Tag Archives: Bertolt Brecht

History from the Workers’ Perspective

By Robin Bates | Published: May 1, 2014

Bertolt Brecht captures the spirit of May Day in “A Worker Reads History.”

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Can Art Change Big Brother?

By Robin Bates | Published: September 2, 2011

The Oscar-winning German film “The Lives of Others” speaks to the ability of art to change people’s lives.

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The Burning of the Books

By Robin Bates | Published: November 24, 2010

In Ben Click’s post yesterday on the banning history of Huckleberry Finn, he tells the story of a man who remembers hearing the book read to him when he was a child in a concentration camp. Horst Kruse never forgot that reading experience and would go on to become a Twain scholar. Ben talks about […]

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Is There a Price for Doing Evil?

By Robin Bates | Published: July 22, 2010

In a dinner conversation with academic colleagues and novelist Rachel Kranz, we grappled with the question of whether those who commit atrocities pay a price for doing so. I came to the conclusion that it is a question that novelists and poets are sometimes better at answering than academics.

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