“It was as though in those last months he [Adolf Eichmann] was summing up the lessons that this long course in human wickedness had taught us—the lesson of the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil.”
Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil ch. 15 (1963)
Excerpted from: Shapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
“Originally Maria Sklodowska. Polish-born French physical chemist. Born in Warsaw, she studied at the Sorbonne (from 1891). Seeking for radioactivity, recently discovered by Henri Becquerel in uranium, in other matter, she found it in thorium. In 1895 she married fellow physicist Pierre Curie (1859-1906). Together they discovered the elements polonium and radium, and they distinguished alpha, beta, and gamma radiation. For their work on radioactivity (a term she coined), the Curies shared a 1903 Nobel Prize with Becquerel. After Pierre’s death, Marie was appointed to his professorship and became the first woman to teach at the Sorbonne. In 1911 she won a Nobel Prize for discovering polonium and isolating pure radium, becoming the first person to win two Nobel Prizes. She died of leukemia caused by her long exposure to radioactivity. In 1995 she became the first woman whose own achievements earned her the honor of having her ashes enshrined in the Pantheon in Paris.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
[Whenever I feel down, I turn to the the Algonquin Wits, and especially one of its most brilliant, albeit self-destructive, members, the late, great Dorothy Parker. I want to annotate this quote with something few people know about Mrs. Parker: she was a dedicated civil rights activist who greatly respected Martin Luther King, Jr.; indeed, she she left her estate in its entirety to him.]
“American writer of short stories, verse, and criticism. Parker was noted for her caustic wit, as a drama critic for Vanity Fair and later a book reviewer for The New Yorker, and she became one of the luminaries of the Algonquin Round Table. Her works in verse are equally sardonic, usually dry, elegant commentaries on departing or departed love. The collection Enough Rope (1926), contains the much quoted ‘Resume’ on suicide, and ‘News Item,’ about women who wear glasses. Her short stories, which were collected in After Such Pleasures (1932) and Here Lies (1939), are as imbued with a knowledge of human nature as they are deep in disenchantment; among the best known are ‘A Big Blonde’ and ‘A Telephone Call.’”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
Posted in English Language Arts, New York City, Quotes, Reference
Tagged black history, fiction/literature, humor, readings/research, women's history
Well, it’s Friday again, so it’s time for another Weekly Text, which continues to to observe Women’s History Month. So, here is a reading on Queen Isabella of Spain with a comprehension worksheet to accompany it. As long as we’re on the subject of royalty in modern history, here is an Everyday Edit on the women in King Henry VIII’s life to complement the longer exercises on Queen Isabella. Incidentally, if you want more of these Everyday Edit exercises, the good people at Education World have posted a year’s supply of them free for the taking.
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.
“French-born American novelist and diarist. Although she had written over a dozen books, Nin was not widely known until the publication of The Diary of Anais Nin 1931-1966 (7 vols. 1966-80). A record of avant-garde life in Paris and New York, with portraits of friends like Henry Miller and Lawrence Durrell, the diaries essentially chronicle a woman’s coming to terms with her identity as a woman. They served as the source of much of Nin’s fiction, which shows the influences of surrealism and psychoanalysis. Her first novel, House of Incest (1936), is a prose poem dealing with psychological torment. The second, Winter of Artifice (1939), examines a daughter’s relationship to her father. The series Cities of the Interior includes Ladders to Fire (1946), Children of the Albatross (1947), The Four-Chambered Heart (1950), A Spy in the House of Love (1954), and Solar Barque (1958). Both in her fiction and her diaries, a dreamlike, sensuous prose expands personal concerns to a universal level. Nin’s essays on literary theory include Realism and Reality (1946) and The Novel of the Future (1968). The Delta of Venus (1977) and Little Birds (1979) are books of erotica she wrote in the 1940s.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged fiction/literature, readings/research, women's history
“English dramatist, novelist, and poet, the first Englishwoman known to earn her living by writing. Her early life is obscure (as is her original surname), but she spent most of it in South America. Her novel Oroonoko (1988), the story of an enslaved African prince who Behn knew in South America, influenced the development of the English novel. Her first play, The Forc’d Marriage, was produced in 1671; her later witty comedies, such as the two-part The Rover (1677, 1681), were highly successful, and toward the end of her life she wrote many popular novels.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged drama/theater, fiction/literature, readings/research, women's history
“Power can be thought of as the never-ending, self-feeding motor of all political action that corresponds to the legendary unending accumulation of money that begets money.”
Origins of Totalitarianism ch. 5 (1953)
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, women's history
Another Friday has rolled around, so it’s time for another Weekly Text in observation of Women’s History Month. This week’s Text is a reading on geneticist and botanist Barbara McClintock accompanied by this comprehension worksheet on the reading. Finally, here is a complementary Everyday Edit worksheet on Marie Curie (and you can get a full-year supply of Everyday Edit worksheets from the generous proprietors of the Education World website.
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.
“U.S. dancer, teacher, choreographer, and foremost exponent of modern dance. Born in Pittsburgh, she trained from 1916 under Ted Shawn at the Denishawn school. She left in 1923 for New York, where she founded her own school in 1927 and a performing company in in 1929. She choreographed over 160 works, creating unique “dance plays” and using a variety of themes to express emotion and conflict. Many are based on American themes including Appalachian Spring (1944); other works include Primitive Mysteries (1931), El Penitente (1940), Letter to the World (1940), Cave of the Heart (1946), Clytemnestra (1958), Phaedra (1962), and Frescoes (1978). She collaborated for many years with Louis Horst, her musical director, and Isamu Noguchi, who designed many of her sets. She retired from dancing in 1970 but continued to teach and choreograph. Her technique became the first significant alternative to classical ballet, and her influence extended worldwide through her choreography and her students.”
Excerpted from: Stevens, Mark A., Ed. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia. Springfield, Massachusetts: Merriam-Webster, 2000.
“The right of women to take part in political life and to vote in an election. Women’s suffrage was advocated by Mary Wollstonecraft in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), and throughout the 19th century, in Britain and the United States, calls were made for voting rights for women. These were first attained at the national level in New Zealand (1893). The state of Wyoming in the United States introduced women’s suffrage in 1869 and by 1920 all women over 21 were given the vote in the United States. The first European nation to grant female suffrage was Finland in 1906, with Norway following in 1913, and Germany in 1919. In Britain, as a result of agitation by the Women’s Political and Social Union, led by Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughter Christabel, the vote was granted in 1918 to those over 30 and in 1928 to women over 21. In the years following World War I, women were granted the vote in many countries, including Germany, Poland, Austria, and Sweden (1919), and the United States (1920). The Roman Catholic Church was reluctant to support women’s suffrage and in many Catholic countries it was not gained until after World War II; in France it was granted in in 1944, in Belgium in 1948, while in Switzerland not until 1971. In Russia women gained the right to vote with the Revolution (1917), and women’s suffrage was extended to the Soviet Union from 1922. In developing countries, women’s suffrage was usually obtained with independence, and in most Muslim countries women now have the vote. Women still do not have the vote in certain absolute monarchies, such as Saudi Arabia.”
Excerpted from: Wright, Edmund, Ed. The Oxford Desk Encyclopedia of World History. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.
Posted in Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged readings/research, united states history, women's history
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