming for “The First Day of Summer” Carolyn plays a teenager who’s outsi…CultureStephen…
In my lit classes, I’m definitely teaching more short stories and fewer novels that I used to. I’ve expanded the time I spend on note-taking, synthesizing quotes from different sources, and why at the college level it’s not a good paragraph if it simply introduces “One quote that supports my position,” repeats three or four…
This was before the printing press, so books were copied by hand on parchment, which made them expensive and rare. Most people didn’t read much, especially for pleasure. Instead, they listened to books at group readings for entertainment. Pero López de Ayala wrote at the end of the 14th century, “It also pleased me to…
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After starting my 200-level “Shakespeare in Context” students on a few sonnets, I assigned Twelfth Night (most had never read a Shakespeare comedy before) and Othello (they loved Iago), and then asked them to sample four different plays — The Taming of the Shrew, The Merchant of Venice, Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta, and Jonson’s…
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The host was Bill Moyers, former White House press secretary under Lyndon Johnson. The guest was August Wilson, one of the great playwrights of the 20th century and unofficial laureate of African American history and culture. It did not go well. “Don’t you grow weary of thinking Black, writing Black, being asked questions about Blacks?”…
Very excited to see this project coming together at the University of Toronto. As a grad student, my first scholarly publication was an explanation of my own 2D simulation of the York Corpus Christi pageant. On Saturday, June 7, 2025 (rain date Sunday, June 8, 2025), starting at 6:30am and continuing past midnight, we will…
Rewatching ST:DS9 On a dark and stormy night, a man gives himself an injection, and a rain-soaked young woman shows up at his door, on a quest to ask the famous writer Jake Sisko why he stopped writing years ago. We flash back to young Jake tagging along on the Defiant ostensibly to see a…
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“Hospice.” Once the word is uttered aloud, there is a seismic shift. You will feel it. Like a (very short) thread through the eye of a needle, swiftly in and swiftly out. The air itself becomes thin, steely. At the periphery of your vision, an immediate dimming. The penumbra begins to shrink. In time, it…
Shortly after my online AmLit survey began, I received two obviously AI-generated submissions. The responses did not address the prompt, there was no textual annotation and brainstorming assignment that was supposed to lead up to the written response, and the student did not take me up on my offer to meet to discuss how the…
I invest a lot of energy asking my college students to unlearn the pattern of summary and personal reflection that was enough to to earn a good grade in high school. I emphasize repeatedly that their high school teachers didn’t do anything wrong by teaching them what they needed to do in order to get…
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Very glad to see another of August Wilson’s plays is getting filmed. Sad to read that it won’t be filed in Pittsburgh, where Wilson grew up and where most of his plays take place. “The entire film industry of Southwest Pennsylvania is saddened to not be able to welcome August Wilson’s ‘Piano Lesson’ to Pittsburgh,…
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