The narrative spell cast over politics and society. Politics, as currently practiced, is no longer the art of the possible, but the art of the fictive. Its aim is not to change the world as it exists, but to affect the way it is perceived. This is the subject of Christian Salmon’s Storytelling, which looks at how the creative imagination has been hijacked in the twenty-first century. Salmon anatomizes the timeless human desire for narrative f ...
Non-degree and undergraduate students are both inexperienced essay writers who need close guidance to become effective writers. One of the puzzles which they encounter at the college and university after reporting for studies is the course assignments offered to them by their lecturers, which demand them to be critical thinkers and argumentative essay writers. In most colleges and universities, lecturers provide to students broad questions to an ...
The inaugural lecture is a tradition that has been practiced in western universities for centuries. These lectures originated in the great universities of continental Europe, spread to Great Britain, and then to North America. The tradition has now been appropriated further by universities around the world and especially of late in majority world countries. The inaugural lecture is a form of academic discourse, in which the recipient of a suitab ...
Crippled in childhood, Mary Wesley, sister of John Wesley, founder of the Methodist Church, speaks of the Wesley household in first-person narrative built on the facts of her life. Mary lived in a strict Christian family, one of 19 children, 10 of whom survived. Her mother, Susanna Wesley, imposed a regiment where «not one child after a year old was heard to cry out.» Her father, Samuel Wesley, a minister at Epworth, could not provide for his f ...
Where Drowned Things Live describes the struggles of an untenured professor, Kristin Ginelli, as she tries to counsel a young woman student at her university and get her to reveal who is abusing her. Kristin fails, and the student is found drowned. As a former Chicago cop who quit the force over sexual harassment and the death of her detective husband in the line of duty, Kristin doggedly investigates this mysterious death, pushing back on foot- ...
Set in and around the boomtown of Creede, Colorado, in 1892, Altars of Tomorrow is the final chapter of the Deacon Coburn narrative that began in Days of Purgatory. It is a poignant story that explores the triumph of hope and redemption in the context of human frailty. Worn down to a ragged frazzle, the River Brethren man from Conoy Creek arrives in town after being in the saddle for nearly eight months. He discovers his daughter now ha ...
Alfred Perkins was an ordinary young man who grew up in the small English village of Carlisle. When he was a boy his godfather, old Oliver Cyning, used to tell him stories about Elfland, the place where all the fairies, elves, gnomes, goblins, and more lived. Alfred grew up believing in those stories. One day, Mr. Cyning told Alfred they had to stop spending time together. Eventually, Alfred stopped believing. Now Alfred has returned home from u ...
An off-hand speculation by ex-pat and professor, David Moran, sends his celebrated historian colleague, Graham Guade, on an investigation that peels back American use of, and protection for, Japanese doctors who committed unspeakable medical experiments in WWII. The inquiry into the legacy of those atrocities churns up murder and madness in both countries, and toys with the interplay of intimacy and career success, as well as accident and causal ...
Not everyone is surprised at the rumor suggesting that Karl Wolfe, Dean of The University School, recently told Rebecca Swingle, new professor at the school, that a promotion could be more easily attained were she to sleep with him. Certainly those least surprised were several female students who had been the target of the Dean's amorous behavior. But the question remains–who might stand and suggest that such behavior should not occur in a ...
