Topic: Arts & Humanities

Blog archives

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• Humanities Crash Course Week 48: Borges

  What my favorite author can teach us about the nature of language.

• Humanities Crash Course Week 47: Short Fiction

  Empathizing with other lives by experiencing literary “virtual realities.”

• Humanities Crash Course Week 46: Freud

  Sometimes, a mindless popcorn flick is just a mindless popcorn flick.

• Humanities Crash Course Week 45: More Modernism

  Exploring works that express ideas and feelings by transcending media conventions.

• Humanities Crash Course Week 44: Modernist Art

  Conveying ideas and feelings by transcending conventional words and images.

• Humanities Crash Course Week 43: Racial Injustice

  Diving into a deeply painful and destructive moral failing: prejudice.

• Humanities Crash Course Week 42: Evil Flowers

  Transcendence as a way to cope with the drabness of everyday life.

• Humanities Crash Course Week 41: What Moves Us

  Learning about memory and motivations from two classic novels.

• Humanities Crash Course Week 40: Good & Evil

  Connecting with meaning by transcending cultural conventions.

• Humanities Crash Course Week 39: Gothic Horror

  Learning about agency and ethics from a 200-year-old novel (and not its more famous film adaptation.)

• Humanities Crash Course Week 38: Emergence

  Perennially relevant lessons about liberty and bottom-up organization from two classic texts.

• Humanities Crash Course Week 37: Jane Austen

  How ChatGPT helped me enjoy — and learn from — a classic 19th century novel.

• Humanities Crash Course Week 36: Revolutions

  Three radically different approaches to remaking society.

• Humanities Crash Course Week 35: Romanticism

  Grappling with poetry infused with powerful mythological imagery.

• Humanities Crash Course Week 34: Sturm und Drang

  Exploring the unreasonable pursuit of personal passions via works of fiction and meta-fiction.

• Humanities Crash Course Week 33: Rational Foundations for Morality

  Three texts that ground knowledge, nature, and morality on solid philosophical foundations.

• Humanities Crash Course Week 32: Voltaire

  Thoughts on a classic philosophical novel with an undesirable stance toward undesirable circumstances.

• Humanities Crash Course Week 31: Political Theory

  Delving into two classic books that explore evergreen political tensions.

• Humanities Crash Course Week 30: Self-deception

  Musings on delusion triggered by one of the best novels ever written.

• Humanities Crash Course Week 29: Shakespeare III

  Thoughts on moral responses to prejudice and injustice spurred by Shakespeare and Spike Lee.

• Humanities Crash Course Week 28: Renaissance Geniuses

  Thoughts on patronage spurred by the lives of some of the world's most important artists.

• Humanities Crash Course Week 27: Shakespeare II

  Reflections on self-referential art inspired by the bard's most famous romantic works.

• Humanities Crash Course Week 26: Shakespeare I

  Across centuries, the bard warns us that subverting the ‘natural’ order of things can have dire consequences.

• Humanities Crash Course Week 25: The Divine Comedy

  Following Dante out of hell onto (hopefully) better things.

• Humanities Crash Course Week 24: Divine Love

  Two poems by Dante Alighieri, and what they tell us about living a good life.

• Humanities Crash Course Week 23: Romantic Love

  Exploring the tension between desire, morals, and social duty through two romantic relationships set centuries apart.

• Humanities Crash Course Week 22: African Epics

  Exploring the line between author and storyteller through African oral traditions.

• Humanities Crash Course Week 21: Middle English

  A visit with early English texts (which I didn’t enjoy very much.)

• Humanities Crash Course Week 20: Confessions

  What Augustine, Bergman, and Derrida teach us about finding meaning in multiple interpretations.

• Humanities Crash Course Week 19: Bhagavad Gita

  Learning about ethical and moral teachings that transcend times and cultures.

• Humanities Crash Course Week 18: 1,001 Nights

  Reflections on how technology affects perceptions of authorship and inspiration.

• Humanities Crash Course Week 17: Curiositas

  Reflections on a second-century tale about messing around and finding out.

• Humanities Crash Course Week 16: The Art of War

  Classic Chinese advice for dealing with conflict and acting in alignment with nature.

• Humanities Crash Course Week 15: Boethius

  Reflections on a classical work of early Medieval philosophy.

• Humanities Crash Course Week 14: Roman Decadence

  Exploring foundational works of Western culture that deal in myth-making and decadence.

• Humanities Crash Course Week 13: The Qur’an

  Reflections on how we derive meaning from ancient spiritual texts — and how AI can help.

• Humanities Crash Course Week 12: Suetonius

  Distressing examples of how absolute power corrupts, plus sadly relevant insights into how republics can devolve into tyranny.

• Humanities Crash Course Week 11: Stoicism

  Looking to literature for answers to one of the key questions in life: how do we deal with suffering?

• Humanities Crash Course Week 10: Greek Drama

  Reflections on ancient plays that explore timeless human foibles, plus a movie starring a venerable recently departed actor.

• Humanities Crash Course Week 9: The Bible

  Revisiting the central work in Western Culture – and a controversial movie that adds texture and perspective.

• Humanities Crash Course Week 8: Ancient Egypt

  Listening to voices that sing of humanity and godliness across vast deserts of time.

• Humanities Crash Course Week 7: Gilgamesh

  Reflections on the finitude of life inspired by some of our most ancient literature and a modern Iranian film.

• Humanities Crash Course Week 6: Herodotus

  Ancient lessons in love and war, supplemented with more recent insights into the power of imitation.

• Humanities Crash Course Week 5: Eudaemonia

  Learning about the good life from Aristotle and a somewhat boring movie.

• Humanities Crash Course Week 4: Confucius

  Turning to ancient Chinese philosophy for clues on living a good life under tumultuous change.

• Humanities Crash Course Week 3: The Odyssey

  Reflections spurred by an epic poem and a classic road movie.

• Humanities Crash Course Week 2: Greek Poetry

  Thoughts about wealth, power, and impermanence.

• Humanities Crash Course Week 1: Plato

  Exploring Plato, AI-enhanced note-taking, and a sci-fi classic in the first week of a humanities journey.

• A Crash Course in the Humanities

  Embarking on a year-long journey to explore the classics with the help of AI and a curated reading list.

• The Informed Life With Matt Nish-Lapidus

  Navigating art’s role in a world shaped by the pandemic and climate change.

• A Tune For These Times

  How a timeless song about loss and hope feels more urgent than ever.

• Apollo 11 at Fifty

  My favorite moon landing story is an inspiring tale of unity.

• Two Approaches to Preserving Cultural Monuments

  How two different cultures tackle preserving their heritage and what we can learn from them.