American Historical Association meetings aren’t known for rousing policy debates. At this year’s gathering, however, there was a sense that historians’ perspectives are sorely needed in current policy discussions — and that historians are increasingly willing to step up. – Inside Higher Ed
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These Are The Ten Most-Borrowed Books At The New York Public Library
Perhaps not surprisingly, more than half are books for children or young readers. No. 1 is “The Snowy Day,” Ezra Jack Keats’s picture book that is one of the first to depict an African-American boy, which has been checked out 485,583 times. Next is Dr. Seuss’s “The Cat in the Hat” (469,650). – The New York Times
Five Ways Music Changed In The 2010s
Streaming changed the way we listened to music, and music changed in response to the way we listened. Songs got shorter, genres bled into one another, and language barriers dissolved. – BBC
Ross Douthat: Lit Studies And A Crisis Of Confidence
If there’s any lesson that the decline of Christianity holds for the painful death of the English department, it’s that if you aspire to keep your faith alive even in a reduced, non-hegemonic form, you need more than attenuated belief and socially-useful applications. – The New York Times
Apocalypse Now: Literature Studies Are Going Away
The academic study of literature is no longer on the verge of field collapse. It’s in the midst of it. Preliminary data suggest that hiring is at an all-time low. Entire subfields (modernism, Victorian poetry) have essentially ceased to exist. In some years, top-tier departments are failing to place a single student in a tenure-track job. Aspirants to the field have almost no professorial prospects; practitioners, especially those who advise graduate students, must face the uneasy possibility that their professional function has evaporated. – Chronicle of Higher Education
This Year’s Oscar Nominees – What The List Looks Like
Despite a plethora of diverse films competing for Oscar love this year, the Academy largely maintained its traditional point of view, handing out the most nominations to four very male, very white films. The best-picture category can have as many as 10 or as few as five nominees, depending on how the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences spreads its support. This year there were nine. – The New York Times
The Intimate Photographs That Captured Merce Cunningham
“I imagine that Cunningham came to understand not only the value of this kind of in-depth documentation, but the independent strength of the photographs as well. The elemental vitality and spirit of these images will forever celebrate Merce Cunningham’s groundbreaking work, to which he devoted his heart, mind, and body.” – New York Review of Books
How “Little Women” Was Choreographed
“Whether Jo is tackling Amy for a most grievous sisterly infraction or the sisters are tumbling over each other to get ready for a party, Gerwig keeps the sisters in constant, surging motion. That energy explodes in the film’s dance scenes, which happen in sweaty, crowded beer halls, proper Paris ballrooms and even on a snow-covered porch. For the swirling dance sequences, Gerwig and her cast got a big choreographic hand from San Diego’s Flannery Gregg.” – Los Angeles Times
The Year Of The Pronoun
Pronouns, along with conjunctions and prepositions, are generally considered a “closed class” – a group of words whose number rarely grows and whose meanings rarely change. So when pronouns take center stage, especially a new use of “they” that expands the closed class, linguists can’t help but get excited. – The Conversation
America’s Textbooks: Same History, Different Stories
The books have the same publisher. They credit the same authors. But they are customized for students in different states, and their contents sometimes diverge in ways that reflect the nation’s deepest partisan divides. – The New York Times