With Good Reason

The federal government unveiled a 12 billion dollar initiative last summer to add 5 million new community college graduates by 2020.   Frank Friedman (Piedmont Virginia Community College) says community college enrollment has exploded during the recession, but colleges are struggling to keep up with the demand for faculty and facilities. Also featured: Realizing that [...]

Marc Lee Raphael (College of William and Mary) says our identities are formed by a narrative that we construct about ourselves that is part fiction and part fact.  In Raphael’s most recent book, Diary of a Los Angeles Jew, 1947-1972: Autobiography as Autofiction, the facts are his diary entries. The fiction is how Marc interprets [...]

James Farmer was the leader of the 1961 Freedom Rides that desegregated transportation in the South. His skilled oratory was shaped in part as a member of the legendary 1935 debate team portrayed in Denzel Washington’s 2007 feature film, The Great Debaters. Timothy O’Donnell (University of Mary Washington) is leading an effort to help historically [...]

Women journalists who covered the Vietnam War are often not given their proper due when the history of the conflict is told.  Joyce Hoffman (Old Dominion University) is the author of On Their Own:  Women Journalists in Vietnam. She shares stories of women who won esteemed prizes for their reporting and several who broke [...]

Philosophers from Epicurus to Charlotte Joko Beck offer insights that may change how we view the world and our place in it. In How Philosophy Can Save Your Life, Marietta McCarty (Piedmont Virginia Community College) introduces ideas from the world’s greatest minds, weaving together the various strands as a tapestry for good living.  Also [...]

Poet Lucille Clifton is widely acclaimed for her powerful explorations of race, womanhood, and spirituality. This June she was honored by the Furious Flower Poetry Center (James Madison University), which brought together more than 40 teachers and scholars to examine the National Book Award-winner’s lifetime of contributions to American poetry.  Also: Hilary Holladay (Virginia Foundation [...]

Wilbur and Orville Wright won a place in history for unraveling the secrets of heavier-than-air flight, but their charismatic sister, Katharine Wright, deserves a lot of credit.  Cindy Wilkey (University of Virginia’s College at Wise) says the brothers, who never married, were shy and reserved and that Katharine devoted her life to running their home [...]

Whether it’s a traditional hymn or a rock and roll Christmas song, many people say Christmas just wouldn’t be Christmas without the music that marks this season.  The sense of joy, comfort, or spiritual uplift comes in classical, popular, jazz, and even world music.    Poet Tim Siebles (Old Dominion University), ethnomusicologist Anne Rasumssen (William and [...]

After teaching courses on marriage and family relations to community college students for 40 years, it’s clear to Russ Crescimanno (Piedmont Virginia Community College) that most couples don’t have a clue on how to compromise.  There is, he says, a science to love and intimacy, and many rocky marriages could thrive if couples would just [...]

Real-life fights are always sloppy and chaotic.  The trick to staging a good fight in is to “order chaos.”  Gregg Lloyd (Christopher Newport University) is a professional actor and fight director who has mastered the art of creating the illusion of violence on stage, making it look effortless.   Also: An “aural landscape” [...]