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…
This essay on college students acting helpless (Chronicle of Higher Education) struck a few chords. I put a lot of time into writing my course policies and assignment instructions. The students who want to know how they can earn a 99 instead of a 95 invariably ask really good questions that arise from their close…
Graydon Hoare offers a rousing hymn to the virtues of text. Don’t get me wrong, I like me some illustrations, photos, movies and music. But text wins by a mile. Text is everything. My thoughts on this are quite absolute: text is the most powerful, useful, effective communication technology ever, period. Text is the oldest…
You can just make out Carolyn, Leigh, and me stacked up on the right edge of this picture. Carolyn won “Best Leading Actress in a Non-Musical” for The Miracle Worker, and I also got to present her with “Best Onstage Save” for some quick thinking (and dancing) during the gypsy scene in Man of La…
Five of us went to see PrimeStage’s 1984. Very well done! I wish I could have included this play in my “World Drama” class, or that I had thought to assign the novel in my “Memes and Fake News” class. When it comes to dystopian literature, the boy is better read than I was at…
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In my defense, I broke that long email down so the recipient (my chair) really only has to read about three bullet points in order to grasp the “Action Item” section… but then I had to *write* all those “just in case this become important later” details, and corral them under increasingly woebegone subheads like…
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I expect that many of my students will be living the experiences documented in this study of how young people encounter news; nevertheless, it’s difficult to notice your own environment if you can’t compare it to *different* environments. Because I grew up with the three TV network news shows and the copy of The Washington…
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),…
Anybody seen a post tagged this way? If so, I’d welcome a screenshot. On Friday, Facebook debuted its new flagging system for fake news in America, tagging hoax stories as “disputed” for some users. First announced amid criticism of the company for its role in spreading misinformation during the 2016 election, the new feature uses…
If you understand the environment in which medieval scholars created and used books, you can better appreciate why medieval books look and function the way they do. Understanding the cultural impact of computers requires us to study the development of both hardware and technology. Playing a text adventure game on an iOS device is convenient,…
Leigh, Peter, Carolyn and I had fun recording “The Nightmare of Prince Prezelsky” for WAOB Audio Theatre’s “All for One Stories.” (Peter plays the prince, Carolyn narrates, and my wife and I are among the servants. The full 9-minute story is online.) Prince Prezelsky needs to fight a dragon to keep his kingdom safe. But…
Wilson offers a good explanation of the position that shouting down speakers is not a form of constitutionally-protected speech. Such arguments are especially important on college campuses, where it’s the job of students to engage with new ideas — even uncomfortable ones; and the job of faculty members to equip students with the critical thinking…
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One photo from the event shows her scrolling through pictures on her phone. I’ve seen captions that suggest she is ignoring the people in he room, retreating to her social media bubble for comfort and self-affirmation. This photo shows she had placed herself in that awkward position to get a picture. There are scores or…
You can’t get much more American than Thomas Jefferson. He did not love every newspaper reporter on the planet; however, he wrote that, if forced to choose between government without newspapers or a newspaper without government, he would not hesitate to choose a newspaper without government (under certain very sensible conditions). The people are the…
Kudos to the reporters from Time and AP who showed solidarity with the banned outlets. Reporters from The Times, BuzzFeed News, CNN, The Los Angeles Times and Politico were not allowed to enter the West Wing office of the press secretary, Sean M. Spicer, for the scheduled briefing. Aides to Mr. Spicer only allowed in…
My Media Aesthetics students are studying the power of fake news. This is good news for supporters of the First Amendment. A new poll from Quinnipiac University suggests that while people may be broadly unhappy with the mainstream media, they still think it’s more credible than Trump. The president regularly accuses the press of “fake…
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…