The band The The is performing live for the first time in 16 years. So I snapped up some tickets and went to look for my old CDs of theirs in the basement (remember those shiny round things? I couldn’t find mine, so I am listening on an iPad). Going through their catalogue – primarily Soul …
I recently made a new friend who is a bird artist. When he told me what he does for a living, I thought immediately of Howard Norman’s The Bird Artist, a book I loved when I read it twenty-five years ago (around the time I started teaching at Bowdoin). This spring break, my friend and …
Over the last Summer period, many of us in the library would gather together in the Media Commons to watch a short TED Talk, and discuss it afterwards. What did we learn? Was there anything surprising or particularly resonant with our work lives? Did we agree with the premise of the speaker, etc.? Now, the …
I took a course on 20th century Italian theater while studying in Bologna, Italy, with no expectations and I left with a love for Pirandellian humor. Before reading Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore, I read other plays by Luigi Pirandello, L’uomo dal fiore in bocca (The Man with the Flower in his Mouth) and Enrico …
I’m late to the show, but I’ve been listening to Phish since 2014 when I finally got “It.” The band has been active since 1983, and almost every show since then has been taped and posted online for fans to enjoy. It feels a little like an archeological dig, going back in time 10, 20, …
I am currently reading Julia Franck’s novel Die Mittagsfrau for the second time as I prepare a talk on it for an upcoming conference. I first read the book in 2008, when I directed an honors project that focused on its depictions of gender and sexuality in Germany during the turbulent first half of the …
Alex DeJonge’s “The Life and Times of Grigorii Rasputin” offers up a fascinating glimpse into the life and times of one of the twentieth century’s greatest enigmas, the so-called “Mad Monk” Grigorii Rasputin. DeJong’s work leads us through Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin’s life, beginning with his childhood in rural Siberia, a bleak landscape that was saturated …
A couple of months ago, while browsing at Royal River Books in Yarmouth, my daughter and I stumbled across Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls. “Great choice,” the woman at the counter told us. “I can barely keep this one on the shelf.” I had never heard of it, but we quickly discovered why it’s so popular: …
Currently I am reading (and re-reading) Tony Kushner’s play Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. I think it was instantly popular when it originally came out, but I’d never heard of it until Professor Hansen’s ‘Modern and Contemporary American Literature’ course. I’ve already recommended it to so many of my friends. The …
I’m reading On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder. A friend of my mother’s recommended the book as a timely look at the parallels between current political turmoil and the Fascist forces that gave rise to WWII. This woman has sent On Tyranny to every US Senator, as a means of encouraging them all to rise above partisan squabbles and, together, stand up …