Alice in Time

I am always fascinated by the overlap between literature and other scholarly and scientific fields. My last article combined Vivaldi's Gloria with Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape and in June, I combined Christina Rossetti's In an Artist's Studio with Botticelli paintings. In this post, you can read an article written by Gillian Beer, professor emeritus of English literature at the University of Cambridge UK. Here, she looks at the role of time and space in Lewis Carroll's Alice books. Charles Dodgson was a prominent mathematician and logician at Oxford and was known to let these scientific areas colour his literary output.

To read the article, click each page and enjoy. Below the article is Beer's lecture on the topic at Harvard University.

Sources: Text, Lecture

Representations of Native Americans

While studying for a task on the Disney adaptation of J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan I came across an interesting and captivating source on the representation of Native Americans in American images. Kevin Gover, Director of The Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian gives his talk on false, perpetuated images of the Native American called "Will the White Man's Indian Ever Die?" and points out how "memorable, powerful and hard to shake"* these are. Enjoy this entertaining, interesting and surprisingly hard to come by lecture!

*Source: Lect. (09:30)

Academic Earth

Some univertities embrace the possibilities of internet to a larger extent than others. While regular, physical attendance at lectures is still required in most forms of higher education, a number of American Universities have contributed to a digital lecture bank at http://www.academicearth.org/.

Consisting mainly of Ivy League contributors, the California based webpage philanthropically aims to provide quality lectures (availiable for grading) for free. It is based on what you might call intellectual donations, lectured volunteered by professionals with permissions from their respective institutions.

The Academic Earth Homepage (click to enlarge)

At the moment, Academic Earth offers 23 subjects, some with quite comprehensive lecture series. These range from literature studies to computer science and media studies. Taking the lectures do not give any official recognition of competence, but they give valuable insight into whatever interests you.

In an age of insatiable search for profit and lacking knowledgeability it is comforting to find a reliable, non-profit vehicle of education like Academic Earth. I, for one, plan to spend parts of my summer vacation taking the psychology and literature lessons.