Stephen B. Heard— In northeastern Germany, about seventy-five kilometers north of Berlin, a little lake sits nestled in the woods. In the lake’s depths swim little fish—a dwarf cisco, Coregonus fontanae. In the fish’s name, a story is tucked away. Coregonus fontanae is one of a pair of cisco species
John A. McGuckin— Encountering Eastern Orthodoxy is not so common an event that it never risks a general level of misunderstanding. I, who am a priest of that church, was once asked by a Protestant minister at an ecumenical conference, how I could be Orthodox and not wear a kippah?
In honor of World Poetry Day, we are revisiting some of our most beloved poetry volumes in the Yale Margellos series. From ancient traditions of kabbalah to contemporary voices from Ukraine, Greece, and Syria, poetry’s capacity to reimagine the limits of language is as old as humankind itself. From violent
Donna Hicks— If there is anything that is clear about the coronavirus, it is that it doesn’t differentiate; not between Republicans and Democrats, North Americans and Europeans, Asians and Africans—all of us who consider ourselves human beings are vulnerable to its potentially lethal threat. I have observed a few interesting human
Gabriel Said Reynolds— Heaven and hell are important notions to the Qur’an, the scripture of Islam. The divine voice of the Qur’an assures its audience that those who are faithful and do good will enter into paradise, which it names janna (related to Hebrew gan, meaning “garden”) and firdaws (from
Kathryn Sikkink— Sometimes we get so enamored with our rights that we forget about our corresponding responsibilities. In order to fully realize our own rights and the rights of others, we also need to embrace and practice responsibilities. For example, people in the United States like to think they have
Stella Tillyard— On a bleak spring evening in 1741 a crowd gathered in a dark, narrow London street. At its edge well-to-do City merchants on their way westward through Hatton Garden mingled with the wretched and curious poor, washed up from tenements to the north, east, and south, looking for
Kristina Spohr — It is striking that hardly anybody in East or West in the late 1980s foresaw or imagined the dissolution of the Soviet bloc, let alone the demise of the USSR itself. Instead, the public discourse of the time, especially in America, was dominated by predictions of an impending
Helen Yaffe— COVID-19 surged in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late December 2019, and by January 2020 it had hit Hubei province like a tidal wave, swirling over China and rippling out overseas. The Chinese state rolled into action to combat the spread and to care for those infected.
Andrew Lambert— Seapower, a distinctive socio-political response to unique circumstances, emerged in the eastern Mediterranean between 2000 and 500 BC. Sea cities evolved to service the resource demands of great land-locked powers: Egypt, Anatolia and above all Mesopotamia. Sailing ships moved timber and metals over increasing distances. Insular Tyre, the