Category Archives: Uncategorized

The 100 Greatest Novels (or Not)

In which I discuss the Guardian’s recent “100 Best Novels of All Time.”

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Leo: Reading Trumps Reductive Views of Reality

Pope Leo recently called for reading books, which he said is “an antidote to closed-mindedness, which manifests in rigid attitudes and reductive views of reality.”

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Intimate with Heaven, as Light

Ascension poems by Donne, Vaughan, and Guite emphasize how, through Jesus, we touch the numinous.

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Expanding Outward at 60

In my latest installment, I look at how my vision began moving beyond the college and my disciplinary field to the broader world and my young adult children.

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Childhood Imagination: Encourage It or Lose It

Reflections of childhood imagining and how too often our society fails to foster it.

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Antigone Taught Mandela Leadership

While in prison, Mandela performed the role of Creon in Antigone. The experience may have helped train him for leadership years later.

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The Joys of Reading Fanny Burney

In which I share my first-time reading experience of Fanny Burney’s Cecilia, which I couldn’t bear to put down.

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O’Connor Illustrates White Identity Formation

In the short story “Artificial Nigger,” O’Connor shows how racism is inculcated in a child. Toni Morrison’s sees the story as paradigmatic.

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She My Lodestar While I Go and Come

Four poems for Mother’s Day.

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