With Good Reason

Written in another time and in another country, the Russian classics — Tolstoy, Lermontov, and all the rest — are still relevant today.  Andrew Kaufman (University of Virginia) and his students are proving that by teaching masterpieces of Russian literature to incarcerated youth.  The readings prompt discussions: What makes for a “successful” life? How I [...]

Two years after his 1959 speech at the Havana Labor Rally Fidel Castro declared that the age of racism and discrimination was over. Geoffroy de Laforcade  (Norfolk State University) and William Alexander (Norfolk State University) discuss the validity of Castro’s declaration in today’s Cuba. This summer, they will be leading students from the United States [...]

Don Quixote, conqueror of windmills and readers’ hearts, was recently voted the best book of all time in a survey of 100 of the world’s best authors.  It’s the tale of a Spanish knight who reads one too many chivalric romances and takes up a rusty breastplate and sword in search of adventures.  Antonio Carreño-Rodríguez [...]

Written in another time and in another country, the Russian classics — Tolstoy, Lermontov, and all the rest — are still relevant today.  Andrew Kaufman (University of Virginia) and his students are proving that by teaching masterpieces of Russian literature to incarcerated youth.  The readings prompt discussions: What makes for a “successful” life? How I [...]

The Camino de Santiago, a medieval pilgrimage trail in northern Spain, continues to attract tens of thousands of travelers each year. Among those are George Greenia (William & Mary, Virginia Foundation for the Humanities), who for years has walked the 500-mile route with his students. George studies the relationship between medieval and modern pilgrimages. He [...]

Scholars from around the world gathered recently for George Mason University’s forum Beyond Golden Age and Decline: Muslim Societies and Global Modernity, 1300-1900.  Some of the scholars joined With Good Reason to talk about the legacy of Muslim societies in today’s world.  Giancarlo Casale (University of Minnesota) says in its heyday, the Ottoman Empire was [...]

How many Victorian books would you have to read to know the Victorians? What if you could read all 1.7 million? Fred Gibbs (George Mason University) co-created a project that does just that. Using digital tools, he can search and then chart how frequently certain words—like “God,” “love,” and “science”—appear in all of 19th-century British [...]

Accents can be endearing – but they can also limit chances for professional and academic success.  Southern students and African-American students are often marginalized in the classroom because of their dialects.  Anne Harper Charity Hudley (College of William & Mary) is the co-author of a book to help educators work with language variations – to [...]

Poetry has long been used to celebrate love and family, but it has also always documented the dark times in human life.  Bob Hicok (Virginia Tech) worked for twenty years in the automotive industry.  His poems explore the lives of family and friends coping with economic devastation in Michigan.  Also: Many scholars have believed that [...]

In 1862, poet Walt Whitman went to Fredericksburg, Virginia, searching for his brother George who had been wounded in a Civil War battle. Whitman was so moved by the carnage he found that he worked as a nurse for the rest of the war.   Mara Scanlon and Brady Earnhart (University of Mary Washington) say [...]