Distinguished
Selling the Human
Did you see Google’s new ad, released not long ago and which is part of their Google India strategy? It’s quite effective. Continue reading “Selling the Human”
“We’re In A Tight Spot”
Do you have an opinion on massively open online courses (MOOC)…? Today, the Edge‘s Russell McCutcheon wrote a brief post on his Department’s blog about them.
We’re All Beautiful
Almost ten years ago, the folks at Dove personal care products created quite a stir with their “Real Beauty” campaign. The photo above became one of the iconic emblems of Dove’s self-described attempt to change the definition of beauty to include “real bodies,” perhaps better defined as the bodies of average women. While Dove’s initial goal with this campaign was to “widen the narrow definition of beauty,” it has lately described a shift in focus onto building female self-confidence and self-esteem, calling the latest incarnation of its work “an unprecedented effort to make beauty a source of confidence, not anxiety.” Continue reading “We’re All Beautiful”
Stay Tuned…
Our Curator, Andie Alexander, was in Baltimore recently, at a conference, and she filmed a panel on “the Nones” featuring a couple members of Culture on the Edge.
The full panel, posted in several parts, will soon be online. In the meantime, did you see the report from this panel that we posted not long ago?
So stay tuned….
“Just By Magic”
For those interested in historical narratives and the topic of origins, consider the following documentary from 2007, about the rock group that, as it turns out, just happened to have been formed when George Harrison had dinner with Roy Orbison and Jeff Lynne. Continue reading ““Just By Magic””
The Social Has Effects
Just because we collectively make things happen — things that provide the conditions in which we all live and move, like defining this as race or that as religion, or this as meaning stop and that as meaning go — doesn’t make those conditions or our actions within them fake.
Subtle Screams
When my oldest child was still a toddler (and in that phase where she was old enough to say “no,” but still young enough to be completely irrational), I called my wise mother one night having a tantrum of my own. I wanted her to tell me how to reason with my daughter – what to tell my precious offspring that would make her eat her breakfast, separate from a beloved toy, or submit to a nap. In short, I was asking for the holy grail of toddler parenting. Continue reading “Subtle Screams”
Reports of the Myth of Race are Greatly Exaggerated
I caught an interview on the radio this morning with Jacqueline Jones, a history professor at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of a new book on “the myth of race.”
Give it a listen. Continue reading “Reports of the Myth of Race are Greatly Exaggerated”
In the Eye of the Beholder
A graduating senior in our Department recently wrote a very nice blog post, for our Department’s site, on how disappointed a friend of hers, whom she had met while traveling in India, was when discovering a Buddhist monk using a cell phone. (Read her blog post here.) I posted a link to the article on a Facebook group devoted to the History of Religions — a group that, despite being some people’s preferred technical name for our academic discipline, has attracted a diverse membership. Someone in the group, having read the post, soon commented on how a monk with a cell phone was evidence of decay in religions. Continue reading “In the Eye of the Beholder”