Perhaps the most famous imperial garden in the Western imagination is that of the thirteenth-century Mongol emperor and founder of the Chinese Yuan dynasty, Khubilai Khan. Immortalized by the vivid and haunting poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge in “Kubla Khan,” Khan’s garden is an elaborate synthesis of natural and manmade
In a piece from the Chronicle of Higher Education, Frank Donoghue writes about the decline in humanities majors, a decline which is also paired with an increase in for-profit and two-year colleges. He concludes that while humanities may lose their footing in the world of college and university, their place
On August 18, 1920, the 19th Amendment was officially ratified, bringing fruition to the women’s suffrage movement and acting as a platform for modern day feminism. Since that time, commonly known as feminism’s first wave, women’s rights movements have progressed. During the early 1900s, suffrage was a primary concern of
This summer, the International Center for Photography in New York is presenting the exhibition For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights, curated by Maurice Berger, a professor at University of Maryland, Baltimore County. The show presents film and television clips, photography, newspapers, and
This past month, on July 16, in the middle of the night, Venezuelan President, Hugo Chávez, along with aides, soldiers, a television crew, and forensics experts gathered to exhume Simón Bolívar. Simón Bolívar helped free six countries from the Spanish Empire, rendering him the hero of most of Latin America.
This Sunday, August 1, the internationally acclaimed journalist and author Ahmed Rashid appeared as a featured guest on ABC News This Week. In a roundtable discussion with George Will, Donna Brazile and Paul Krugman, Rashid discussed the significance and concerns behind the recent exposure of information on the Afghanistan war
In 2013 a new edition of the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) will be published, and the American Psychiatric Association has already begun to prepare it. A number of mental health professionals are warning that the expanded diagnoses are leading to a world in which almost no
This past Sunday “The Way We Live Now,” a regular feature in the New York Times Magazine, covered the effects of the increase in Americans’ inclination towards thrift in these recent years: specifically the cycle of deleveraging, which is a contraction of credit as individuals begin to spend and borrow
This Monday, the International Criminal Court in The Hague charged the President of Sudan, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, with three counts of genocide in Darfur, which is the worst crime in international law. The charges come after a long legal process, during which al-Bashir was reelected for another term as president.
Ever find yourself daydreaming or doodling only to feel guilty for not paying attention? Well, maybe your guilt has been misplaced. The New York Times recently published an article called “Discovering the Virtues of a Wandering Mind” with the premise that daydreaming might not be so bad for you after