Culture & Religion

How does the greatest poet of the English language speak to our most pressing contemporary issues? A distinguished panel finds in Shakespeare some striking analogies to our expectations of Obama as a leader, the turmoil in the Middle East, and America’s love of revenge. 

The kind of literary criticism that Lionel Trilling practiced, which assumed that national literatures reflected deep national values, is dead now.

Snooki and crew are like the bearded ladies and the deformed of the Victorian era. The public has always been willing to pay a couple of cents to see something […]

Listening to your favorite melodies and harmonies can trigger the brain to release large amounts of dopamine, a chemical that sends “feel good” signals to the rest of the body.

The Mets’ David Wright says he now has the confidence to be the vocal leader he’s never been, and the New York Post says it’s going to take that to get the Mets out of their hole.

Reducing corporate speak is in your best interest. Words that provoke concrete imagery or relate to something familiar have a far greater impact.

Computer software helps prove that Shakespeare was no different than the writers of today’s crime scene dramas. He collaborated with other writers. 

The CD and the physical newspaper are now Nero playing the fiddle. They are viewed as the mountains that can’t move on the horizon: omnipresent, and sacred. But they shouldn’t be.

Women (and men) increasingly hate their bodies. Everyone knows poor body image is a problem. A new movement wants to do something to actually change our culture.

The New York Times paywall is costing the newspaper $40-$50 million to design and construct, Bloomberg has reported. And it can be defeated through four lines of Javascript.

In Canada, older, affluent well-educated people merely follow the social media conversation on blogs, Facebook and Twitter that is created by young, upwardly mobile immigrants.

A 21st-century education must surely look different. We must address new knowledge (technology & digital media) and new challenges (globalization & community fragmentation).

Television is the most dominant form of cultural expression in our country, beating out movies, print publications, and books. Is it a good idea to cut your kid off in the name of—what exactly?

Distinguished neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran thinks that neuroscience can explain why humans make, or at least appreciate, art. But do we need a scientific explanation of art?

Randall Stephens says that creating a Digital Public Library of America would be no easy task but it’s encouraging that conversations/debates and planning have begun in earnest.

It is not religion alone that contributes to America’s aversion to gay marriage; the belief that homosexuality is a choice is just as important, if not more so.

A study from the University of Toronto has found that the more a woman’s job encroaches on her family life, the more guilty she feels—and interprets the guilt as personal failure.

It is the sense that pervasive corruption must end — more than poverty and unemployment and low wages — which is at the heart of the complaints by protesters in the Arab world.

While humans are social animals, does it follow that being alone is bad for us? An emerging body of research is suggesting that spending time alone, if done right, can be good for us.

President Sarkozy is accused of trying to win far-right votes as France outlaws full-face veils with its controversial niqab ban.

Those who pass for heroes these days—those at the top of our meritocracy defined largely by productivity—display none of the virtues of the heroes of the past.

Journalists Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington clinched an Oscar nomination for their documentary “Restrepo,” in which they show the Afghanistan war through the eyes of soldiers.

Is it a coincidence that the Wall Street bankers responsible for the market crash were men, or do aggressive risk-taking strategies befall the male gender more naturally?

Many of this year’s top movies portray dark themes or flawed characters. One culture watcher says they mirror this moment in history where anti-heroes are the more common stock.

A new book looking back on The Feminine Mystique explains why Betty Friedan might have paved the way for equal marriages by blowing the roof off male-dominated couplings.

‘Will Egypt’s revolution spark a Domino Effect?’. Almost anywhere one looks for analysis of events, a metaphor stares back. But metaphors are no substitute for the generation of ideas.

By 2100, more than half of the more than 7,000 languages spoken on Earth—many of them not yet recorded—may disappear, taking with them a wealth of knowledge.

An art group that stages orgies, throws cats at cashiers and has Banksy as a fan has enraged the Russian authorities to the point of violent repression and censorship of their work.

Have traditional liberal institutions such as education, religion, labor, and the arts stopped challenging corporate powers and, instead, joined them? Yes, says Pulitzer Prize winner Chris Hughes.

Can you teach writing? Americans think you can, broadly speaking. They are happy to attempt a definition of good writing. In the UK, we are a bit more skeptical.