How was Cotton Mather related to Increase Mather? Increase (1639-1723) was the father of Cotton (1663-1728). Both were clergymen, theologians, and prolific writers in Puritan New England.
Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
Here is a context clues worksheet on the verb excommunicate. It is used only transitively, so don’t forget your direct object: you (or the Church) must excommunicate someone.
It has taken me no small amount of time and cognition to render this word accessible to struggling learners. I remain unconvinced that I’ve done an adequate job of it. Nonetheless, this verb shows up in social studies classes and texts with sufficient regularity that students need to know it.
That said, this word also turns up as an adjective. If you use it that way, be advised that unlike the verb, which pronounces as it looks (i.e. excommuni-kate with a long a), the adjective pronounces as excommuni-cut–with a short a in the final syllable.
If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“One of four frescoes by Raphael (1483-1520) painted c. 1509 in the Stanza della Segnatura, a room in the papal apartments in the Vatican. The work was commissioned by Pope Julius II, who also commissioned Donato Bramante to design the new St. Peter’s and Michelangelo to design his tomb and (against his will) to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling. The frescoes in the Stanza della Segnatura are intended to demonstrate how neoplatonist philosophy justifies the power of the Roman Catholic Church. The School of Athens depicts Plato and Aristotle and a host of other philosophers, both ancient and modern, in a calm and balanced composition. The classical architectural setting–reminiscent of the new St. Peter’s–was painted from designs by Bramante, who himself acted as the model for the mathematician Euclid in the painting. Raphael’s portrait of his patron, Pope Julius, is in the National Gallery, London.
‘It took a soul as beautiful as his, in a body as beautiful as his, to experience and rediscover the true character of ancients in modern times.'”
Johann J. Winckelmann: on Raphael, in Thoughts on the Imitiation of Greek Art in Painting and Sculpture (1755)
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
Here is a reading on Ibn Rushd, also known as Averroes: he was a Muslim philosopher who commented extensively on Aristotle. He is prominently featured in Raphael’s famous painting The School of Athens. This reading comprehension worksheet accompanies the reading.
See above for related materials.
If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“We know that a man can read Goethe or Rilke in the evening, that he can play Bach and Schubert, and go to his day’s work at Auschwitz.”
Language and Silence Preface (1967)
Excerpted from: Shapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged philosophy/religion, readings/research
“The first novel (1951) by James Jones (1921-77), who was serving in the US infantry in Hawaii when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941. Twice promoted and twice reduced to private, he fought at Guadalcanal and was wounded in the head by a mortar fragment. The novel, which won a National Book Award, draws on his own experiences in Hawaii and caused a sensation for its expose of army brutality and its outspokenness about sex and military mores. The film (1952) was a slick, sexually oblique version directed by Fred Zinnemann. The title comes from the poem ‘The Gentlemen Rankers’ (1889) by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) about oppressed junior ranks:
‘Gentlemen-rankers out on the spree,
Damned from here to Eternity,
God ha’ mercy on such as we.'”
Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.
Last year, for the first time, I taught sophomore global studies in an integrated co-teaching (ICT) classroom here in New York City. This cycle of social studies instruction covers the period, roughly, from the beginning of the Enlightenment to the present day. In this maelstrom, I found it a bit odd that the curriculum didn’t at least touch on The Dreyfus Affair, if for no other reason its role as a precursor to the anti-Semitic horrors of the twentieth century.
Superficial though it may be, here is a Cultural Literacy worksheet on the Dreyfus Affair. It is a modest attempt to rectify what I consider to be a significant gap in the New York State sophomore global studies curriculum.
If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
If you teach United States History, than you might find useful this reading on the beginnings of the Civil War as well as the reading comprehension worksheet that accompanies it. It serves any number of purposes which will be contingent, ideally, on the student to whom it is assigned.
If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review
As I sit down to publish this Cultural Literacy worksheet on the digital divide, I wonder if it is still relevant. It looks like, to some extent, the availability of relatively cheap smartphones have done something to close this gap. At the same time, as net neutrality ends, the divide may reopen with different fissure lines. And as far as smartphones go, yes they are readily available; but neither smartphones themselves nor the data plans that make them useful are created equal. On could make the argument that the lines of the digital divide now run along the lines of smartphones and the plans that drive them.
If nothing else, this worksheet introduces students to the idea that social class determines what one has access to in our society, so this worksheet could be used to open a conceptual inquiry on social class and the extent to which it circumscribes life itself.
If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“Leporello, manservant of the fictional rake Don Giovanni (Don Juan), revealed that his master made 1,003 sexual conquests in his Spanish homeland…as well as 640 in Italy, 231 in Germany, 100 in France, and 91 in Turkey. Of course, it must be remembered that Leporello’s purpose was to gently persuade Donna Elvira not to put too much trust in his master–and to amuse an operatic audience. Still, Don Giovanni’s figures stack up well alongside his historic rivals. Casanova claimed to have slept with a mere 122 women. Byron (who wrote his own Don Juan) raced through more than 300 women (plus numerous rent boys and transvestites) before his early death in Greece, aged 36.”
Excerpted from: Rogerson, Barnaby. Rogerson’s Book of Numbers: The Culture of Numbers–from 1,001 Nights to the Seven Wonders of the World. New York: Picador, 2013.
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