Articles

Explore the debate and science of Member Contributions.

June 15, 2024

Letter to a Young Professor

Loretta Graziano Breuning

Being “non-judgmental” was the highest virtue when I became a professor in the 1980s. How can you be non-judgmental while grading hundreds of papers?

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June 15, 2024

The Threat of Literature qua Literature and the Death of Greatness

Mark Zunac

The impetus for my foray into curriculum building was little more than a desire to make literature old again. Culturally, we knew we were facing headwinds when it came to literature’s appeal to......

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June 1, 2024

Misadventures of a Reluctant Convert—Another Whimsical Memoir

Nils A. Haug

This memoir recounts the story of my education in the vicissitudes of life while at university, straight out of school, and how I reluctantly and unexpectedly transitioned from a free (and loose) spir......

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May 4, 2024

Doktormutter and Languages of Old

Peter Cohee

Professor Slater taught me how to prepare and read as a serious student, not imposing my vain and lazy interpretation on a text but mastering the granular details of a language to make the vast s......

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April 20, 2024

The Academic's Roadmap

Bob Wright

By all means, pursue your noble dream of improving the condition of humanity through your research and teaching. Could I do it all again, I would, but I would do things very differently.

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April 20, 2024

The Case of the Anguished Airman

F.R. Duplantier

There are only two good reasons for attending graduate school: (1) getting a degree prerequisite to a teaching career, and (2) having nothing better to do. 

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April 6, 2024

Doktorväter: A Memoir

Stefania R. Jha

It would be difficult to decide which of the five Doktorväter were most influential in my development as a scholar—they all contributed in various ways by their example of humanity, exactin......

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April 6, 2024

Stranger in a Strange Land

Forest Hansen

It wasn’t until I joined the faculty that I learned I was entering a somewhat foreign culture. I can best sum it up as “a culture of pretense.”

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March 23, 2024

Misadventures of a Reluctant Student—A Whimsical Memoir

Nils A. Haug

Education. What does that really mean? Does it imply certain requirements such as a university degree or a high school certificate to succeed in life? What is it exactly that makes a person educated?

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March 9, 2024

A Portrait of Claireve Grandjouan

Helaine L. Smith

Claireve Grandjouan, when I knew her, was Head of the Classics Department at Hunter College, and that year gave a three-hour Friday evening class in Egyptian archaeology.

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