Why Should We Read Sylvia Plath? An Animated Video Makes the Case

in Literature, Poetry | March 12th, 2019

In “Morn­ing Song,” from Sylvia Plath’s posthu­mous 1965 col­lec­tion Ariel, pub­lished two years after her sui­cide, a new­born infant is a “fat gold watch.” Among the inces­sant lists of adjec­tives in both her work, “fat” is one that stands out, appear­ing often, in sev­er­al syn­onyms, as a cel­e­bra­tion of abun­dance and real anx­i­ety over weight gain and a gen­er­al too-much­ness. In the same poem, the baby is a work of art, a “new stat­ue.” Its moth­er, on the oth­er hand, is in one stan­za a cloud effaced by the wind in a mir­ror, and a clum­sy ani­mal, “cow-heavy and flo­ral / In my Vic­to­ri­an night­gown. / Your mouth opens clean as a cat’s.”

Plath’s images are brac­ing and unex­pect­ed, awed and strick­en, usu­al­ly at once. She deploys them so quick­ly and adroit­ly that even when one fails to land, the oth­ers imme­di­ate­ly take up the slack, mak­ing even her less-great poems impres­sive for a line or stan­za that takes hold in the mind for days. This abil­i­ty was not the result of either divine inspi­ra­tion or men­tal ill­ness, but tal­ent honed through hard work and com­mit­ment. Plath “chose the artist’s way. Poet­ry was her call­ing,” the ani­mat­ed TED-Ed video by Iseult Gille­spie tells us above. As such, she per­se­vered even through severe bouts with depres­sion and many sui­cide attempts before she final­ly suc­cumbed at age 30.

Plath’s semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal nov­el, The Bell Jar, which dra­ma­tizes these themes, as well as a hand­ful of her dark­est poems, have come to pop­u­lar­ly sym­bol­ize her lega­cy. You’ve heard of them even if you’ve nev­er read them. Yet she com­posed a “large bulk of poet­ry,” her hus­band, poet Ted Hugh­es, wrote in the intro­duc­tion to her Col­lect­ed Works, pub­lished and unpub­lished, nev­er throw­ing any­thing out. “She brought every piece she worked on to some final form accept­able to her, reject­ing at most the odd verse…. Her atti­tude to her verse was arti­san-like: if she couldn’t get a table out of the mate­r­i­al, she was quite hap­py to get a chair, or even a toy.”

His char­ac­ter­i­za­tion may not sound like the most char­i­ta­ble, and as her lit­er­ary execu­tor, Hugh­es was accused of refus­ing to pub­lish some of her work. But he was also a fel­low poet who watched her tire­less­ly write and revise. Quot­ing from her jour­nals, Hugh­es shows how her first col­lec­tion, 1960’s The Colos­sus and Oth­er Poems, came togeth­er over a peri­od of many years, its title chang­ing every few months, new poems appear­ing and old ones falling away. The result is a debut whose “breath­tak­ing per­spec­tives on emo­tion, nature, and art con­tin­ue to cap­ti­vate and res­onate,” notes the video’s nar­ra­tor.

Despite her major pres­ence in the lit­er­ary mag­a­zines and the respect she won espe­cial­ly in the UK, The Colos­sus and Oth­er Poems would be Plath’s only pub­lished col­lec­tion in her life­time. It made her a well-respect­ed poet, but did not make her the celebri­ty she became after the pub­li­ca­tion of The Bell Jar three years lat­er and her sui­cide the fol­low­ing month. “With­in a week of her death,” writes Time mag­a­zine in its review of Ariel in 1966, “intel­lec­tu­al Lon­don was hunched over copies of a strange and ter­ri­ble poem she had writ­ten dur­ing her last sick slide toward sui­cide. ‘Dad­dy’ was its title.”

After the pub­li­ca­tion of Ariel, read­ers fixed on “Dad­dy” and “Lady Lazarus,” sen­sa­tion­al poems in which “fear, hate, love, death and the poet’s own iden­ti­ty become fused at bleak heat with the fig­ure of her father, and through him, with the guilt of the Ger­man exter­mi­na­tors and the suf­fer­ing of their Jew­ish vic­tims.” These are poems, wrote Robert Low­ell in his pref­ace, that “play Russ­ian roulette with six car­tridges in the cylin­der.” As fem­i­nist schol­ars embraced her work in the 1970s, a mor­bid fas­ci­na­tion with her image only grew. This is the Plath many peo­ple know by word of mouth. But those who haven’t read more of her will miss out.

Plath doesn’t shy away from star­ing at sui­cide, abuse, and mass mur­der. She helped to “break the silence sur­round­ing issues of trau­ma, frus­tra­tion, and sex­u­al­i­ty.” Ariel and her dozens of uncol­lect­ed poems are also “filled with mov­ing med­i­ta­tions on heart­break and cre­ativ­i­ty,” includ­ing the heart­break and cre­ativ­i­ty of moth­er­hood, a theme always fraught with fears of love and death. Plath’s work can be dark, and it can be at once lumi­nous in its imag­i­na­tive can­dor. In writ­ing about life with depres­sion and the domes­tic mis­ery vis­it­ed on her in her mar­riage to Hugh­es, she cel­e­brates life’s sub­lime plea­sures and mourns its depths of suf­fer­ing, in poem ofter poem, with near-con­stant inge­nu­ity, wit, and courage.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Sylvia Plath Read 50+ of Her Dark, Com­pelling Poems

Sylvia Plath, Ted Hugh­es & Peter Porter Read Their Poet­ry: Free Audio 

Sylvia Plath, Girl Detec­tive Offers a Hilar­i­ous­ly Cheery Take on the Poet’s Col­lege Years

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

John Cleese Revisits His 20 Years as an Ivy League Professor in His New Book, Professor at Large: The Cornell Years

in Books, Comedy | March 6th, 2019

Cre­ative Com­mons image by Paul Box­ley

It takes real intel­li­gence to suc­cess­ful­ly make dumb com­e­dy. John Cleese and his Mon­ty Python col­leagues are a pre­mi­um exam­ple. You can call sketch­es like the “Min­istry of Sil­ly Walks” and “Dead Par­rot” sur­re­al­ist, and they are com­pa­ra­ble to the absur­dist stunts favored by cer­tain ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry mod­ern artists. But you can also call them very smart kinds of stu­pid, a descrip­tion of some of the high­est forms of com­e­dy, I’d say, and one that applies to so much of Cleese’s best work, from the Pythons, to Fawl­ty Tow­ers, to A Fish Called Wan­da. We are moved by stu­pid­i­ty, Cleese believes, and silli­ness is the engine of good com­e­dy. “Some­times very, very sil­ly things,” he says in the inter­view with Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty Press direc­tor Dean Smith below, “have the pow­er to touch us deeply.” Then he tells the old joke about a grasshop­per named Nor­man.

Is Cleese still fun­ny? Depends. Many lis­ten­ers of a recent BBC Radio 4 show found his act a lit­tle stale. He has also come off late­ly as a “clas­sic old man yelling at a cloud,” writes Fiona Sturges at The Guardian. (He called, sure­ly in jest, for the hang­ing of EU pres­i­dent Jean Claude Junck­er, for exam­ple, dur­ing the Brex­it cam­paign).

In cur­mud­geon­ly inter­views, he com­plains about hyper­sen­si­tiv­i­ty with exam­ples of jokes con­tem­po­rary audi­ences sim­ply don’t find amus­ing, or at least not com­ing from him. Cleese has railed about the evils of polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness, espe­cial­ly on col­lege cam­pus­es, while spend­ing the past 20 years as a “pro­fes­sor-at-large” on the pres­ti­gious cam­pus of Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty, where he has deliv­ered “incred­i­bly pop­u­lar events and classes—including talks, work­shops, and an analy­sis of A Fish Called Wan­da and The Life of Bri­an.”

These appear­ances draw hun­dreds of peo­ple, and their enor­mous pop­u­lar­i­ty should offer Cleese some reas­sur­ance that he may not need to fear cen­sor­ship, and that his wit—while it might not be as well appre­ci­at­ed in today’s mass entertainment—still has plen­ty of cur­ren­cy in places where smart peo­ple gath­er. From sem­i­nars on script writ­ing to lec­tures on psy­chol­o­gy and human devel­op­ment, Cleese’s appear­ances at Cor­nell lead to riv­et­ing, some­times hilar­i­ous, and often con­tro­ver­sial con­ver­sa­tions.

In the episodes here from the Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty Press pod­cast, you can hear Cleese’s full con­ver­sa­tion with Smith, part of the pro­mo­tion of his 2018 book Pro­fes­sor at Large: The Cor­nell Years, in which he includes an inter­view with Princess Bride screen­writer William Gold­man, a lec­ture about cre­ativ­i­ty called “Hare Brain, Tor­toise Mind,” a dis­cus­sion of facial recog­ni­tion tech­nol­o­gy, and a talk on group dynam­ics with busi­ness stu­dents and fac­ul­ty. Like Cleese’s mind, these lec­tures and dis­cus­sions range far and wide, demon­strat­ing, once again in his long career, that it takes real smarts to not only speak with ease on sev­er­al aca­d­e­m­ic sub­jects, but to under­stand the mechan­ics of stu­pid­i­ty. You can pick up a copy of Pro­fes­sor at Large: The Cor­nell Years here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Cleese on How “Stu­pid Peo­ple Have No Idea How Stu­pid They Are” (a.k.a. the Dun­ning-Kruger Effect)

John Cleese Explains the Brain — and the Plea­sures of DirecTV

John Cleese’s Phi­los­o­phy of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Cre­at­ing Oases for Child­like Play

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

When Fred Rogers and Francois Clemmons Broke Down Race Barriers on a Historic Episode of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood (1969)

in History, Life, Television | February 15th, 2019

Last year’s Fred Rogers doc­u­men­tary, Won’t You Be My Neigh­bor, pro­pelled François Clem­mons—bet­ter known to gen­er­a­tions of Mis­ter Rogers Neigh­bor­hood view­ers as Offi­cer Clemmons—back into the inter­na­tion­al spot­light.

One of the most strik­ing anec­dotes in the doc con­cerns a 1969 episode in which Mis­ter Rogers, who was white, invit­ed Offi­cer Clem­mons, who is black, to join him in soak­ing his bare feet in a back­yard baby pool on a hot summer’s day.

It was one of those giant leaps for mankind moments that pass­es itself off as a homey, fair­ly unre­mark­able step, though as Clem­mons told his friend Karl Lind­holm in a Sto­ryCorps inter­view, Rogers under­stood the pow­er­ful mes­sage this ges­ture would send.

Like­wise, his choice of Clem­mons to embody a friend­ly cop for his tele­vi­sion neigh­bor­hood, a part Clem­mons, who played the role for 30 years, was ini­tial­ly hes­i­tant to accept:

Fred came to me and said, “I have this idea, you could be a police offi­cer.” That kind of stopped me in my tracks. I grew up in the ghet­to. I did not have a pos­i­tive opin­ion of police offi­cers. Police­men were sick­ing police dogs and water hoses on peo­ple. And I real­ly had a hard time putting myself in that role. So I was not excit­ed about being Offi­cer Clem­mons at all.

Rogers, who had met Clem­mons in a Pitts­burgh area church where the trained opera singer was per­form­ing, pre­vailed, stress­ing the impact such a pos­i­tive por­tray­al of a black author­i­ty fig­ure could have on the com­mu­ni­ty.

Offi­cer Clem­mons, the first recur­ring black char­ac­ter on a children’s series, paved the way for the mul­tira­cial casts of Sesame Street and The Elec­tric Com­pa­ny, also on PBS.

If a pic­ture is worth a thou­sand words, a song can also pack quite a wal­lop. It’s hard not to get choked up hear­ing Clem­mons sing “There Are Many Ways to Say I Love You,” above, a tune he reprised in 1993, for his final appear­ance on the show.

Such sen­ti­ments are a nat­ur­al fit in pro­grams aimed at the preschool crowd, whose love of their fam­i­lies is rein­forced at every turn, but it’s still unusu­al to see these feel­ings artic­u­lat­ed so pure­ly when the only peo­ple in sight are grown men.

Clem­mons learned not to doubt Roger’s sin­cer­i­ty when he said, “I like you just the way you are.”

And Rogers grew to accept his friend’s sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, though this embrace came a bit less nat­u­ral­ly. In an inter­view with Van­i­ty Fair’s Chris Azzopar­di, Clem­mons was philo­soph­i­cal, recall­ing his “sur­ro­gate father’s” request to steer clear of gay clubs so as not to endan­ger the show’s whole­some image:

Sac­ri­fice was a part of my des­tiny. In oth­er words, I did not want to be a shame to my race. I didn’t want to be a scan­dal to the show. I didn’t want to hurt the man who was giv­ing me so much, and I also knew the val­ue as a black per­former of hav­ing this show, this plat­form. Black actors and actresses—SAG and Equity—90 per­cent of them are not work­ing. If you know that and here you are, on a nation­al plat­form you’re gonna sab­o­tage your­self?

I weighed this thing, the pros and the cons. And I thought, I not only have a nation­al plat­form, I’m get­ting paid. I was also get­ting a pro­mo­tion that I sim­ply could not have afford­ed to pay for. Every time I did the show, and every time Fred took us across the coun­try to do three, four, five per­son­al appear­ances, my name was being writ­ten into somebody’s heart—some lit­tle kid who would grow up and say, “Oh, I remem­ber him, I remem­ber that he could sing, I remem­ber that he was on Mis­ter Rogers’ Neigh­bor­hood.” I didn’t have the mon­ey to pay for that, but I was get­ting it free. There were so many things that I got back for that sac­ri­fice that I kept my big mouth shut, kept my head down, kept my shoul­der to the plough.

Stu­dents at Mid­dle­bury Col­lege, where Clem­mons was a long time fac­ul­ty pres­ence, were well acquaint­ed with the self-pro­claimed “Divaman’s”’ flam­boy­ant side:

Clem­mons has added col­or and soul to the Mid­dle­bury Col­lege scene for near­ly 25 years. As Alexan­der Twi­light Artist in Res­i­dence and direc­tor of the Mar­tin Luther King Spir­i­tu­al Choir, he is known by many names: the divo, the mae­stro, the rev­erend, doc­tor-madam-hon­ey-man, sportin’ life, and even black mag­ic. He has played the role of pro­fes­sor, choir­mas­ter, res­i­dent vocal soloist, advi­sor, con­fi­dant, and com­mu­ni­ty cheer­leader. Yet his pur­pose is sin­gu­lar: to share hope through song.

Lis­ten to Sto­ryCorps pod­cast episode #462 about Mis­ter Rogers’ and Fran­cois Clem­mons’ famous foot bath, as well as an inci­dent that took place five years pri­or where pro­test­ers staged a “wade in” at the “Whites Only” pool at St. Augus­tine, Florida’s Mon­son Motor Lodge.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Col­ors of Mis­ter Rogers’ Hand-Knit Sweaters from 1979 to 2001: A Visu­al Graph Cre­at­ed with Data Sci­ence

Mis­ter Rogers Turns Kids On to Jazz with Help of a Young Wyn­ton Marsalis and Oth­er Jazz Leg­ends (1986)

Mr. Rogers Takes Break­danc­ing Lessons from a 12-Year-Old (1985)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  See her onstage in New York City on March 11 as host of  The­ater of the Apes book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Why Should We Read Flannery O’Connor? An Animated Video Makes the Case

in Literature | February 12th, 2019

Every time a sto­ry of mine appears in a Fresh­man anthol­o­gy, I have a vision of it, with its lit­tle organs laid open, like a frog in a bot­tle. –Flan­nery O’Connor, “A Rea­son­able Use of the Unrea­son­able”

Why did Flan­nery O’Connor write? To con­vert us? The devout Catholic was not immune to a cer­tain apolo­getic impulse, or a sense of her own pur­pose as a ves­sel for divine truth. Or did she, like Greek trage­di­ans, write to inspire pity and ter­ror? “I don’t have any pre­ten­sions,” she once demurred, “to being an Aeschy­lus or Sopho­cles and pro­vid­ing you in this sto­ry with a cathar­tic expe­ri­ence.” In any case, what drove her may be a less inter­est­ing ques­tion than what should dri­ve us to read her.

O’Connor wrote, as most great writ­ers do, because she was com­pelled to write. What we gain as read­ers is the deeply unset­tling, but also deeply plea­sur­able expe­ri­ence of rec­og­niz­ing our own flawed human­i­ty in her vio­lent, manip­u­la­tive char­ac­ters, none of whom, some­how, are ever beyond redemp­tion. O’Connor’s autho­r­i­al voice does not judge or con­demn but expos­es to light the flaws that even, or espe­cial­ly, her most respectable char­ac­ters would rather hide from them­selves and oth­ers.

By use of what she called “a rea­son­able use of the unrea­son­able” she shows mur­der, con­tempt, and decep­tion as shock­ing­ly ordi­nary states of affairs, bely­ing the polite fic­tions of civil­i­ty and social nice­ness. Per­haps no set­ting could bet­ter illu­mi­nate the con­trasts than the pious­ly vio­lent seg­re­gat­ed mid-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can South. O’Connor’s “mas­tery of the grotesque,” notes the TED-Ed video above by Iseult Gille­spie, “and her explo­rations of the insu­lar­i­ty and super­sti­tions of the South led her to be clas­si­fied as a ‘South­ern Goth­ic’ writer.”

The label may fit super­fi­cial­ly, but “her work pushed beyond the pure­ly ridicu­lous and fright­en­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics asso­ci­at­ed with the genre to reveal the vari­ety and nuance of human char­ac­ter.” O’Connor her­self sug­gest­ed that what set her apart were “the assump­tions… of the cen­tral Chris­t­ian mys­ter­ies.” Though we need not read her work this way, she grants, there is “none oth­er by which it could have been writ­ten.” We might say that her com­mit­ted belief in the idea of uni­ver­sal human deprav­i­ty gave her unique insight into the mean­ing­less­ness of class and race dis­tinc­tions. Few writ­ers have tak­en the idea as seri­ous­ly, or approached it with more wicked play­ful­ness.

Why did she write? One rea­son is she “took plea­sure in chal­leng­ing her read­ers,” as the video explains. But it was plea­sure that she chiefly desired to share. We can vivi­sect her sto­ries, carve them up and seal them in jars labeled with pol­i­tics and the­olo­gies. Yet “prop­er­ly, you ana­lyze to enjoy,” she wrote. “It’s equal­ly true that to ana­lyze with any dis­crim­i­na­tion, you have to have enjoyed already, and I think that the best rea­son to hear a sto­ry read is that it should stim­u­late that pri­ma­ry enjoy­ment.” Lovers of O’Connor know the answer to the ques­tion of why we should read her. Because they take as much plea­sure in read­ing her sto­ries as she did in writ­ing them.

Dis­cov­er this enjoy­ment on your own. Hear Studs Terkel read her sto­ry “Rev­e­la­tion,” hear Estelle Par­sons read “Every­thing that Ris­es Must Con­verge,” and hear O’Con­nor her­self read that 1959 clas­sic of her South­ern grotesque style, “A Good Man is Hard to Find.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear a Rare Record­ing of Flan­nery O’Connor Read­ing “A Good Man is Hard to Find” (1959)

Flan­nery O’Connor Ren­ders Her Ver­dict on Ayn Rand’s Fic­tion: It’s As “Low As You Can Get”

Flan­nery O’Connor’s Satir­i­cal Car­toons: 1942–1945

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Download Free Coloring Books from 113 Museums

in Art, Coloring Books, Museums | February 8th, 2019

One can only col­or so many flo­ral-trimmed affir­ma­tions before one begins to crave some­thing slight­ly more per­verse. An ema­ci­at­ed, naked, anthro­po­mor­phized man­drake root, say or…

Thy wish is our com­mand, but be pre­pared to hus­tle, because today is the final day of Col­or Our Col­lec­tions, a com­pelling­ly demo­c­ra­t­ic ini­tia­tive on the part of the New York Acad­e­my of Med­i­cine.

Since 2016, the Acad­e­my has made an annu­al prac­tice of invit­ing oth­er libraries, archives, and cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions around the world to upload PDF col­or­ing pages based on their col­lec­tions for the pub­lic’s free down­load.

This year 113 insti­tu­tions took the bait.

Our host, the New York Acad­e­my of Med­i­cine kicks things off with the afore­men­tioned man­drakes, and then some.

Med­ical sub­jects are a pop­u­lar theme here. You’ll find plen­ty of organs and oth­er rel­e­vant details to col­or, com­pli­ments of Boston’s Count­way Library’s Cen­ter for the His­to­ry of Med­i­cine, London’s Roy­al Col­lege of Physi­cians, and the His­tor­i­cal Med­ical Library of The Col­lege of Physi­cians of Philadel­phia (aka the Müt­ter Muse­um).

The col­or­ing book of the Richard­son-Sloane Spe­cial Col­lec­tions Cen­ter at the Dav­en­port Pub­lic Library is a bit more all-ages. They cer­tain­ly remind me of my child­hood. The work of native son, Patrick J. Costel­lo, above, fig­ures heav­i­ly here. Either he deserves a lot of cred­it for devel­op­ing the School House Rock aes­thet­ic, or he was one of a num­ber of hard work­ing illus­tra­tors tap­ping into the cartoon‑y, thick-nibbed zeit­geist

The Andover-Har­vard The­o­log­i­cal Library’s col­or­ing book has some divine options for those who would use their col­or­ing pages as DIY 16th-cen­tu­ry book­plates or alpha­bet primers.

Those who need some­thing more com­plex will appre­ci­ate the intri­cate maps of the Lithuan­ian Art Museum’s col­or­ing book. Col­or­ing Franz Hogenberg’s 1581 map of Vil­nius is the emo­tion­al equiv­a­lent of walk­ing the labyrinth for god knows how many hours.

As befits a con­tent web­site-cum-dig­i­tal-Nation­al-Library, the Memo­ria Chile­na Col­or­ing Book 2019 has some­thing for every taste: flayed anatom­i­cal stud­ies, 1940’s fash­ions, curi­ous kit­ty cats, and a heap­ing help­ing of jesters.

Check out all your options here.

Once you’ve had your way with the Cray­olas, please share your cre­ations with the world, using the hash­tag #Col­or­Our­Col­lec­tions.

Par­tic­i­pat­ing Insti­tu­tions 2019

The New York Acad­e­my of Med­i­cine Library

Roy­al Col­lege of Physi­cians, Lon­don

OHSU His­tor­i­cal Col­lec­tions & Archives

Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin-Mil­wau­kee Spe­cial Col­lec­tions

Swarth­more Col­lege Libraries

South Car­oli­na State Library

Shenan­doah Coun­ty Library, Truban Archives

Bib­liote­ca de la Uni­ver­si­dad de Zaragoza

Christ’s Col­lege Library, Cam­bridge

Tow­er Hill Botan­ic Gar­den

Uni­ver­si­ty of Water­loo Spe­cial Col­lec­tions & Archives

Wagenin­gen Uni­ver­si­ty & Research

Brunel Uni­ver­si­ty Spe­cial Col­lec­tions

Hawaii State Foun­da­tion on Cul­ture and the Arts

Wash­ing­ton State Library

Saint Fran­cis de Sales Parish Unit­ed by the Most Blessed Sacra­ment Parish His­to­ry Archives

Get­ty Research Insti­tute

Auck­land Muse­um

Loy­ola Uni­ver­si­ty Chica­go Archives & Spe­cial Col­lec­tions

Seton Hall Uni­ver­si­ty Libraries

Bib­lio­theque interuni­ver­si­taire de Sante, Paris

Dig­i­tal Library at Vil­lano­va Uni­ver­si­ty

West Vir­ginia and Region­al His­to­ry Cen­ter

Bass Library, Yale Uni­ver­si­ty Library

Uni­ver­si­ty of Kansas Libraries

Med­ical Her­itage Library

The Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty Health Sci­ences Library

Uni­ver­si­ty of Mass­a­chu­setts Amherst Libraries

Rut­gers Uni­ver­si­ty Spe­cial Col­lec­tions and Uni­ver­si­ty Archives

Uni­ver­si­ty of British Colum­bia Library

Nation­al Library of Med­i­cine

Sci­ence His­to­ry Insti­tute

Rick­er Library of Archi­tec­ture and Art at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois

Chau­tauqua Insti­tu­tion Archives

Bib­lio­theque et Archives nationales du Que­bec

The LuEs­ther T. Mertz Library of the New York Botan­i­cal Gar­den

Auburn Uni­ver­si­ty Spe­cial Col­lec­tions and Archives

Open Muse­um, Acad­e­mia Sini­ca Cen­ter for Dig­i­tal Cul­tures

Les Champs Libres

Lithuan­ian Art Muse­um

Memo­ria Chile­na

Bar­ret Library, Rhodes Col­lege

Wales High­er Edu­ca­tion Libraries Forum (WHELF)

Roy­al Anthro­po­log­i­cal Insti­tute

Delaware Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry

James Madi­son Uni­ver­si­ty Libraries

Utah State Uni­ver­si­ty Libraries Spe­cial Col­lec­tions & Archives

Stevens Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy / Archives & Spe­cial Col­lec­tions

War­ing His­tor­i­cal Library of the Med­ical Uni­ver­si­ty of South Car­oli­na

Bernard Beck­er Med­ical Library at Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty in St. Louis

Uni­ver­si­ty of Puget Sound

Drex­el Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege of Med­i­cine Lega­cy Cen­ter Archives and Spe­cial Col­lec­tions

Queens’ Col­lege Library, Cam­bridge

Stadt­bib­lio­thek Koeln

Andover-Har­vard The­o­log­i­cal Library

Rare Book and Man­u­script CRAI Library at Uni­ver­si­ty of Barcelona

New­ber­ry Library

His­tor­i­cal Med­ical Library of The Col­lege of Physi­cians of Philadel­phia

Lam­beth Palace Library

Fol­ger Shake­speare Library

Uni­ver­si­ty of Glas­gow Archives and Spe­cial Col­lec­tions

John J. Burns Library

Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library

The Uni­ver­si­ty of Iowa Libraries, Iowa Dig­i­tal Library

Ten­nessee State Muse­um

Cen­ter for the His­to­ry of Med­i­cine, Count­way LIbrary

Russ­ian State Library

South Car­oli­na His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety

Library Com­pa­ny of Philadel­phia

The Burke Library at Union The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary

Pratt Insti­tute Archives

The Chil­dren’s Muse­um of Indi­anapo­lis

Wan­gen­steen His­tor­i­cal Library of Biol­o­gy and Med­i­cine, Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta Libraries

Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty Libraries Julian Edi­son Depart­ment of Spe­cial Col­lec­tions

Libraries and Cul­tur­al Resources, Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­gary

Leonard H. Axe Library, Pitts­burg State Uni­ver­si­ty

Susque­han­na Uni­ver­si­ty, Blough-Weis Library

Richard­son-Sloane Spe­cial Col­lec­tions Cen­ter, Dav­en­port Pub­lic Library

Den­ver Pub­lic Library, West­ern His­to­ry and Geneal­o­gy

Find­lay-Han­cock Coun­ty Pub­lic Library

North­ern Illi­nois Uni­ver­si­ty

Escuela Supe­ri­or de Artes de Yucatan

Lake Coun­ty Pub­lic Library

Unit­ed Nations Library Gene­va

Jele­niorskie Cen­trum Infor­ma­cji i Edukacji Region­al­nej Ksi­azni­ca Karkonos­ka

Women and Lead­er­ship Archives, Loy­ola Uni­ver­si­ty Chica­go

Grand Portage Nation­al Mon­u­ment Archives Col­lec­tion

Jagiel­lon­ian Library

Botan­i­cal Research Insti­tute of Texas

Uni­ver­si­ty of North Texas Libraries

Lehigh Uni­ver­si­ty Libraries Spe­cial Col­lec­tions

Rare Book and Man­u­script Library at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois at Urbana-Cham­paign

Mass­a­chu­setts Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal Archives & Spe­cial Col­lec­tions

Clark Spe­cial Col­lec­tions, McDer­mott Library, USAFA

Bib­lio­theque nationale de France

Cen­tre for Chi­nese Con­tem­po­rary Art Archive & Library

Shangri La Muse­um of Islam­ic Art, Cul­ture & Design

British Library

West­ern Uni­ver­si­ty Archives and Spe­cial Col­lec­tions

Euro­peana

Den­ver Botan­ic Gar­dens

Med­Chi, The Mary­land State Med­ical Soci­ety

Grin­nell Col­lege Libraries

Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land, Bal­ti­more Coun­ty (UMBC)

His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety of Penn­syl­va­nia

Nation­al Library of Rus­sia

East­ern Ken­tucky Uni­ver­si­ty Spe­cial Col­lec­tions & Archives

Nume­lyo

Louisiana State Uni­ver­si­ty Spe­cial Col­lec­tions

New York State Library

North Car­oli­na Pot­tery Cen­ter

Roy­al Hor­ti­cul­tur­al Soci­ety Libraries

Library of Vir­ginia

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  See her onstage in New York City this Mon­day as host of  The­ater of the Apes book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Where Did the Monk’s Haircut Come From? A Look at the Rich and Contentious History of the Tonsure

in History, Religion | December 28th, 2018

One might assume from a mod­ern view­point that the hair­styles worn by monks arose to deal with male pat­tern bald­ness anx­i­ety. As in the school uni­form approach, you can’t sin­gle out one person’s bald­ness when every­one is bald. But this, again, would be a mod­ern view, full of the van­i­ty the tonsured—those with reli­gious­ly shaven heads—ostensibly vowed to renounce. Accord­ing to the Catholic Ency­clo­pe­dia, the ton­sure (from the Latin verb for “to shear”) began as a “badge of slav­ery” among Greeks and Romans. It was adopt­ed “on this very account” by ear­ly monas­tic orders, to mark the total sur­ren­der of the will.

Would it sur­prise you, then, to learn that there were ton­sure wars? Prob­a­bly not if you know any­thing about church his­to­ry. Every arti­cle of cloth­ing and of faith has sparked some major con­tro­ver­sy at one time or anoth­er. So too with the ton­sure, of which—we learn in the Vox video above—there were three styles. The first, the coro­nal (or Roman or Petrine) ton­sure, is the one we see in count­less Medieval and Renais­sance paint­ings: a bald pate at the crown sur­round­ed by a fringe of hair, pos­si­bly meant to evoke the crown of thorns. Next is the Pauline, a ful­ly shaved head, seen much less in West­ern art since it was “used more com­mon­ly in East­ern Ortho­doxy.”

The third style of ton­sure caused all the trou­ble. Or rather, it was this style that served as a vis­i­ble sign of reli­gious dif­fer­ences between the Roman Catholic Church and the church­es in Britain and Ire­land. “Celtic Catholi­cism was ‘out of sync’ with the Roman Catholic Church,” notes Vox. “Roman Catholics would use the dif­fer­ences between them to por­tray Celtic Catholi­cism as pagan, or even as an off­shoot, cel­e­brat­ing the pow­er-hun­gry magi­cian, Simon Magus.” The Celtic ton­sure fell under a cloud, but how exact­ly did it dif­fer from the oth­ers? Since it dis­ap­peared in the ear­ly Mid­dle Ages and few images seem to have sur­vived, no one seems sure.

Daniel McCarthy, fel­low emer­i­tus at Trin­i­ty Col­lege, Dublin set out to solve the mys­tery. He spec­u­lates the Celtic ton­sure, as you’ll see on a com­put­er-sim­u­lat­ed monk’s head, was a tri­an­gu­lar shape, with the apex at the front. When the Roman Catholics took over Ire­land, all of the vest­ments, dates, and hair­cuts were slow­ly brought into line with the dom­i­nant view. The prac­tice of ton­sure offi­cial­ly end­ed in 1972, and fell out of favor in Eng­lish-speak­ing coun­tries cen­turies ear­li­er, accord­ing to the Catholic Ency­clo­pe­dia. But in any case, McCarthy sees the ton­sure not as a spurn­ing of fash­ion, but as a cult-like devo­tion to style. In that sense, we can see peo­ple who adopt sim­i­lar hair­cuts around the world as still visu­al­ly sig­nal­ing their mem­ber­ship in some kind of order, reli­gious or oth­er­wise.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How a Bal­ti­more Hair­dress­er Became a World-Renowned “Hair Archae­ol­o­gist” of Ancient Rome

Ani­mat­ed: Stephen Fry & Ann Wid­de­combe Debate the Catholic Church

50 Years of Chang­ing David Bowie Hair Styles in One Ani­mat­ed GIF

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

Meet the Hurdy Gurdy, the Hand-Cranked Medieval Instrument with 80 Moving Parts

in History, Music | December 19th, 2018

Donovan’s “Hur­dy Gur­dy Man” may be the creepi­est song ever writ­ten about an obscure medieval instru­ment (made all the more so by its use in David Fincher’s Zodi­ac), but the Hur­dy Gur­dy did not give his record­ing its omi­nous sound. Those dron­ing notes come from an Indi­an tan­pu­ra. Yet they evoke the title instru­ment, an inge­nious musi­cal inven­tion “set up pri­mar­i­ly for the pur­pose of mak­ing drones,” Case West­ern Reserve’s Col­lege of Art and Sci­ences explains. “In the Mid­dle Ages, it was known in Latin as the organ­istrum and the sym­pho­nia, and in French as the vielle à roue (the vielle with the wheel).”

With a sound pro­duced by a “rosined wood­en wheel, turned by a crank” that set “a num­ber of strings in con­tin­u­ous dron­ing vibra­tion,” the hur­dy gur­dy can, it’s true, give off a bit of a folk hor­ror vibe. From its very ear­ly, maybe 10th or 11th cen­tu­ry ori­gins in litur­gi­cal music, hur­dy gur­dy expert Jim Kendros tells us in the video above, the instru­ment became asso­ci­at­ed with Euro­pean folk music, shrink­ing from a beast played by two peo­ple to more portable dimen­sions, about the size of a large gui­tar and resem­bling a hand-cranked vio­lin with keys for play­ing melodies on cer­tain strings.

Though it grew small­er and more maneu­ver­able, how­ev­er, the instru­ment grew no less com­pli­cat­ed. Kendros calls it “the equiv­a­lent of a medieval space­ship,” with its more than 80 mov­ing parts.

The hur­dy gur­dy, or “wheel fid­dle,” played in the TED Talk above by Car­o­line Phillips looks less like a fid­dle, or a space­ship, and more like a medieval keytar—just one of the many shapes the instru­ment could take. All of them, how­ev­er, had one impor­tant fea­ture in com­mon: the hur­dy gur­dy is “the only musi­cal instru­ment that uses a crank to turn a wheel to rub strings like the bow of a vio­lin to pro­duce music.” His­tor­i­cal­ly, it was used in medieval dance music “because of the unique­ness of the melody com­bined with the acoustic boom box” of its large body. Try not to shake your body, or to shiv­er, when Phillips plays a haunt­ing, dron­ing Basque folk song.

The Hur­dy Gur­dy spread all over Europe, from Britain to France, Spain, Italy, Ger­many, Hun­gary, and Swe­den, where stringed-instru­ment enthu­si­asts The String­dom caught up with vir­tu­oso Hur­dy Gur­dy play­er Johannes Geworkian Hell­man. He tells us how the hur­dy gur­dy and its dron­ing son­ic cousin, the bag­pipes, set off “an ear­ly folk revival” as com­posers took inspi­ra­tion from peas­ant music. The inter­est from medieval upper class­es meant bet­ter luthiers and high­er-qual­i­ty hur­dy gur­dies. Now mod­ern inter­est in the Hur­dy Gur­dy is grow­ing. While it may take two to three years to hand­craft one, “a lot of new instru­ments are get­ting made,” says Hell­man.

Should you doubt that the 1000-year old hur­dy gur­dy can still sound hip, lis­ten to Hell­man play an elec­tri­fied ver­sion in his hur­dy gurdy/accordion duo, Sym­bio, or hur­dy gurdy/dulcimer two-piece, Mai­ja & Johannes. He coax­es from the instru­ment such a range of rhythms and tim­bres that it’s easy to see why it was so immense­ly pop­u­lar for so long. Yet for all its musi­cal appeal, it is a com­plex machine, dif­fi­cult to tune and sub­ject to any num­ber of mechan­i­cal prob­lems. Not for the casu­al ama­teur, the instru­ment still requires a ded­i­cat­ed Hur­dy Gur­dy man or woman to make it sing—a much more com­mon sight than in Dono­van’s day but an exceed­ing­ly rare one com­pared to the many cen­turies of the hur­dy gur­dy’s hey­day. See more hur­dy gur­dies at the Vin­tage News.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How an 18th-Cen­tu­ry Monk Invent­ed the First Elec­tron­ic Instru­ment

Vis­it an Online Col­lec­tion of 61,761 Musi­cal Instru­ments from Across the World

Watch a Musi­cian Impro­vise on a 500-Year-Old Music Instru­ment, The Car­il­lon

New Order’s “Blue Mon­day” Played with Obso­lete 1930s Instru­ments

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

The Thoughtful Note That George H.W. Bush Left on Bill Clinton’s Desk Before Leaving the White House (1993)

in Life, Politics | December 1st, 2018

With the pass­ing of George H.W. Bush, Bill Clin­ton reflect­ed on the life and lega­cy of his polit­i­cal pre­de­ces­sor, and par­tic­u­lar­ly the thought­ful note that Bush 41 left on his desk, right before leav­ing the White House. Dat­ed Jan­u­ary 20, 1993, it read:

Dear Bill,

When I walked into this office just now I felt the same sense of won­der and respect that I felt four years ago. I know you will feel that, too.

I wish you great hap­pi­ness here. I nev­er felt the lone­li­ness some Pres­i­dents have described.

There will be very tough times, made even more dif­fi­cult by crit­i­cism you may not think is fair. I’m not a very good one to give advice; but just don’t let the crit­ics dis­cour­age you or push you off course.

You will be our Pres­i­dent when you read this note. I wish you well. I wish your fam­i­ly well.

Your suc­cess now is our country’s suc­cess. I am root­ing hard for you.

Good luck—

George

It’s hard not to see this let­ter as a rel­ic of an irre­triev­able age in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. But Clin­ton won’t quite buy that. He writes today in the Wash­ing­ton Post: “Giv­en what pol­i­tics looks like in Amer­i­ca and around the world today, it’s easy to sigh and say George H.W. Bush belonged to an era that is gone and nev­er com­ing back — where our oppo­nents are not our ene­mies, where we are open to dif­fer­ent ideas and chang­ing our minds, where facts mat­ter and where our devo­tion to our children’s future leads to hon­est com­pro­mise and shared progress. I know what he would say: ‘Non­sense. It’s your duty to get that Amer­i­ca back.’ ” Soon enough, after enough sturm and drang, the major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans (Elec­toral Col­lege includ­ed) may be ready to sign up for that.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 2,000+ Films Watched by Pres­i­dents Nixon, Carter & Rea­gan in the White House

Gonzo Illus­tra­tor Ralph Stead­man Draws the Amer­i­can Pres­i­dents, from Nixon to Trump

Barack Oba­ma Shares a List of Enlight­en­ing Books Worth Read­ing

NASA Digitizes 20,000 Hours of Audio from the Historic Apollo 11 Mission: Stream Them Free Online

in Archives, History | November 15th, 2018

When we think of the Apol­lo mis­sions, we tend to think of images, espe­cial­ly those broad­cast on tele­vi­sion dur­ing the Apol­lo 11 moon land­ing in 1969. And if we think of the sounds of Apol­lo, what comes more quick­ly to mind — indeed, what sound in human his­to­ry could come more quick­ly to mind — than Neil Arm­strong’s “one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind” line spo­ken on that same mis­sion? But that’s just one small piece of the total amount of audio record­ings made dur­ing the Apol­lo pro­gram, which ran from the mid-1960s to the ear­ly 1970s. Now, with near­ly 20,000 hours of them dig­i­tized, they’ve begun to be made avail­able for lis­ten­ing and down­load­ing at the Inter­net Archive.

“After the Apol­lo mis­sions end­ed, most of the audio tapes even­tu­al­ly made their way to the Nation­al Archives and Records Admin­is­tra­tion build­ing in Col­lege Park, Mary­land,” writes Astron­o­my’s Cather­ine Mey­ers. But even after get­ting all the record­ings in one place (eas­i­er said than done giv­en the vast size of the archives in which they resided), a much larg­er chal­lenge loomed.

“The exist­ing tapes could be played only on a machine called a Sound­Scriber, a big beige and green con­trap­tion com­plete with vac­u­um tubes. NASA had two machines, but the first was can­ni­bal­ized for parts to make the sec­ond one run.”

Refur­bish­ing the very last Sound­Scriber to play these 30-track tapes required the help of a retired tech­ni­cian, and then the research team need­ed to “play all 30 tracks at once to min­i­mize the time required to dig­i­tize them, as well as to avoid dam­ag­ing the almost 50-year-old tapes by play­ing them over and over.” What with the 50th anniver­sary of the Apol­lo 11 moon land­ing approach­ing next sum­mer — and with First Man, Damien Chazelle’s biopic of Neil Arm­strong cur­rent­ly in the­aters — NASA has cleared that mis­sion’s audio record­ings for pub­lic release.

You can lis­ten to the Apol­lo 11 tapes direct­ly at the Inter­net Archive, or you can make your way through them at Explore Apol­lo, a site designed by stu­dents at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at Dal­las that high­lights the most his­tor­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant of the thou­sands of hours of audio record­ed dur­ing Apol­lo 11: not just Arm­strong’s first step, but the launch from Kennedy Space Cen­ter, the lunar land­ing itself, and the astro­nauts’ walk on the moon’s sur­face. But space explo­ration is about much more than astro­nauts, as you’ll soon find out if you spend much time at the Inter­net Archive’s col­lec­tion of Apol­lo 11 record­ings, on which appear not just Neil Arm­strong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins, but the hun­dreds and hun­dreds of oth­er NASA per­son­nel who made the moon land­ing pos­si­ble. We may nev­er have heard their names before, but now we can final­ly hear their voic­es.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Orig­i­nal TV Cov­er­age of the His­toric Apol­lo 11 Moon Land­ing: Record­ed on July 20, 1969

Hear the Declas­si­fied, Eerie “Space Music” Heard Dur­ing the Apol­lo 10 Mis­sion (1969)

8,400 Stun­ning High-Res Pho­tos From the Apol­lo Moon Mis­sions Are Now Online

NASA Puts 400+ His­toric Exper­i­men­tal Flight Videos on YouTube

The Best of NASA Space Shut­tle Videos (1981–2010)

NASA Puts Online a Big Col­lec­tion of Space Sounds, and They’re Free to Down­load and Use

NASA Releas­es a Mas­sive Online Archive: 140,000 Pho­tos, Videos & Audio Files Free to Search and Down­load

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The Journal of Controversial Ideas, Co-Founded by Philosopher Peter Singer, Will Publish & Defend Pseudonymous Articles, Regardless of the Backlash

in Current Affairs, Philosophy, Politics | November 14th, 2018

Pho­to of Peter Singer by Mat Vick­ers, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Aus­tralian bioethi­cist Peter Singer has made head­lines as few philoso­phers do with claims about the moral sta­tus of ani­mals and the “Singer solu­tion to world pover­ty,” and with far more con­tro­ver­sial posi­tions on abor­tion and dis­abil­i­ty. Many of his claims have placed him out­side the pale for stu­dents at Prince­ton, his cur­rent employ­er, where he has faced protests and calls for his ter­mi­na­tion. “I favor the abil­i­ty to put new ideas out there for dis­cus­sion,” he has said in response to what he views as a hos­tile aca­d­e­m­ic cli­mate, “and I see an atmos­phere in which some peo­ple may be inti­mat­ed from doing that.”

For those who, like him, make con­tro­ver­sial argu­ments such as those for euth­a­niz­ing “defec­tive infants,” for exam­ple, as he wrote about in his 1979 Prac­ti­cal Ethics, Singer has decid­ed to launch a new venue, The Jour­nal of Con­tro­ver­sial Ideas. As The Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion reports, the jour­nal aims to be “an annu­al, peer-reviewed, open-access pub­li­ca­tion that will print wor­thy papers, and stand behind them, regard­less of the back­lash.” The idea, says Singer, “is to estab­lish a jour­nal where it’s clear from the name and object that con­tro­ver­sial ideas are wel­come.”

Is it true that “con­tro­ver­sial ideas” have been denied a hear­ing else­where in acad­e­mia? The wide­ly-cov­ered tac­tics of “no-plat­form­ing” prac­ticed by some cam­pus activists have cre­at­ed the impres­sion that cen­sor­ship or illib­er­al­ism in col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties has become an epi­dem­ic prob­lem. No so, argues Princeton’s Eddie Glaude, Jr., who points out that fig­ures who have been dis­in­vit­ed to speak at cer­tain insti­tu­tions have been wel­comed on dozens of oth­er cam­pus­es “with­out it becom­ing a nation­al spec­ta­cle.” Sen­sa­tion­al­ized cam­pus protests are “not the norm,” as many would have us believe, he writes.

But the ques­tion Singer and his co-founders pose isn’t whether con­tro­ver­sial ideas get aired in debates or lec­ture forums, but whether schol­ars have been cen­sored, or have cen­sored them­selves, in the spe­cial­ized forums of their fields, the aca­d­e­m­ic jour­nals. Singer’s co-founder/ed­i­tor Jeff McMa­han, pro­fes­sor of moral phi­los­o­phy at Oxford, believes so, as he told the BBC in a Radio 4 doc­u­men­tary called “Uni­ver­si­ty Unchal­lenged.” The new jour­nal, said McMa­han, “would enable peo­ple whose ideas might get them in trou­ble either with the left or with the right or with their own uni­ver­si­ty admin­is­tra­tion, to pub­lish under a pseu­do­nym.”

Those who feel cer­tain posi­tions might put their career in jeop­ardy will have cov­er, but McMa­han declares that “the screen­ing pro­ce­dure” for pub­li­ca­tion “will be as rig­or­ous as those for oth­er aca­d­e­m­ic jour­nals. The lev­el of qual­i­ty will be main­tained.” Some skep­ti­cism may be war­rant­ed giv­en the journal’s intent to pub­lish work from every dis­ci­pline. The edi­tors of spe­cial­ist jour­nals bring net­works of review­ers and spe­cial­ized knowl­edge them­selves to the usu­al vet­ting process. In this case, the core found­ing team are all philoso­phers: Singer, McMa­han, and Francesca Min­er­va, post­doc­tor­al fel­low at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ghent.

One might rea­son­ably ask how that process can be “as rig­or­ous” on this whole­sale scale. Though the BBC reports that there will be an “intel­lec­tu­al­ly diverse inter­na­tion­al edi­to­r­i­al board,” board mem­bers are rarely very involved in the edi­to­r­i­al oper­a­tions of an aca­d­e­m­ic jour­nal. Justin Wein­berg at Dai­ly Nous has some oth­er ques­tions, includ­ing whether the degree, or exis­tence, of aca­d­e­m­ic cen­sor­ship even war­rants the journal’s cre­ation. “No evi­dence was cit­ed,” he writes “to sup­port the claim that ‘a cul­ture of fear and self-cen­sor­ship’ is pre­vent­ing arti­cles that would pass a review process” from see­ing pub­li­ca­tion.

Fur­ther­more, Wein­berg says, the journal’s puta­tive founders have giv­en no argu­ment “to allay what seems to be a rea­son­able con­cern that the cre­ation of such a jour­nal will fos­ter more of a ‘cul­ture of fear and self-cen­sor­ship’ com­pared to oth­er options, or that it plays into and rein­forces exper­tise-under­min­ing mis­con­cep­tions about acad­e­mia bandied about in pop­u­lar media that may have neg­a­tive effects…. Giv­en that the found­ing team is com­prised of peo­ple not­ed for views that empha­size empir­i­cal facts and con­se­quences, one might rea­son­ably hope for a pub­lic dis­cus­sion of such evi­dence and argu­ments.”

Should schol­ars pub­lish pseu­do­ny­mous­ly in peer-reviewed jour­nals? Shouldn’t they be will­ing to defend their ideas on the mer­its with­out hid­ing their iden­ti­ty? Is such sub­terfuge real­ly nec­es­sary? “Right now,” McMa­han asserts, “in cur­rent con­di­tions some­thing like this is need­ed…. I think all of us will be very hap­py if, and when, the need for such a jour­nal dis­ap­pears, and the soon­er the bet­ter.” Giv­en that the journal’s co-founders paint such a broad­ly dire pic­ture of the state of acad­e­mia, it’s rea­son­able to ask for more than anec­do­tal evi­dence of their claims. A few high-pro­file inci­dents do not prove a wide­spread cul­ture of repres­sion.

It is also “fair to won­der,” writes Annabelle Tim­sit at Quartz, “whether the board of a jour­nal ded­i­cat­ed to free speech might have a bias toward pub­lish­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly con­tro­ver­sial ideas in the inter­est of free­dom of thought” over the inter­ests of good schol­ar­ship and sound eth­i­cal prac­tice.

via Dai­ly Nous

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A New Aca­d­e­m­ic Hoax–Complete with Fake Arti­cles Pub­lished in Aca­d­e­m­ic Journals–Ventures to Show the “Cor­rup­tion” of Cul­tur­al Stud­ies

What Are the Most Influ­en­tial Books Writ­ten by Schol­ars in the Last 20 Years?: Lead­ing Aca­d­e­mics Pick “The New Canon”

The 20 Most Influ­en­tial Aca­d­e­m­ic Books of All Time: No Spoil­ers

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness