We no longer dare to believe in beauty and we make of it a mere appearance in order the more easily to dispose of it. "No more loved or fostered by religion, beauty is lifted from its face as a mask, and its absence exposes features on that face, which threaten to become incomprehensible to man. Beauty is the disinterested one, without which the ancient world refused to understand itself, a word that both imperceptibly and yet unmistakably has bid farewell to our new world, a world of interests, leaving it to its own avarice and sadness. "Beauty is the last thing which the thinking intellect dares to approach, since only it dances as an uncontained splendor around the double constellation of the true and the good and their inseparable relation to one another. In the introduction to the first volume of his monumental "Herrlichkeit" (The Glory of the Lord), in which he developed a systematic theology centered on the transcendentalism of the beautiful, Hans Urs von Balthasar writes:
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For more specific instructions, see " Reading Notes: Suggested Approaches." Grading: reading assignments 80% class participation 20%. These will be graded and will serve as the basis for class discussions. Students should complete notes for three of four readings per week and for twelve of the fifteen weeks. Notes on each of the readings should usually be two short paragraphs - one summarizing the central argument and one offering critical analysis - for a total of 2 to 5 pages per week. (1) Before class write a brief summary of the readings. Students may choose one of the following two options: Course RequirementsĬlass attendance is mandatory. We will take an interdisciplinary and critical approach, integrating history with literary criticism, philosophy, and anthropology. Readings include works by Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Habermas, Whorf, Quine, Wittgenstein, Geertz, Foucault, and Spivak. Office hours: Mondays 10-12 and by appointment.Į-mail: interdisciplinary course examines the most important works on representations of cultures - whether conceptualized as tribes, nations, civilizations, the modern, or the West. Imagined Unities: Nations, Civilizations, Modernities Imagined Unities: Nations, Civilizations, Modernities The story begins as Ashoke and Ashima leave Calcutta and settle in New York City. The film takes place primarily in Kolkata, New York City, and suburbs of New York City. The Namesake depicts the struggles of Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli, first-generation immigrants from the state of West Bengal to the United States, and their American-born children Gogol and Sonia. The Namesake received positive reviews from American critics. The film was released in the United States on 9 March 2007, following screenings at film festivals in Toronto and New York City. The film was produced by Indian, American and Japanese studios. It stars Kal Penn, Tabu, Irrfan Khan and Sahira Nair. The Namesake is a 2006 English-language drama film directed by Mira Nair and written by Sooni Taraporevala based on the novel The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri. The prices skyrocket, but when disaster looms, Ylfing must face what he has done and decide who he wants to be: a man who walks away and lets the city shatter, as his master did? Or will he embrace the power of story to save ten thousand lives? At Sterre's command, Ylfing begins telling stories once more, fanning the city into a mania for a few shipments of an exotic flower. That is, until Ylfing's employer finds out what he is, what he does, and what he knows. But Ylfing has been struggling to come to terms with what his master did, with the audiences he's been alienated from, and with the stories he can no longer trust himself to tell. Now Ylfing is all alone in a new realm, brokenhearted and grieving-but a Chant in his own right, employed as a translator to a wealthy merchant of luxury goods, Sterre de Waeyer. Three years ago, Ylfing watched his master-Chant tear a nation apart with nothing but the words on his tongue. A young storyteller must embrace his own skills-and the power of stories-to save a nation from economic ruin, in the standalone sequel to A Conspiracy of Truths. One way to discuss this book is an exploration into the nature of feelings. While everyone had some idea of what getting the moon consisted of that made it impossible, Lenore’s idea of it was pretty easy to accommodate. The only person with the wisdom actually to ask her what she is really asking for is the court jester. But perhaps Lenore is not asking for as much as everyone thinks. Of course, he has no idea how this can even be possible, and it seems that his trusty entourage of crafty assistants only seem to validate this. Her father, the King, who always gets his beloved daughter what she wants, promises the moon. When Princess Lenore falls ill with a tummy ache from too many tarts, she laments that only the moon itself can cure her ailment. Puppet show with ASL interpretation and closed captioning by TN Deaf Library Guidelines for Philosophical Discussion Can the King figure out a way to satisfy his daughter’s demands? Only with the help of an unassuming assistant… his court jester! Princess Lenore has fallen ill, and there is only one thing that can make her feel better: the moon. Activity Suggestion » Summary Many Moons is a magical story about emotion, wisdom, and perception. This murderer claims to be al-Jahiz, returned to condemn the modern age for its social oppressions. Al-Jahiz transformed the world forty years ago when he opened up the veil between the magical and mundane realms, before vanishing into the unknown. So when someone murders a secret brotherhood dedicated to one of the most famous men in history, al-Jahiz, Agent Fatma is called onto the case. Djèlí Clark (Published by Tordotcom and Orbit UK) Winner,Ĭairo, 1912: Though Fatma el-Sha’arawi is the youngest woman working for the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities, she’s certainly not a rookie, especially after preventing the destruction of the universe last summer. 7/3/2023 0 Comments Ocean vuong exit woundsThe Los Angeles Public Library serves the largest most diverse population of any library in the United States. He teaches English and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. His newest nonfiction book, Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War was be published in April 2016. His first novel, The Sympathizer won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction and the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. His stories have appeared in Best New American Voices, TriQuarterly, Narrative, and the Chicago Tribune and he is the author of the academic book Race and Resistance. Viet Thanh Nguyen was born in Vietnam and raised in America. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, he lives in New York City. Selected by Foreign Policy magazine as a 2016 100 Leading Global Thinker, Ocean has been featured on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” PBS NewsHour, VICE, and The New Yorker. Vuong’s writings have been featured in The Atlantic, The Nation, New Republic, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Village Voice, and American Poetry Review, which awarded him the Stanley Kunitz Prize for Younger Poets. A Ruth Lilly fellow from the Poetry Foundation, he has received many honors including fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, The Academy of American Poets, and the Pushcart Prize. Poet and essayist Ocean Vuong is the author of Night Sky with Exit Wounds, winner of the 2016 Whiting Award. In 2019 Shoestring Press published The Fragile Bridge, my New and Selected Poems. You can order it or read the opening chapters via the top two links on the right. It moves Jane Austen's characters into the twenty-first century and considers how they might behave. My take on Jane Austen's classic novel, Mansfield Park Revisited, is available as a paperback and e-book. As I write the pandemic is still going on, but I have had the jab, and am going out occasionally, but being careful not to endanger others. Sickness, bereavement and isolation are all here, along with empty cities and animals roving the streets, but there are also some very funny and life-enhancing poems about how people are coping in extraordinary times, and intend to come through. The poems come from all five continents and all corners of Britain, and look from several different angles at the crisis. I'm happy to announce that my translation of Lorca's Selected Poems, published by Bloodaxe as long ago as 1992, has appeared in a revised edition this month.ĭuring the lockdown I spent time collecting work for an anthology about corona virus and the lockdowns, Poems for the Year 2020 : Eighty Poets on the Pandemic ( Shoestring Press, £10). I thought I wanted the kiss between the two men in Brokeback Mountain to be long, sloppy and ravenous. How many such cinematic kisses have we seen? Before how many western sunsets? How many happy endings in which the binary molecule of man and woman embracing rationalises the messy, blood-spattered colonisation of the western half of the North American continent and makes it tolerable anew. When I imagined seeing Ang Lee's new film adaptation of Brokeback Mountain, based on a screenplay by Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana, I imagined the first kiss of its two protagonists. I thought the only way I was going to like it was if these cowboys had sex! And then they did!" And yet I remember calling out to my wife, midway through this particular story, saying, "I'm reading this cowboy story that I thought I was going to hate. The early pages of this unknown western narrative did not interest me, because I thought at that time, and think still, that the myth of the Old West, with its gunslingers and traditional masculine bravado, was stifling, repellent, and misguided. The names of the writers were stripped from the works for the purposes of the competition. It's by Annie Proulx, but I didn't know that then. I first read "Brokeback Mountain", the short story on which Ang Lee's new film is based, when I was judging a short story award in 1998. No sooner said than done - the pool does indeed close before Glory's birthday party. Even Frankie is changing, but not in a very nice way. And then Frankie, Glory's other best friend, tells her the pool is going to be closing for repairs, even though there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with it. First, big sister Jesslyn, her best friend, in more interested in a boy now than in doing things with Glory. But before the summer even gets going, things begin to change. It is also the summer when mostly white volunteers went to Mississippi to register black voters.įor Gloriana June Hemphill, or Glory, the summer of 1964 means a 12th birthday celebrated at her beloved Community Pool on July 4th. It was during the summer of 1964, called the Freedom Summer, that the Civil Rights Act was signed into law prohibiting discrimination based on race, color, religion or national origin. Set in a place called Hanging Moss, Mississippi, Glory Be is a work of historical fiction set in 1964, a volatile time and place at the height of the Civil Rights Movement and much of it is drawn from the author's own recollections and experiences. I read Glory Be last summer during a very hazy, hot, and humid stretch of weather we were having.* It was the perfect book for the season - it, too, is loaded with heat and humidity, but not all of it is weather related. |