Ask a random current student if he or she has read something by William Shakespeare, Geoffrey Chaucer, or Mark Twain, and the answer will almost certainly be a yes— whether that “yes” is voiced with fondness, indifference, or bitterness. Ask that student’s parents or grandparents the same question, and despite generational gaps, the answer likely will not change.
The quintessential “American Dream” is one of the most pervasive and iconic themes of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries — our mentors push us toward it; the media glamorizes it; poor Jay Gatsby died trying to achieve it. However, as young graduates across the nation return to their parents’ homes with diplomas in one hopeful hand, the goal of proud, self-governed homeownership seems to slip further and further away.
I enjoy playing online games, even though finding just the right game that suits my style can be a challenge. I have loved SuperPoke Pets in the past, and now, this week, I have a whole new endearment to endorse — SimCity — even though I have yet to play the game!
Today, March 8, is International Women’s Day, and there are many reports of today’s worldwide celebrations; there are lists of famous women who are remarkable for many reasons, women past and present who lead their chosen field in one way or another. I thought I would salute one particular woman of the now and the future and share a unique piece of Portuguese Culture at the same time.
Shortly after I arrived in Portugal I was invited to attend the “Ribbon Ceremony” for the final year students at ESCS- Escola Superior de Comunicação Social, to watch Mr Ps youngest daughter, Lara, having her “Ribbons” being blessed.
Educating the Deaf in America is an expensive proposition — especially in a modern mainstream setting with Hearing students and interpreters are required. Educating the college-capable Deaf is an even more daunting project because of the massive amount of money it takes to educate just a single Deaf student.
The Americans with Disabilities Act is now 22 years old, but that Act still doesn’t begin to really protect the rights of the disabled. All the Act does is try to level the playing field of fair play by mandating equal access and opportunity but, in many cases, if you want full and verified ADA protection, you have to hire a lawyer and sue. That’s an expensive proposition for any disabled person to conjure.
There’s an infuriating move afoot in several major universities to “dumb down” graduation requirements by removing foreign language fluency from the core program of study. Some schools incredibly want to make a mere semester of a foreign language an elective and not a hard requirement for earning a diploma. When I was in college, we had to take four semesters of a foreign language in order to graduate. Soon, that minimal forced fluency that formed many generations of students will no longer be important to a college education.
After four years, we still hold the one-year Masters degree in utter disdain. I recently learned that an old adjunct friend of mine was forced to get an MFA degree — a Master of Fine Arts — in order to keep her college teaching job.
One semester, I was teaching a Dramatic Literature course at a major public university on the East Coast, when I was approached by four women after the first session.
I love it when cultural entertainment memes are employed against real fake society — and that just happened at Washington State University when V — not the V War Machine — played an uninvited classroom visit via video.
If we were to have a mascot for this Scientific Aesthetic blog where the Arts and Science converge, it would undoubtedly be the visage of the medically trained essayist, poet philosopher and Harvard professor — and brother of Henry and Alice and son of Henry, Sr. — William James.
We rambunctiously support higher education. We love semiotics. When we received a request over the weekend from the University of Tartu Department of Semiotics — that combined both of our passions — we were delighted to help!
When I was working on the Broadway production of — “The Will Rogers Follies” — I was contacted by a friend of mine who was teaching at a major East Coast university.
There are very few, if any, graduate theatre training programs where the word is so valued that a Playwright is the Chair of the department.
First the car industry went bankrupt; next on the economic griddle — as argued in the Chronicle of Higher Education — is the rising astronomical cost of a university education that is about to burst a bloody mess upon us all.
