Who do you think you are? There are two answers We tell children that they can be whatever they want to be. But philosopher Joanna Lawson, an assistant professor at Oklahoma State University, remembers the moment her piano teacher told her that, in fact, she could not plan to attend Juilliard and become a professional
Literary Links: Life Stories in Literature Read More »
You Must Remember This “On the nature of autobiographical memory” When we construct our life story, we tap into autobiographical memory, our remembrances of events that we’ve experienced over our lifetime. In this article Jonathan Weiner, the Maxwell M. Geffen Professor of Medical and Scientific Journalism at Columbia University, examines how different peoples’ memories function
Literary Links: Life Stories in Literature Read More »
Introduction During the last three weeks in June my husband and I undertook a huge road trip to attend a family wedding: 3,000 miles from the West Coast to the East Coast of the U.S., then 3,000 miles back. That trip provided lots of time to listen to audiobooks. We had enjoyed a TV series
Author Focus: L.R. Wright Read More »
Think for Yourself “One of the most dehumanizing effects of AI is the short cuts it offers through the gaps and impasses intrinsic to the act of writing.” For those of us who write to discover what we think about a topic, Dan Chiasson, chair of the English department at Wellesley College, addresses a fundamental
How America Gave Up on Its Own History “Unable to agree on how to interpret the American story, the country’s schools, universities, and political institutions have stopped trying to tell it at all.” Just as individuals construct stories that assert their identity, so do other social and political groups, including nations. Yoni Appelbaum, deputy executive
Literary Links: Life Stories in Literature Read More »
Do We Think Too Much About the Future? “For most of history, people didn’t try predicting it. Maybe that was wise.” One feature of life story psychology is the concept of life review, a tendency to think about the future in terms of what our lives mean and what we want to leave as a legacy.
Literary Links: Life Stories in Literature Read More »
The Summer Reading Guide If you’re still drawing up your summer reading plan, The Atlantic has 25 recommendations for books in the following categories: What Close Reading Can Reveal About an Author’s Intentions I was always taught that we cannot know what an author intended to do; we can only see what an author has
In Praise of Chick Lit: The Genre’s All-Stars Talk to Vanity Fair “As The Devil Wears Prada 2 dominates, it’s time to give these best-selling, much-maligned books about single women in the big city their due—with help from Plum Sykes and Jennifer Weiner.” I don’t like the term chick lit; nonetheless, I’ll have to live
A man awakens with no memory of who he is, where he is, or why he’s here. He’s being ministered to by robotic arms apparently controlled by a computer that keeps asking, “What is your name?” As flashes of memory play out in his mind, he struggles to remember. He asks questions, but all the
Reading Notes: March Read More »
Reading to young kids improves their social skills − and a new study shows it doesn’t matter whether parents stop to ask questions Interested in developing empathy and creativity in her school-age children, Erin Clabough, associate professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, compared two methods of reading aloud to children: (1) reading straight
