Tag Archives: readings/research

The Bloomsbury Group

A group of English writers and artists who gathered regularly in the Bloomsbury section of London before, during, and after World War I. Their unconventional lifestyle, socialist views, and aesthetic sensibility combined to give ‘Bloomsbury‘ a connotation outside the circle of somewhat precious snobbery. Central to the group were artists Vanessa and Clive Bell, Roger Fry and Duncan Grant; writers Leonard and Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey, and E.M. Forster; and the economist John Maynard Keynes. Cambridge-educated and the artistic and intellectual pacesetters of their generation, they were devoted adherents of the philosopher G.E. Moore and were frequently joined at their ‘Thursday evenings’ by such Cambridge luminaries as Bertrand Russell and Rupert Brooke.”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

Commodore Matthew Perry and Japan

If you teach global studies or world history, I expect you might be able to use this reading on Commodore Perry and Japan and the comprehension worksheet that attends it. When I taught sophomore global studies for the first time last year, I was surprised to learn that the curriculum the administration of my school prescribed didn’t introduce students to the key concept implicit in this material, namely gunboat diplomacy.

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.

33–Number of Completion

“Thirty-three is an ancient number of completion: the age when Christ was crucified; the years in which King David reigned. It also marks the number of divinities in the public festivals of the Persian Empire, and in the Hindu tradition three sets of eleven deities appear frequently as an auspicious pantheon of thirty-three. In Muslim tradition the ninety-nine beautiful names of God are recited with rosaries made from thirty-three prayer beads each used thrice, while the Hizb al-Wiqaya is a prayer of personal protection collected from thirty-three verses that invoke Koranic protection and divine names.

In broader cultural contexts, the number was chosen by Dante to structure his Divine Comedy (composed of three sets of thirty-three chapters); it expresses the number of spiritual ranks within Freemasonry; and the blows with which Shakespeare records death being delivered to Julius Caesar (‘When think you that the sword goes up again? Never, till Caesar’s three and thirty wounds be well avenged’).”

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.

Rotten Reviews: The Assistant

[This botched assessment refers to Bernard Malamud’s second novel, published in 1957, produced as a movie, and included in Time’s All-TIME 100 Novels.]

“Despite its occasional spark of humanity and its melancholy humor this is on the whole too grim a picture to have wide appeal.”

Excerpted from: Bernard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.

A Child of Our Time

“A wartime oratorio by Michael Tippett (1905-98) with a libretto by the composer. The work was written in 1939-41 and first performed in 1944. The ‘child’ of the title is Herschel Grynspan, a Polish-Jewish student whose assassination in Paris of the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath on 7 November 1938 led to the infamous Kristallnacht, a night of violence against Jews and their property on 9-10 November. Escalating official persecution followed. Tippett uses Negro spirituals at important points in the score, as Back had used the chorales in his passions. The title, stressing the universality of the story, was suggested by that of a novel (1938) by the German-Hungarian writer and diplomat Odon von Horvath (1901-38), Ein Kind unserer Zeit.”

Excerpted from: Crofton, Ian, ed. Brewer’s Curious Titles. London: Cassell, 2002.

Mellifluous (adj)

Richly sweet and smooth in speech or tone; resonant and flowing; honeyed. Adverb: mellifluously; noun: mellifluousness.

‘The best American essay on him, in my opinion, was by Edmund Wilson, dry and to the point, There was not mellifluous English nonsense about the ‘inimitable’ and ‘incomparable.’”

V.S. Pritchett, The Tale Bearers

Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.

Pier

“Pier: Massive solid masonry that functions as vertical structural support. Also, often used to designate Romanesque and Gothic pillars of noncylindrical form.”

Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.

Independent Practice: Monarchy

Here is an independent practice worksheet on monarchy, which calls upon students to understand monarchy as a concept. I think I assigned this around the time the global studies class I co-taught started dealing with Medieval Europe.

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.

Constitutional Convention

Here is a reading on the United States Constitutional Convention along with a comprehension worksheet to accompany it. This is basic material in United States history, so I can think of a lot of places, times, and manners in which to use it.

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.

James Russell Lowell on Books

“As poet James Russell Lowell put it, ‘books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind.'”

Excerpted from: Willingham, Daniel. The Reading Mind. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2017