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We’re excited that you’ve joined the conversation! At HMU, we want to continue the great authors’ conversations in a contemporary context, and this blog will help us do that. We look back to Aristotle and the early philosophers who used reason and discourse to gain wisdom and now we endeavor to do the same every day.
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May 26, 2023 Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post. Last week’s blog (https://hmu.edu/2023-5-19-reading-rabelais-part-i/) used Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel as the foundation to connect with contemporary works. Today’s blog continues in the same vein, connecting the old with the new. As I said before, however, Rabelais is not easy reading. The language feels …
Before HGTV, before Ty Pennington or Joanna and Chip Gaines, before This Old House even, Charlotte Brontë wrote about the dullness of life in orphanages and the solitary life of a governess in Jane Eyre. As Jane moves from situation to situation, she comments on the decoration of her living situation. In each case, the …
March 18, 2022 Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post. As chrysanthemums and tulips sprout, birds nest, and winter eases its hold on the ground, humans also begin to change some behaviors. We associate spring with life and vitality. With this also comes annual responsibilities such as cleaning. Cleaning is one of those …
December 10, 2021 Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post. Recently I attended a webinar hosted by Middlebury College on the subject of data literacy. This webinar was part of a program called Middlebury Initiative for Data and Digital Methods (or Midd:data for short) and functioned as an introduction to the importance of …
August 13, 2021 Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post. “Witchery works to scare people, to make them fear growth. But it [growth] has always been necessary, and more than ever now, it is. Otherwise we won’t make it. We won’t survive. That’s what the witchery is counting on: that we will cling …
November 6, 2020 Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post. The Social Contract has been on my mind a lot lately. Of course, elections and coronavirus and all of the current stresses on society have been on my mind, and they often circle me back into what it means to exist in a …
July 31, 2020 Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post. For an introduction to the film, listen to Johnny Flynn’s “Queen Bee” from the movie Emma. I think that something about the practiced manner of public behavior attracts us yet today. Emma is the picture of etiquette in almost all instances. When she …
June 26, 2020 Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post. Bread is of universal importance. Since nearly every culture has a type of bread used for celebration, ceremony and comfort, today’s blog breaks bread in the form of an invitation for community. Thank you for joining me today. First, I want to share …
January 10, 2020 Thanks to Alissa Simon, HMU Tutor, for today’s post. “I hate our people who find it harder to tolerate a gown awry than a soul awry, and judge a man by his bow, his bearing, and his boots.” – Michel de Montaigne, “Of Pedantry” The season of awards shows has arrived, which …
October 25, 2019 Thanks to Ned Boulberhane, a 2019 Harrison Middleton University Fellow in Ideas, for today’s post. China: The far lands of the Orient, and perhaps the world’s oldest living civilization. However, the days of Huang He River Valley have evolved into something quite different than the previous centuries. 1949 saw the rise of …
Maoist Influence on Contemporary Chinese Thought Read More »
