Zena Hitz
@zenahitz
Tutor @stjohnscollege Foundress @CatherineProj Author, LOST IN THOUGHT *New*: A PHILOSOPHER LOOKS AT THE RELIGIOUS LIFE (http://tinyurl.com/2p82j7ma)
I am astonished, grateful, and proud that last year, LOST IN THOUGHT surpassed 25,000 copies in cumulative total sales @PrincetonUPress ! (1/x)
Some lit journals pay nothing. Today, appreciatively, I received a modest check from @utulsa for this poem, which appeared in @NimrodJournal last month. Editor-in-chief @BorisDralyuk and his excellent young staff put out a first-class journal that respects the folks it publishes.
reading was such a cornerstone of my childhood, so it breaks my heart that fewer children are reading for fun :( and will thus never experience the exhilaration that comes with staying up past your bedtime bc you can’t put a good book down
reading was such a cornerstone of my childhood, so it breaks my heart that fewer children are reading for fun :( and will thus never experience the exhilaration that comes with staying up past your bedtime bc you can’t put a good book down
Congratulations Tyler and Jay!
Surprised, confused, but very flattered that the pod @jaycaspiankang and I co-host, Time to Say Goodbye (@ttsgpod), made Time’s “100 Best Podcasts of All Time” list. If you like hot takes, sports metaphors, and inconsistent audio-quality, check us out. time.com/collections/10…
Universities simply do not need anywhere near the number of new buildings they are building. Just slap your megadonor’s name on a big platinum monolith. People will remember it more than the new $200m comp sci building with the generic nouveau Spanish villa facade.
U of Chicago is going to merge humanities departments and downscale its language offerings in part because...the institution spent too much money on construction projects. Its endowment: over $10 billion. Are there any leaders in higher ed who *want* to save the humanities?
Beliefs are not utterly and entirely disembodied, not utterly and entirely of the head. They are connected to communities and of the heart. When people you belived in prove to be unbelievable, everything shifts.
Apparently a horde of Catholic bikers is on the loose. I favor this development.
Trump’s prison guards banned Bibles at Alligator Alcatraz, saying there's "no right to religion" there. Pope Leo’s Catholic bikers rode in to pray and protest. open.substack.com/pub/lettersfro…
These poems by Jane Greer published by @Plough mean a great deal to me as a parent: "Help me be mild. The good in me please amplify" @NorthDakotaJane will be missed by many. plough.com/en/topics/cult…
I am very sad to report that the wonderful Catholic poet Jane Greer @NorthDakotaJane has died. Please keep her soul, her family and her husband Jim in your prayers.
everyone should read Paul S on homelessness!
I have a new essay in Jacobin, arguing that homelessness is at odds with the ideal of a democratic society. I'll take this opportunity to mention that I'm writing a book for Oxford UP elaborating on the ideas in this piece. It will be a trade book, meant for a popular audience.
Even my beloved alma mater, although it takes in, give or take, a kajillion dollars per year in gifts, is under some pressure. Luckily, these proposed changes affect only teaching and research, rather than core university functions, such as gift solicitation.
The Division of the Arts & Humanities is considering consolidating its 15 departments into eight, reducing language instruction, and establishing minimum class and program sizes, citing new federal policies and shifts in the “underlying financial models” for higher education.
Exactly. My first semester at Rice I placed into an advanced (it happened to be 400) Latin class - Plautus and Terence. One other student. Ever few weeks we met for lunch at the Faculty Club and translated across the table. Prob why I ended up a major.
Rest in peace, Jane. We'll miss you.
I don’t usually repost compliments, but this one is violent and intense and deserves its own boost.
I'll never forget the Summer Hebrew elective I took where after 3 weeks the professor looked at the 3 of us in the classroom and said, "this commute is silly, next week we're meeting at my living room and I'm making the coffee."
A kind informer has told me that someone named "Claude" has never heard of @CatherineProj .
“How many levels of Cartesianism are you on?” “I believe the mind is a distinct substance from the body.” “You are like a little baby. Watch this.”
“You are not the author of your thoughts. Thoughts arise in consciousness, unbidden, and you merely witness them." - Sam Harris, Free Will (2012)
Thinking that LLM-ish AIs could soon lead our science and philosophy and art is tied to thinking we already reached the end of science and philosophy and art anyway. Nobody thinks an LLM-ish AI trained only on variations on 17th century texts could get us to 21st century civ
Not me. I abstract my ideas from reality itself.
"Every philosophical position starts by assuming there's a clear relation between our models and an external thing they model, and so they all play the same rigged game: arguing about which map matches their assumed territory." iai.tv/articles/truth…
Small classes should not be only for the deserving--they're how education works!
I was a classics major and so many of my upper-level classes were either me or me and one other person. I received a much better education than I deserved.
Well if the classes are small, how could it be worth studying? Especially <checks notes> ancient Greek?
When I took Ancient Greek in undergrad one of my classes was literally just me, others were 5 or less. I hope things like that aren’t going to go away entirely.
Many moons ago the Univ of Pittsburgh Chancellor came into one of my MBA classes to speak. His entire lecture was "know the family jewels and protect them." To him at that time the Pitt family jewels were UPMC and top level medical research (with a sidebar in Athletics primarily…