Pop culture and academia: A marriage of convenience or of love?

by Michele Callaghan TV is bigger than any story it reports. It’s the greatest teaching tool since the printing press. —Fred Friendly, president of CBS news and one of the people behind the creation of public television All television is educational television. The question is: what is it teaching? —Nicholas Johnson, commissioner of the Federal…

Jane Austen on Location

Guest post by Janine Barchas To fully understand Jane Austen, hiking boots are a must. The research for my book Matters of Fact in Jane Austen: History, Location, and Celebrity led me (and, occasionally, my students and family members) to a number of eighteenth-century landscapes, castles, and country homes in England.  We visited locations with…

September news and new books

News and Notes Hurricane Isaac may have forced the cancellation of last week’s Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association (APSA), but that didn’t stop us from putting together our own APSA Virtual Exhibit Booth! Garrison Keillor reads X.J. Kennedy’s poem, “Décor,” from Kennedy’s collection In a Prominent Bar in Secaucus in honor of…