Author Archives: Steve Weiss
Writing God’s Life
Jack Miles provides an overview of his new book, God: A Biography, which won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for biography. In it, he contemplates the life of the Divinity as expressed through a variety of epic roles, from creator to … Continue reading
Posted in Episodes, Miles, Jack
Tagged Art, Literature, New York Times, Pulitzer Prize, Religion
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Civic Journalism & Cyberspace
An opinion that even though the flow of information in our society has never been greater, journalism in America has surrendered the high ground of serious reporting to entertainment, hasty analysis, and poor research. However, because of new technologies such … Continue reading
Legal Lit
Read a book or go to jail. That choice is key to an innovative alternative sentencing program called Changing Lives through Literature. One of its inventors, literary scholar Robert Waxler, describes it for Soundings. Also Robert Ferguson offers the opinion … Continue reading
New Musics
A discussion of and performance of excerpts from the music of two important American composers, George Gershwin and William Grant Still, both of whom helped to shape contemporary ideas about highbrow and lowbrow artistry with music historian Carol Oja. 829 … Continue reading
License to Speak
Moving from John Milton in the 17th-century to present-day controversies, two of the country’s leading literary and legal experts provide a lively overview of the modern interpretations of freedom of speech. 828 – License to Speak
Teachers in Cyberspace
A talk about the crucial intersection between higher education and high technology. 827 – Teachers in Cyberspace
Posted in Episodes
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Killing the White Man’s Indian
Perhaps more than any other group of people in the U.S., native Americans are the objects of inaccurate stereotypes such as the noble savage and helpless victim. But Fergus Bordewich argues that native Americans in the 1900s are giving the … Continue reading
Posted in Bordewich, Fergus, Episodes
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Best of the South
A discussion with Shannon Ravenel and Richard Bausch of Best of the South: From Ten Years of New Stories from the South, a new collection of 20 short stories chosen by Anne Tyler, from New Stories from the South. Newsweek … Continue reading
Posted in Bausch, Richard, Episodes, Ravenel, Shannon
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Death in a Delphi Seminar
Norman Holland reads from and talks about his new novel, Death in a Delphi Seminar, which he calls a post-modern mystery. The setting is an English department where the complexities of literary theory turn grim and lead to murder in … Continue reading
Democracy on Trial
Is America still the model for democracy in the modern world? Today, when many critics argue that our social fabric is unraveling, what are our prospects for deliberative democracy and social cohesion? Distinguished social philosopher, Jean Bethke Elshtain, addresses those … Continue reading
Posted in Elshtain, Jean Bethke, Episodes
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