I run when I need to clear my mind. The pandemic has been good to me in only one way—it has increased my running and, with it, my time alone for uninterrupted thinking. Left to its own devices, though, my brain can run itself ragged hopping down one unproductive rabbit hole of worry after another. …
It might seem surprising that a sci-fi novel about alien conflict could provide solace during quarantine, yet somehow Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem inspired an interesting shade of hope for me in the depth of winter. As the first installment in Liu’s Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy, this book offers a novel take on the …
No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood has gotten a lot of hype since it was published in February of this year, and for good reason, in my opinion! It is a masterful exploration of form, and one of the most interesting (and accurate) commentaries on the contemporary moment’s online existence that I’ve …
It can be difficult to remain intellectually curious when one spends a gap semester on a farm. Without pending due dates or deadlines providing that initial spark to get my synapses firing, I nevertheless did my fair share of intellectual work: contemplating difficult and relevant issues such as identifying each farm workers’ spirit vegetable (I …
I confess that I read so much for research and teaching, that I end up reading embarrassingly little for pleasure. That’s why I was excited when I was asked to contribute to the “Bowdoin Reads” series, as I told myself that I couldn’t read anything that deals with my current work. I ended up choosing …
While my time spent on Bowdoin’s campus may have been brief this fall, it was certainly not lacking in formative experiences, my trip to the Special Collections and Archives chief among them. Having spent the former part of the semester voraciously consuming each of their “Beyond the Reading Room” virtual events from the isolation of …
Often one to enjoy self-help resources, after completing my first season as a head coach while managing an assistant coach for the first time I thought how can I make this opportunity more enjoyable and successful for not only me but, the people around me too. After recommendations from my partner in addition to friend, …
Most summers, I go to Japan or China for research, but the pandemic this year has made fieldwork abroad all but impossible. To escape lockdown without ever having to leave Brunswick, I read Stranger in the Shogun’s City, written by my brilliant friend and colleague, Amy Stanley, a history professor at Northwestern University. Stranger in …
In Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie reveals the life of Ifemelu, a young woman who struggles to reconcile her new American way of thinking and the culture of her home country, Nigeria. As a child of Zimbabwean parents myself, I found myself nodding along at certain moments in a way I never have while reading other …
Following the recent, brutal murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and Tony McDade, we are living through a moment of protest that I know many of us hope is a turning point in this country’s long history of violence against Black people. As a white person, I have so much to learn and …