Humanities

Something on Your Mind? The Brain Decides…

Follow @yaleSCIbooks How do we know how many eggs are in a dozen? How do we tell red from blue? How can we imagine tomorrow when the sun has not even begun to set on today? These are just a few of the mysteries associated with the human brain, the

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Alison Bechdel’s Library of Books

Congratulations to Alison Bechdel, whose newest book, Are You My Mother?, publishes today.  We can’t wait to read this book, and have been thrilled by the marvelous attention its author has gotten recently, including a New Yorker profile by Judith Thurman, a Time profile by Lev Grossman, a fabulous book

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Eminent Biography: Cathy Jrade on Delmira Agustini

One day, oddly fainted on the ground, I fell asleep on the deep plush textures of this forest . . . I dreamed divine things! . . . A smile of yours woke me, it seems to me . . . and I do not feel my wings!. . .

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Lost Without Translation: Fady Joudah on the Poetry of Ghassan Zaqtan

Fady Joudah first became associated with Yale University Press in 2007 when he was awarded the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize by then-judge Louise Glück, and the subsequent publication of his first volume of poetry, The Earth in the Attic, in April 2008. He returns to our list this

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Architectural Space in Hitler’s Berlin

Seventy years after the end of WWII, we tend to associate Hitler and the German Reich with destruction. Yet, as Hitler rose to power in the 1920s and 1930s, construction was a key part of his political agenda, a fact that Thomas Friedrich makes clear in Hitler’s Berlin: Abused City,

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Curator Helen Evans Tours the Objects of Byzantium and Islam

Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition (7th – 9th Century), the revelatory exhibition now on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (accompanied by a rich catalogue of the same title), was recently lauded in the New York Times, praised specifically for “offering a soothing picture of artistic continuity.”  The

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Slow Lightning and Eduardo Corral: Yale’s First Latino Younger Poet

The first poem Eduardo C. Corral ever wrote was a response to Beowulf in rhyming couplets. Corral’s high school English teacher, who assigned the poem, thought his response was so good, she read it aloud to her other classes. More than a decade later, Corral’s poetry is winning even higher

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Zaha Hadid: Form in Motion

In 2004, Zaha Hadid became the first woman ever to win the Pritzker Prize, architecture’s highest honor. Last year, Hadid, an Iraqi-born architect widely known for her dynamic and innovative work, was invited to join the committee of judges for the Pritzker. If that is not evidence enough of the

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John Guare Announces the 2012 Yale Drama Series Winner: Clarence Coo’s Beautiful Province

Clarence Coo has been chosen by playwright John Guare as the winner of the 2012 Yale Drama Series for his play Beautiful Province.  Selected from over 1100 plays submitted from 24 countries, Beautiful Province, as the winner of this year’s Yale Drama Series Award, will be published by Yale University

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The Amorality of the State: An Excerpt from Why Niebuhr Matters

Famously cited as one of Obama’s favorite philosophers, midcentury religious and political thinker Reinhold Niebuhr offered “a political realism that refuses to abandon high moral principles to short-term practical compromises.” In Why Niebuhr Matters, from Yale University Press’s Why X Matters Series, author Charles Lemert explores the continued relevance of

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