It was a cold and wet, absolutely miserable day. This could be the start to a novel, but definitely not a good start to your day. Nevertheless, I and thousands of others crowded the metro to get to the National Mall for the Library of Congress’s National Book Festival yesterday. Yet there was a reason…
There is the Superbowl for football fans, dozens of music festivals for anyone who owns an ipod, and there is even Comic Con for all of those scifi/fantasy/comic book geeks out there. So what is there for bookworms? Maybe there are not hundreds of festivals in honor of books (although there should be!), but there…
You might know that Dan Brown’s latest mystery is set here in DC. You might not know that Professor Margaret Soltan has read it, and talked about the book last night on the Lehrer News Hour. From the transcript (here): MARGARET SOLTAN: [Mystery blockbusters] appeal to a large audience because they’re fun to read, they’re…
What influences poet Ed Skoog? Really, the question should be where is Ed Skoog influenced. Skoog, the newest Jenny McKean Moore Writer in Residence, may be in DC right now, but whose to say where he will be next fall. Even he does not know or want to know. “I don’t want to pick a…
Emily Cahn reports: The University’s first vice president for research says he hopes to raise the University’s research profile by starting new research centers in the fields of autism, computational biology, science policy, energy, sustainability and neglected diseases. Well, you don’t need to hear it from me again. But you will. Could the day please…
In the discussion that unfolded at this post about the humanities at GW, Calder Stembel kindly linked to a letter he composed to The Hatchet about arts and politics at this institution. The letter in its entirety is worth your time, but I want to excerpt some parts that speaks to the crux of the…
As students sunbathe in the last weeks of summer, professors feel the start of the new semester as an entirely different weather pattern. “The new semester has crashed with all the force of a tsunami. But sometimes it’s good to get wet,” said Professor Jonathan Gil Harris. This academic year is a complete change from…
Drugs. Sex. Money. Excess. Narcissism. Moral depravity. I could be referring to the nightly news, but really I am referring to Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. That novel about a man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty, that slowly sucks you in, thrilling and horrifying you at the same time….
An undeniable fact: the humanities are strong at GW. The English and History departments alone have well over two hundred majors, each. Both departments have a long history of graduating distinguished alumni. Both possess world class faculty whose research has taken their disciplines in new directions. Both are well known for their excellence in teaching,…
Stepping into Gregory Pardlo’s office is an odd, but charming combination of thrift store and art museum. Picasso adorns the wall as well as a salvaged window screen from Brooklyn. They are not just mere decorations, but help to explain some the fundamentals of GW’s newest creative writing professor. For Pardlo is not just a…
