In the town hall of Fischach, a village in southern Germany with a population of 2,500, I am staring at a glass …
Right now, it can feel like the worst of times for democracy. It also can feel like the best of times …
The last four years have been a strange time to be a scholar of American treason law. The members of this …
How will Californians ever recover from this year of apocalypse and conflict, of pandemic and fire, when …
Properly framed, Hamlet could be an introduction to the idea of suicide contagion, generating a self-consciousness that might counteract the danger of the phenomenon. When you know what suicide contagion is and how it works, you’re less likely to succumb to it, or perpetuate it. And Hamlet provides, in the final example of Horatio, an example of successful resistance to suicide contagion.
Yet, if hearing Hamlet talk about suicide planted the seed in Ophelia’s mind, could the same happen with Hamlet in our classrooms? Could the text be damaging to someone who has a pre-existing vulnerability?
Some months ago, I was going to invite my teenage niece to a performance of Romeo and Juliet, but decided against it. One of her friends …
At a moment when the eyes of the nation are fixed on Black Lives Matter and the anti-racism struggle, it may seem odd to call attention to quiet breaches of America’s ethno-racial dividing lines. A South Asian immigrant family moving into a predominantly white suburb; an African American promoted to a position with authority over white employees; or the celebration of a marriage between white and Mexican-American partners—events like these, which are now common in many parts of the U.S., don’t appear to augur much social change. But their cumulative impact can be transformative.
Consider in this light the upper reaches of the workforce. During the 20th century, white Americans monopolized the highest-paying …
