“While squabbles over session approval are not uncommon at academic conferences, the conflict in medieval studies feels like a struggle for the future of the field, one that sometimes pits older scholars against a younger generation, and those with a traditional approach against those with a more activist bent. And it’s turned personal at times, even nasty and disturbing, with medievalists lobbing insults over Twitter, squaring off in blog posts, and calling for colleagues to be more or less excommunicated from the discipline.” – Chronicle of Higher Education
Blog
This Is How A Language Dies
Today, only about 40 people speak the Tayap language, and Don Kulick predicts that the language will be “stone cold dead” in less than 50 years. How did that happen? Perhaps more importantly, what cultural and economic losses paved the way? The answer might lie in the backward way we’ve been framing language death. – The American Scholar
The Pursuit Of Happiness: An Ultimately Futile Exercise In The Era Of Self-Gratification
“We trick ourselves into thinking we know what is needed to be happy: a promotion, a new car, a vacation, a good-looking partner. We believe this even though we know there are plenty of people with good jobs, new cars, vacations, and attractive partners, and many of them are miserable. But they, too, imagine their misery can be fixed by a bottle of Pétrus or a yacht or public adulation.” – Lapham’s Quarterly
When Bad Things Happen At The Opera: Should We Applaud These Plotlines?
“When our society is having to confront the murder of women, how can we dare to applaud the killing of a woman?” said Cristiano Chiarot, the head of the opera house, the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. – Sydney Morning Herald
Opera Australia Director: It Would Be “Irresponsible” To Ban Classics Of The Repertoire
Lyndon Terracini was responding to a call from Australian composers, directors, musicians, and vocalists, who have called for a ”revolution” to remove what they describe as gender bias, sexism, and dramatised acts of violence against women in opera. – Sydney Morning Herald
The Book Editor Whose Sessions With Authors Are Like Psychoanalysis
Judith Gurewich, the publisher of Other Press. trained as a Lacanian analyst and still practices as one part-time. “She brings her intensity to her uniquely aural editing process, hosting authors at her home in Cambridge, Mass., for days at a time while they read their manuscripts aloud to her.” – The New York Times
‘Nixon in China’ comes to Princeton – literally smarter than ever
Everybody from singers to directors to conductors to critics has needed a few decades to determine what exactly is in John Adams’s first opera and how to draw the most out of it. Steven LaCosse’s staging at this year’s Princeton Festival did just that. – David Patrick Stearns
How Medieval History Is Being Used To Fuel Conspiracy Theories
“Simple stereotypes about the Middle Ages aren’t just wrong; they have become weapons for white supremacy. As the great spire of Notre Dame fell, I knew the disaster, whatever the cause turned out to be, would fuel incendiary anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish conspiracy theories based on white supremacist reconstructions of Western European history.” – Pacific Standard
Boris Johnson Or Jeremy Hunt — As UK Prime Minister, Which One Would Be Better For The Arts?
Ed Vaizey, who was Conservative PM David Cameron’s minister for culture: “Safe to say, the arts and cultural policy have not featured highly in the many debates and hustings that have taken place in the last few weeks of campaigning. Nevertheless, there is some hope for the arts, when one analyses the background of the main contenders.” (Vaizey goes on to compare Johnson to Marmite.) – The Art Newspaper
The Rise Of Conspiracy Theory Culture
Shane Dawson is a capricious conspiracist. In the middle of his paranoid rant about the moon, he places his hands sincerely over his chest and says: “Once again, it’s a theory. I don’t want to get sued, or put in jail.” Then he narrows his eyes, as if to size up the whole field of space science, and scoffs, “But I mean, the evidence is not looking good.” – The New York Times