I Should Have Read This before Finishing “Dear Layla Welcome to Palestine”
“There’s just one request I have, Pan: please don’t stick me in any of your books. And if that’s too much to ask, do me a favor and at least leave my name out.” —…
“There’s just one request I have, Pan: please don’t stick me in any of your books. And if that’s too much to ask, do me a favor and at least leave my name out.” —…
Some friends and I are reading Du Fu in David Young’s translation. Here’s what Ye Xie (1627-1703) had to say about him– “Take any one of Du Fu’s poems, or even one line, and everywhere…
The thing is to get under the students’ skin and arouse enough enthusiasm that they get under their own skin. This means allowing yourself to be yourself in class. My own best teachers were WC…
What I saw then was this fairly obvious faculty of art: that it goes on, it lasts a bit longer that our frail human lives—it offers comfort. The vision is more enduring than our persons—it…
A work of art is something you make, something you give to other people. It’s an object for use, and people can make many different uses of the same work. Susan Sontag
Chris Wallach and I are starting a reading group in 2015 with the aim of reading one of the translations each month of such poets as Wang Wei, Han-Shan, Li Ch’ing-chao, Tu Fu, Su Tung-p’o, Bo Juyi,…
On John Balaban’s Remembering Heaven’s Face: A Moral Witness in Vietnam For Chris, Carol, and Cristina John Balaban declared himself a Conscientious Objector during the VietnamWar; he ended up going to Vietnam, but as a member…
Thomas Merton is perhaps the single most important American Catholic writer of the 20th century, and his writings continue to remain startlingly relevant today. In this course, we will read and discuss a broad sample…
In his novel Life and Fate Vasily Grossman exposed the horrors of the Soviet system Some of the Soviet intellectuals acknowledged He had told the truth But they were against publishing it Because it could hurt the…
Magan studied Social Justice with me in 2004; did theater work with refugee kids through Center for Survivors of Torture and War Trauma as well as Playback Theater; worked with ISM in Palestine in 2006;…