Results by title

After a chance meeting aboard the ocean liner Paris in 1924, Harvard University scholar and activist F. O. Matthiessen and artist Russell Cheney fell in love and remained inseparable until Cheney’s death in 1945. During the intervening years, the men traveled throughout Europe and the United States, achieving great professional success while contending with serious personal challenges, including addiction, chronic disease, and severe depression.

During a hospital stay, years into their relationship, Matthiessen confessed to Cheney that “never once has the freshness of your life lost any trace of its magic for me. Every day is a new discovery of your wealth.” Situating the couple’s private correspondence alongside other sources, Scott Bane tells the remarkable story of their relationship in the context of shifting social dynamics in the United States. From the vantage point of the present day, with marriage equality enacted into law, Bane provides a window into the realities faced by same-sex couples in the early twentieth century, as they maintained relationships in the face of overt discrimination and the absence of legal protections.

Sixty years ago, at the height of World War II, an extraordinary series of gatherings took place at Mount Holyoke College in western Massachusetts. During the summers of 1942–1944, leading European figures in the arts and sciences met at the college with their American counterparts for urgent conversations about the future of human civilization in a precarious world. 

Two Sorbonne professors, the distinguished medievalist Gustave Cohen and the existentialist philosopher Jean Wahl, organized these “Pontigny” sessions, named after an abbey in Burgundy where similar symposia had been held in the decades before the war. Among the participants—many of whom were Jewish or had Jewish backgrounds—were the philosophers Hannah Arendt and Rachel Bespaloff, the poets Marianne Moore and Wallace Stevens, the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss and the linguist Roman Jakobson, and the painters Marc Chagall and Robert Motherwell. 

In this collection of original essays, Stanley Cavell and Jacques Derrida lead an international group of scholars—including Jed Perl, Mary Ann Caws, Jeffrey Mehlman, and Elisabeth Young-Bruehl—in assessing the lasting impact and contemporary significance of Pontigny-en- Amérique. Rachel Bespaloff, a tragic figure who wrote a major work on the Iliad, is restored to her rightful place beside Arendt and Simone Weil. Anyone interested in the “intellectual resistance” of Francophone intellectuals and artists, and the inspiring support from such American figures as Stevens and Moore, will want to read this pioneering work of scholarship and historical re-creation.

Disability in Africa has received significant attention as a dimension of global development and humanitarian initiatives. Little international attention is given, however, to the ways in which disability is discussed and addressed in specific countries in Africa. Little is known also about the ways in which persons with disabilities have advocated for themselves over the past one hundred years and how their needs were or were not met in locations across the continent. Kenya has been on the forefront of disability activism and disability rights since the middle of the twentieth century. The country was among the first African states to create a legal framework addressing the rights of persons with disabilities, namely the Persons with Disabilities Act of 2003. Kenya, however, has a much longer history of institutions and organizations that are dedicated to addressing the specific needs of persons with disabilities, and substantial developments have occurred since the introduction of the legal framework in 2003.

As a humanities professional, your skills are in demand. Despite the challenges of a competitive job market, the unique skill set that you possess is highly transferable to various industries and roles. Knowing how to position your creativity, knowledge and empathy is vital for achieving meaningful employment and professional growth.
 
Hustles for Humanists provides a detailed roadmap for humanities professionals who want to leverage their valuable skills to find or create meaningful work. Drawing from her experiences as an academic turned entrepreneur, Erica Machulak gives practical advice on how to connect with your core values, market yourself, build relationships with clients, and negotiate fair compensation.
 
This is an essential field guide for finding work that aligns with the core values of your humanities scholarship and practice. It demonstrates how the professional strengths of the humanities can be drawn upon to create fairer, more just and equitable entrepreneurial approaches – whether you’re launching a business, job hunting, or looking for inspiration. Hustles for Humanists helps you unlock the value of your humanities practice and explore exciting new pathways to achieving economic stability both within and beyond academia.

"I began this book to articulate my sense of disappointment and alienation from the status I had fought so hard to achieve." A remarkable admission from an alumnus of Harvard Law School who has held tenured professorships in the law schools of Yale and Stanford and has taught in the law schools of Harvard and Chicago.

In this personal reflection on the status of higher education, Julius Getman probes the tensions between status and meaning, elitism and egalitarianism, that challenge the academy and academics today. He shows how higher education creates a shared intellectual community among people of varied races and classes—while simultaneously dividing people on the basis of education and status.

In the course of his explorations, Getman touches on many of the most current issues in higher education today, including the conflict between teaching and research, challenges to academic freedom, the struggle over multiculturalism, and the impact of minority and feminist activism. Getman presents these issues through relevant, often humorous anecdotes, using his own and others' experiences in coping with the constantly changing academic landscape.

Written from a liberal perspective, the book offers another side of the story told in such works as Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind and Roger Kimball's Tenured Radicals.

John Aubrey (1626–97) was one of the best-connected scholars and antiquaries in the great decades of the British scientific revolution. He is remembered as a pioneer historian and the father of English life-writing, whose Brief Lives remains a lasting portrait of a generation of eminent thinkers and nobles. But Aubrey’s intellectual interests were much broader. He was one of the first Fellows of the Royal Society, and he was acquainted with leading scientists of the generation of Robert Hooke and Isaac Newton. Aubrey championed Hooke’s geological theories, radical for the time, that proposed the organic origin of fossils. In addition, Aubrey was a keen mathematician and an early donor to the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology and the Bodleian Library. Extensively illustrated, John Aubrey and the Advancement of Learning presents all of Aubrey’s varied interests and pursuits in their intellectual milieu. Published to celebrate the 350th anniversary of the Royal Society, this is the first accessible and illustrated guide to Aubrey’s many diverse achievements as a biographer, natural philosopher and scientist, and antiquary.