Thomas Epstein - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by Thomas Epstein
Curriculum by Design
This essay focuses on the pedagogical and cognitive importance of the four reflection sessions fo... more This essay focuses on the pedagogical and cognitive importance of the four reflection sessions for our Enduring Question courses on death. While the spatial and temporal distance of “Death in Antiquity” and “Life and Death in Russian Literature” created a useful gap through which students could engage a difficult subject, the reflection sessions were constructed so as gradually to bring the subject of death closer to home, to transform the students from receivers of knowledge about death in two distant, distinct cultures to producers of knowledge. The piece describes how we designed our reflection sessions to increase in complexity over the course of the term with the goal of inviting our students to develop increasing comfort and competence in the skill of synthesizing course materials, personal experience, and the world beyond the classroom.
Diogenes, 1992
When the world reveals a part of its beauty, what should our reaction be? How can we respond adeq... more When the world reveals a part of its beauty, what should our reaction be? How can we respond adequately? Is not our initial reaction one of a &dquo;discrepancy between our impressions and their habitual expression?&dquo; It is this question that Proust poses in one of the crucial passages early on in his masterpiece. Describing his walks along M6s6glise’s Way, and &dquo;the humble discoveries&dquo; he made there, the
Russian Postmodernism
ike its Western counterpart, Russian postmodernism and the discourse surrounding it have proven t... more ike its Western counterpart, Russian postmodernism and the discourse surrounding it have proven to be a vast, rich, and diverse storehouse of competing ideas and aesthetics. Alternately intriguing and maddening, insightful and bombastic, humble and totalitarian, Russian postmodernism and its discourse raise questions, some of them quite unpleasant, that are nevertheless fundamental to the cultural experience of the last third of the twentieth century. The instructiveness of the Russian case is in part a result of its "unnaturalness": appearing with its all too familiar temporal lag (in this case, a result of decades of censorship and other forms of repression of the cultural process), Russian postmodernism presents a concentrated, intellectualized, and accelerated form of the phenomenon. Always taken with extremes, Russia has once again "caught up," and with a vengeance, producing a body of challenging, sophisticated, and sometimes extremely radical postmodern texts. This is no less true for the discourse on postmodernism, as the present volume demonstrates. Given the deconstructionist underpinnings of much postmodern discourse, it is only natural that we begin with a question for which we do not claim to have a definitive answer: "Just what is Russian postmodernism?" Is it merely one cultural trend among others, foregrounding "play with the signifier," parody, de-centered discourse, and the absence of an organizing self? Or is postmodernism as such part of a larger cultural paradigm, the Postmodern, marked by a
The Slavic and East European Journal, 1996
In the second edition of this book, much of the material has been rewritten to clarify the presen... more In the second edition of this book, much of the material has been rewritten to clarify the presentation. It also has provided the opportunity for correcting many minor typographical errors or mistakes. Also, the definition of a chaotic attractor has been changed to include the requirement that the chaotic attractor is transitive. This is the usual definition and it eliminates some attractors that should not be called chaotic. Several new applications are included for systems of differential equations in Part 1. I would encourage readers to email me with suggestions and further corrections that are needed.
The Slavic and East European Journal, 1996
Brill's Companion to Camus
Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction, 2000
ABSTRACT Milton J. Rosenberg is a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago and direct... more ABSTRACT Milton J. Rosenberg is a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago and director of the doctoral program in social and organizational psychology, as well as an author of numerous articles and books, including Attitude Organization and Change and Theories of Cognitive Consistency. He has conducted his interview program since 1973, reaching as many as 600,000 listeners over thirty-eight states. Joseph Epstein, a lecturer in literature and writing at Northwestern University, has published several collections of personal essays, including The Middle of My Tether, A Line Out for a Walk, Once More Around the Block, and Narcissus Leaves the Pool. His collections of literary essays include Plausible Prejudices, Partial Payments, Pertinent Players, and Life Sentences. He was the editor of The American Scholar from 1975 to 1997 and edited two anthologies, The Best American Essays 1993 and The Norton Book of Personal Essays. Thomas Kaminski, is an associate professor of English at Loyola University at Chicago, where he directs the graduate teaching fellows program. He is the author of The Early Career of Samuel Johnson and numerous articles on Restoration and eighteenth-century literature. Robert L. Root Jr., who teaches composition and nonfiction at Central Michigan University, is the author of Wordsmithery: A Guide to Working at Writing and two studies of nonfiction writers: Working at Writing: Columnists and Critics Composing and E. B. White: The Emergence of an Essayist. Root is the co-editor of The Fourth Genre: Contemporary Writers of/on Creative Nonfiction and Those Who Do Can: Teachers Writing, Writers Teaching. His personal essays and academic articles have appeared in such publications as English Journal, North Dakota Quarterly, Journal of Teaching Writing, and Writing on the Edge.
The Routledge Handbook of International Beat Literature
The Originality and Complexity of Albert Camusâs Writings, 2012
The Slavic and East European Journal, 2001
Curriculum by Design
This essay focuses on the pedagogical and cognitive importance of the four reflection sessions fo... more This essay focuses on the pedagogical and cognitive importance of the four reflection sessions for our Enduring Question courses on death. While the spatial and temporal distance of “Death in Antiquity” and “Life and Death in Russian Literature” created a useful gap through which students could engage a difficult subject, the reflection sessions were constructed so as gradually to bring the subject of death closer to home, to transform the students from receivers of knowledge about death in two distant, distinct cultures to producers of knowledge. The piece describes how we designed our reflection sessions to increase in complexity over the course of the term with the goal of inviting our students to develop increasing comfort and competence in the skill of synthesizing course materials, personal experience, and the world beyond the classroom.
Diogenes, 1992
When the world reveals a part of its beauty, what should our reaction be? How can we respond adeq... more When the world reveals a part of its beauty, what should our reaction be? How can we respond adequately? Is not our initial reaction one of a &dquo;discrepancy between our impressions and their habitual expression?&dquo; It is this question that Proust poses in one of the crucial passages early on in his masterpiece. Describing his walks along M6s6glise’s Way, and &dquo;the humble discoveries&dquo; he made there, the
Russian Postmodernism
ike its Western counterpart, Russian postmodernism and the discourse surrounding it have proven t... more ike its Western counterpart, Russian postmodernism and the discourse surrounding it have proven to be a vast, rich, and diverse storehouse of competing ideas and aesthetics. Alternately intriguing and maddening, insightful and bombastic, humble and totalitarian, Russian postmodernism and its discourse raise questions, some of them quite unpleasant, that are nevertheless fundamental to the cultural experience of the last third of the twentieth century. The instructiveness of the Russian case is in part a result of its "unnaturalness": appearing with its all too familiar temporal lag (in this case, a result of decades of censorship and other forms of repression of the cultural process), Russian postmodernism presents a concentrated, intellectualized, and accelerated form of the phenomenon. Always taken with extremes, Russia has once again "caught up," and with a vengeance, producing a body of challenging, sophisticated, and sometimes extremely radical postmodern texts. This is no less true for the discourse on postmodernism, as the present volume demonstrates. Given the deconstructionist underpinnings of much postmodern discourse, it is only natural that we begin with a question for which we do not claim to have a definitive answer: "Just what is Russian postmodernism?" Is it merely one cultural trend among others, foregrounding "play with the signifier," parody, de-centered discourse, and the absence of an organizing self? Or is postmodernism as such part of a larger cultural paradigm, the Postmodern, marked by a
The Slavic and East European Journal, 1996
In the second edition of this book, much of the material has been rewritten to clarify the presen... more In the second edition of this book, much of the material has been rewritten to clarify the presentation. It also has provided the opportunity for correcting many minor typographical errors or mistakes. Also, the definition of a chaotic attractor has been changed to include the requirement that the chaotic attractor is transitive. This is the usual definition and it eliminates some attractors that should not be called chaotic. Several new applications are included for systems of differential equations in Part 1. I would encourage readers to email me with suggestions and further corrections that are needed.
The Slavic and East European Journal, 1996
Brill's Companion to Camus
Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction, 2000
ABSTRACT Milton J. Rosenberg is a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago and direct... more ABSTRACT Milton J. Rosenberg is a professor of psychology at the University of Chicago and director of the doctoral program in social and organizational psychology, as well as an author of numerous articles and books, including Attitude Organization and Change and Theories of Cognitive Consistency. He has conducted his interview program since 1973, reaching as many as 600,000 listeners over thirty-eight states. Joseph Epstein, a lecturer in literature and writing at Northwestern University, has published several collections of personal essays, including The Middle of My Tether, A Line Out for a Walk, Once More Around the Block, and Narcissus Leaves the Pool. His collections of literary essays include Plausible Prejudices, Partial Payments, Pertinent Players, and Life Sentences. He was the editor of The American Scholar from 1975 to 1997 and edited two anthologies, The Best American Essays 1993 and The Norton Book of Personal Essays. Thomas Kaminski, is an associate professor of English at Loyola University at Chicago, where he directs the graduate teaching fellows program. He is the author of The Early Career of Samuel Johnson and numerous articles on Restoration and eighteenth-century literature. Robert L. Root Jr., who teaches composition and nonfiction at Central Michigan University, is the author of Wordsmithery: A Guide to Working at Writing and two studies of nonfiction writers: Working at Writing: Columnists and Critics Composing and E. B. White: The Emergence of an Essayist. Root is the co-editor of The Fourth Genre: Contemporary Writers of/on Creative Nonfiction and Those Who Do Can: Teachers Writing, Writers Teaching. His personal essays and academic articles have appeared in such publications as English Journal, North Dakota Quarterly, Journal of Teaching Writing, and Writing on the Edge.
The Routledge Handbook of International Beat Literature
The Originality and Complexity of Albert Camusâs Writings, 2012
The Slavic and East European Journal, 2001