Humanities Speaker Series
Founded in 1947, the Humanities Speaker Series is the oldest continuing program of its kind at KU. Previous speakers have included actor and author Alan Alda, poet A.E. Stallings, sociologist Matthew Desmond, and many others.
A Talk by Christina Sharpe
Christina Sharpe
TUE SEP 10, 7:00 PM
Hall Center Conference Hall (and online via Hall Center Crowdcast)
Christina Sharpe is a writer, professor, and researcher currently serving as the Canada Research Chair in Black Studies in the Humanities at York University in Toronto, Canada. She is also a Senior Research Associate at the Centre for the Study of Race, Gender & Class at the University of Johannesburg. The New York Times describes her work as “expanding the vocabulary of life in slavery’s long shadow—peeling back the meaning of familiar words and resurrecting neglected history.” Her writings explore literature, the cinematic, artifacts, personal memories, and scenes from everyday life.
Sharpe was named a Guggenheim Fellow this year, a testament to her contributions to the field of Black studies and her innovative approach to research and writing. She is also the recipient of a Hilary Weston Writer’s Trust Prize and a Windham-Campbell Prize.
Lessons in Chemistry: A Conversation with Bonnie Garmus
Bonnie Garmus
MON SEP 30, 7:00 PM
Liberty Hall (and online via Hall Center Crowdcast)
The Hall Center will host a conversation with Bonnie Garmus, the author of Lessons in Chemistry, a number-one global bestseller and winner of several national and international awards. Her debut novel centers around Elizabeth Zott, a chemist in the 1960s who finds herself relegated to a television cooking show after her academic career is derailed. The story, which has also been made into an Apple TV miniseries, explores Elizabeth’s journey navigating societal expectations, gender discrimination in scientific fields, and her own ambitions in a world where women’s roles are often narrowly defined.
Garmus’s exploration of themes of resilience, identity, and the pursuit of personal fulfillment amidst societal constraints has won world-wide acclaim, including Barnes & Noble’s Book of the Year, Hay Festival’s Book of the Year, Goodreads Choice Award Debut of the Year, British Book Awards Author of the Year, Waterstones Author of the Year, Books Are My Bag Author of the Year Award, and Readers’ Choice Award, Germany and Australia’s Booksellers Book of the Year, Australia’s International Book of the Year, and many more.
Novelist and KU Professor Laura Moriarty will lead the conversation with Garmus. In addition to being a published author herself, Moriarty conducts research on fiction writing with a particular interest in how writers use voice, characters, plot, and language to engage readers.
Emily Taylor and Marilyn Stokstad Women’s Leadership Lecture
Gender and the Speech Police: Unpacking the varied guidance on how girls and women are "supposed" to speak
Lisa Damour
WED FEB 12, 7:00 PM
Lied Center Pavilion (and online via Hall Center Crowdcast)
Women hear a lot of advice about how to talk, but not all of it fits with what the research shows about effective communication. Lisa Damour will address popular misconceptions about how women speak and share her path-breaking work on how everyone can develop effective strategies for advancing their ideas, managing conflict, and saying “no” without harming their relationships.
Damour is the author of three New York Times best sellers: Untangled, Under Pressure, and The Emotional Lives of Teenagers. She co-hosts the “Ask Lisa” podcast, works in collaboration with UNICEF, and is recognized as a thought leader by the American Psychological Association.
Journey to the Edge of Space-Time
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
MON MAR 10, 7:00 PM
Hall Center Conference Hall (and online via Hall Center Crowdcast)
Every day we move through space, but what is it? And how is space-time different from our every day-concept of space? Exploring concepts from the vacuum to quantum radiation from black holes, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein will take us on a journey to the edge of space-time, discussing along the way what it means for humanity to attempt to answer these questions. Regarded as one of the leading physicists of her generation, she is also one of fewer than one hundred Black American women to earn a doctorate from a department of physics. Her viewpoint has been praised as vibrant and buoyantly nontraditional, taking a bold approach to science and society.
Prescod-Weinstein is an associate professor at the University of New Hampshire. Her research in theoretical physics focuses on cosmology, neutron stars, and dark matter. She also does research in Black feminist science, technology, and society studies. Nature recognized her as one of 10 people who shaped science in 2020, and Essence has recognized her as one of “15 Black Women Who Are Paving the Way in STEM and Breaking Barriers.”
Other Rivers: A Chinese Education
Peter Hessler
TUE APR 1, 7:00 PM
Hall Center Conference Hall (and online via Hall Center Crowdcast)
Peter Hessler will discuss his book, Other Rivers: A Chinese Education, which uses his inside view of China’s education system as a way of examining the country. In 1996, when he arrived in China, almost all of the people in Hessler’s classroom were first-generation college students. They typically came from large rural families, and their parents, subsistence farmers, could offer little guidance as their children entered a brand-new world. By 2019, when Hessler arrived at Sichuan University, he found a very different China, as well as a new kind of student—an only child whose schooling was the object of intense focus from a much more ambitious cohort of parents. Hessler also draws insights from the experience of his own daughters, who gave him an intimate view of their local school in China.
Hessler is an award-winning author and a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he served as Beijing correspondent from 2000 to 2007, Cairo correspondent from 2011 to 2016, and Chengdu correspondent from 2019 to 2021. He won the 2008 National Magazine Award for excellence in reporting, and he was named a MacArthur fellow in 2011.
A Mind Spread Out on the Ground
Alicia Elliott
THU APR 17, 7:00 PM
Haskell Auditorium (and online via Hall Center Crowdcast)
Alicia Elliott, a Mohawk writer and editor living in Ontario, will address topics such as intergenerational trauma, colonization, and the complexities of living as an Indigenous woman in contemporary society. These themes are pursued in the essays comprising her bestselling memoir A Mind Spread Out on the Ground. Her innovative and deeply personal storytelling reveals powerful insights on parenthood, love, art, poverty, representation, the land, memory, and mental health, exposing the enduring impact of colonialism and racism on Indigenous lives.
Elliott’s short fiction was selected for The Best American Short Stories 2018, Best Canadian Stories 2018, and The Journey Prize Stories 30. She was chosen as the 2018 recipient of the RBC Taylor Emerging Writer Award for A Mind Spread Out on the Ground, which was a national bestseller in Canada and won the Forest of Reading Evergreen Award.
Past speakers
Year | Speaker | Title |
2023-24 | N.K. Jemisin | An Evening with N.K. Jemisin (Common Book) |
2023-24 | Lewis Gordon | From Kitchens and Pubs to the World: Philosophy for Humanity Today and Beyond |
2023-24 | Nicole Fleetwood | Marking time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration |
2023-24 | Susan Wolf | Meaning in Life and Why It Matters |
2023-24 | A.E. Stallings | This Afterlife: Selected Poems |
2022-23 | Alice Wong | Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century (Common Book) |
2022-23 | Daniel Wildcat | Exercises of Indigenuity in an Age of Global Crises |
2022-23 | Cynthia Culver Prescott | Pioneer Mother Monuments: Constructing Cutural Memory |
2022-23 | Lee McIntyre | Post-Truth |
2022-23 | Victoria Chang | Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief |
2021-22 | Natalie Diaz | Postcolonial Love Poem |
2021-22 | Terry Tempest Williams | The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America's National Parks |
2021-22 | Alexus Pauline Gumbs | Dub: Finding Ceremony |
2021-22 | Robin Wall Kimmerer | Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants (Common Book) |
2021-22 | Bathsheba Demuth | Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait |
2021-22 | Irin Carmon | Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Women's Leadership in Modern America |
2021-22 | Amitav Ghosh | The Nutmeg's Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis |
2020-21 | Lual Mayen | From Refugee to Game Developer: Peacemaking through the Art of Gaming |
2020-21 | Denise Brennan | Whose Exploitation Counts? Trafficking Survivors As Exceptions in An Era of Mass Deportation |
2020-21 | Donna Gabbacia | Gender and International Migration: From the Slavery Era to the Global Age |
2020-21 | Tara Westover | An Evening with Tara Westover (Common Book) |
2020-21 | Erika Lee | America for Americans: A History of Xenophobia in the United States |
2020-21 | Juan Felipe Herrera | An Evening with Juan Felipe Herrera |
2020-21 | Jerry Mitchell | Race Against Time: A Reporter Reopens the Unsolved Murder Cases of the Civil Rights Era |
2020-21 | Jose Olivarez | Citizen Illegal |
2020-21 | Dierdre Cooper Owens | Medical Bondage: Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology |
2020-21 | Kwame Anthony Appiah | The Lies That Bind |
2019-20 | Nadine Strossen | HATE: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship |
2019-20 | Alan Alda | An Evening with Alan Alda |
2019-20 | Sarah Deer | Sovereignty of the Soul: Centering the Voices of Native Women |
2019-20 | Brittney Cooper | Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpowers |
2019-20 | Jesmyn Ward | An Evening with Jesmyn Ward |
2018-19 | Walter Mosley | Political Optimism in the Age of Trump |
2018-19 | Neil Gaiman | An Evening with Neil Gaiman |
2018-19 | Marie Grace Brown | Body Movements: Positioning Sudanese Women in an Age of Empire |
2018-19 | Maria Hinojosa | Frontline: latinos and Immigration from a Woman's Perspective |
2017-18 | Andrea Wulf | The Invention of Nature: Alexander Von Humboldt's New World |
2017-18 | Brian Donovan | American Gold Digger: Law, Culture, and Marriage in the Early 20th Century |
2017-18 | Peter Balakian | A Conversation with Poet Peter Balakian |
2017-18 | Zadie Smith | Why Write?: An Evening with Zadie Smith |
2017-18 | Matthew Desmond | Evicted: Poverty & Profit in the American City |
2017-18 | Joan Breton Connelly | The Parthenon Enigma |
2017-18 | Siddhartha Mukherjee | The Gene: An Intimate History |
2016-17 | Evan Osnos | The Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China |
2016-17 | Matthew Stewart | Nature's God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic |
2016-17 | Terrance Hayes | An Evening with Terrance Hayes |
2016-17 | Alice Dreger | Good Causes, Bad Acts |
2015-16 | Robin D.G. Kelley | Mike Brown's Body: A Meditation on War, Race, and Democracy |
2015-16 | Hannah Britton | Human Trafficking in the Heartland |
2015-16 | Iain McCalman | The Great Barrier Reef |
2015-16 | Krista Tippet | The Adventure of Civility |
2015-16 | Alice Goffman | On the Run: Fugitive Life in the American City |
2015-16 | Rick Perlstein | The Invisible Bridge: From Nixon to Reagan to Palin and Beyond |
2014-15 | James Oakes | Rethinking Emancipation: Freedom National |
2014-15 | Natasha Trethewey | Poetry & History: An Evening with U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey |
2014-15 | Anna Deveare Smith | Snapshots: Portraits of a World in Transition |
2014-15 | Amy Wilentz | Haiti: Tragedy & Hope |
2014-15 | John Symons | What Can We Teach Our Posthuman Descendants? |
2014-15 | Katherine Boo | Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity |
2013-14 | Jeffrey Toobin | The Supreme Court in the Age of Obama |
2013-14 | Peter Brown | Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-500 AD |
2013-14 | Anne D. Hedeman | Imagining the Past: Interplay Between Literary & Visual Imagery in Late Medieval France |
2013-14 | Junot Diaz | An Evening with Junot Diaz: Literature, Diaspora, and Immigration |
2013-14 | Jill Lepore | Unseen - The History of Privacy |
2013-14 | Arsalan Iftikhar | The Role of Islam in Post 9/11 America |
2012-13 | Edwidge Danticat | An Evening with Edwidge Danticat |
2012-13 | Stephen Greenblatt | The Swerve: How the World Became Modern |
2012-13 | Robin Rowland | From Hope to Audacity: The Evolution of President Obama's Rhetoric and the 2012 Campaign |
2012-13 | Sarah Vowell | An Evening with Sarah Vowell |
2012-13 | Nikky Finney | Making Poetry in Our Anthropocene Age |
2011-12 | Jamaica Kincaid | Landscapes and Memory |
2011-12 | Alain de Botton | Religion for Athiests |
2011-12 | Jeff Moran | The Antievolution Controversies and American Culture |
2011-12 | Luois Menand | A Man is Shot: The Cold War Meaning of a Cinematic Technique |
2011-12 | Diane Ravitch | Will School Reform Improve the Schools? |
2011-12 | Laurance Rees | Talking with Nazis |
2010-11 | Henry Louis Gates, Jr | African American Lives: Geneaology, Genetics, and Black History |
2010-11 | Mae Ngai | Illegal Immigration: Origins and Consequences |
2010-11 | Susan Harris | Pious Hypocrisies: Mark Twain, the Phillipines, and America's Christian Mission |
2010-11 | Joseph O'Neill | An Evening with Joseph O'Neill |
2010-11 | Ross Douthat | The Obama Presidency in the Shadow of the Midterms |
2010-11 | Elizabeth Kolbert | Science, Politics, and Climate Change |
2009-10 | Kevin Wilmott | Revolution, History, and the Power of Independent Film to Change the World |
2009-10 | Mary Oliver | An Evening with Poet Mary Oliver |
2009-10 | Rory Stewart | Afghanistan: Rhetoric and Reality |
2009-10 | Chris Abani | Stories of Struggle, Stories of Hope: Art, Politics, and Human Rights |
2009-10 | T.R. Reid | We're Number 37! Why Other Countries Have Better, Fairier, and Cheaper Healthcare than the USA |
2009-10 | Lewis Hyde | Culture as Commonwealth |
2008-09 | Dipesh Chakrabarty | The Decline and Prospect of Universal History |
2008-09 | James McBride | The Color Of Water: Search for Identity |
2008-09 | Anthony Corbeill | Androgynous Gods, Androgynous Nouns, and the Invention of Heterosexuality in Ancient Rome |
2008-09 | Jeannette Walls | The Glass Castle: Hunting Demons and Other Life Lessons |
2008-09 | Michael Chabon | Conquering the Wilderness: Imaginative Imperialism and the Invasion of Legoland |
2008-09 | Susan Estrich | The 2008 Election: What's at Stake |
2007-08 | Carol Ann Carter | Art @ Work: Mapping Transformation |
2007-08 | Ian Buruma | Among the Unbelievers: Muslims in Europe |
2007-08 | Paul Muldoon | The Eternity of the Poem |
2007-08 | Orville Schell | The China Miracle: How Did It Happen and How Durable Is It? |
2007-08 | Sara Ahmed | The Promise of Happiness |
2007-08 | Alexander McCall Smith | The Very Small Things of Life: An Evening with Alexander McCall Smith |
2006-07 | Maria Carlson (KU, Slavic) | Culture and History Matter: Russia's Search for Identity After the Fall |
2006-07 | Kwame Anthony Appiah | Making Sense of Moral Conflict |
2006-07 | Nancy Cott | Grooming Citizens: Marriage and Civic Status in U.S. History |
2006-07 | Richard Dawkins | The God Delusion |
2006-07 | Nuruddin Farah | The Fork in the Fork in the Road |
2006-07 | Andrei Codrescu | An Evening with Andrei Codrescu |
2005-06 | Allan Cigler (KU, Political Science) | The New Electoral Landscape: Two Political Churches and an Unbelieving Mass Electorate |
2005-06 | Scott Turow | Confessions of a Death Penalty Agnostic |
2005-06 | Samantha Power | Can U.S. Foreign Policy Be Fixed? |
2005-06 | Salman Rushdie | Step Across This Line: An Evening with Salman Rushdie |
2005-06 | Deborah Lipstadt | History On Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving |
2004-05 | Ted Wilson (KU, History) | The GI Generations: Sending American Soldiers into Battle in World War II |
2004-05 | Akbar Ahmed | Islam Under Siege |
2004-05 | Rita Dove | The Poet at the Dance |
2004-05 | Steven Pinker | The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature |
2004-05 | Gary Hart | Security in the New Age of the 21st Century |
2003-04 | E.O. Wilson | The Future of Life |
2003-04 | Linda Stone-Ferrier (KU, History of Art) | The Rembrandt Research Project: Issues and Controversies |
2003-04 | Sherman Alexie | Killing Indians: Myths, Lies and Exaggerations |
2003-04 | Peter Gay | Modernism in Exile |
2002-03 | David Bergeron (KU, English) | Shakespeare in the Closet |
2002-03 | Paule Marshall | Triangular Quest for Self and Community: Brooklyn - Barbados - Benin |
2002-03 | Robert D. Kaplan | The Roots of Future Conflict |
2002-03 | Jared Diamond | Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies |
2001-02 | Dava Sobel | Galileo's Reconciliation: Science and Faith |
2001-02 | Frances Reid & Deborah Hoffman | Long Night's Journey into Day |
2001-02 | Alice Walker | Remembering Langston |
2001-02 | Joane Nagel (KU, Soclology) | The Color of Sex: Race, Ethnicity and Sexuality in America |
2001-02 | Edward Said | the Dilemmas of American Humanism |
2000-01 | Stan Lombardo (KU, Classics) | Homer's Light |
2000-01 | Donna J. Haraway | The Birth of the Kennel: Diversity in the Dog Genome |
2000-01 | Robert Darnton | Poetry and the Police in the 18th Century |
2000-01 | Julian Bond | Crossing the Color Line: From Rhythm and Blues to Rock'n'Roll |
1999-00 | Jeane J. Kirkpatrick | Year 2000: Global Issues |
1999-00 | Anna Deavere Smith | Snapshots: Glimpses of America in Change |
1999-00 | Jonathan Kozol | Love Against Fear: The Ethics and Compassion of Young Children Under Siege |
1999-00 | Stephen Jay Gould | Questioning the Millennium: Why We Cannot Predict the Future |
1998-99 | Patricia Williams | Toward a Theory of Grace |
1998-99 | John Michael Vlach | The Strength of These Arms: Endurance, Creativity and Authority in the Plantation Landscape |
1998-99 | JoAnne Akalaitis | Living in Performance |
1998-99 | Sandra Zimdars-Swartz (KU, Religion) | Wounds on Wounds: Christianity, Pain and Religious Experience |
1997-98 | Robert Hemenway (KU) | Humanities and American Politics |
1997-98 | Nancy Kassabaum Baker | An Evening with Nancy |
1997-98 | Ira Michael Heyman | Exhibition Dilemmas |
1997-98 | Donald Worster (KU, History) | The Inhabited Prairie: Nature and Culture on the Great Plains |
1997-98 | Winona LaDuke | Native American Environmentalism at the Cusp of the Millennium |
1996-97 | Rolena Adorno | The Spanish New World in the Narrative Imagination |
1996-97 | Richard White | Working with Nature |
1996-97 | Gwendolyn Brooks | Poetry Reading |
1995-96 | Charles Eldredge (KU, History of Art) | John Steuart Curry, Prairie Prodigal |
1995-96 | Kwame Anthony Appiah | Against National Culture: For Cosmopolitan Patriotism |
1995-96 | Bernard Williams | Truthfulness and Democratic Politics |
1995-96 | Carol Gluck | War and Memory in Japan- Fifty Years Later |
1995-96 | Daniel T. Politoske (KU, Music and Dance) | From Berlin to Krakow: Musical Treasures Rediscovered |
1994-95 | Drucilla Cornell | Pornography's Temptation |
1994-95 | Manning Marable | Beyond Black and White: Unlearning Racism |
1994-95 | Elizabeth Broun | Childe Hassam's America |
1994-95 | Janet Sharistanian (KU, English) | Gender, Modernism, Politics: The Case of Tess Slesinger |
1993-94 | Cornel West | Beyond Eurocentrism and Multiculturalism |
1993-94 | Sheldon Hackney | Beyond the Culture Wars |
1993-94 | Dominick LaCapra | The Return of the Historically Repressed: Secularization and Approaches to the Holocaust |
1993-94 | Del Brinkman (KU, Journalism) | William Allen Wight and the Presidents: Fifty Years of Influence on Washington by a Small-Town Kansas Editor |
1992-93 | Gordon Parks | Creativity |
1992-93 | Rex Martin (KU, Philosophy) | Are Rights Enough? Social Justice in Our Nations Third Century |
1992-93 | Martin Jay | Modernism, Post Modernism: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth Century French Thought |
1992-93 | Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria | The Second Discovery of America: History and Literature in the Writings of Peter Martyr d'Anghiera |
1991-92 | Patricia Limerick | Troubled Land and Haunted Places: A Re-envisioning of the American West |
1991-92 | Martha Banta | Imperialist Acts and Efficiency Movements at the Turn of the Century: Veblen, Cuba and the Jameses |
1991-92 | Jacques D'Amboise | The Arts Set the Stage for Life |
1991-92 | Ronald Willis (KU, Theatre and Film) | The Answer is Theater! What's the Question? |
1990-91 | Lawrence Levine | The Meaning of America: Frank Capra and the Politics of Culture During the Great Depression |
1990-91 | Arnold Rampersad | Four Black American Lives: Du Bois, Hughes, Hurston and Wright |
1990-91 | Patricia Graham | Collaborating for Children in Schools: Historical Views |
1990-91 | Boris Notkin | Good Evening from Moscow |
1990-91 | John G. Clark (KU, History) | Her Huge Shadow: Energy and America's Responsibilities to the Globe |
1989-90 | William Cronon | Dust Bowl Days: Stories of Environmental Change |
1989-90 | Catharine R. Stimpson | Women, Literature and Society |
1989-90 | Anthony Seeger | Folk Music and American Culture |
1988-89 | Chu-Tsing Li (KU, History of Art) | |
1988-89 | Peter Casagrande (KU, English) | Moving Easy in Harness: Creativity and Constraint |
1988-89 | Paul Kurtz | What is Secular Humanism? |
1988-89 | William McGlaughlin | An Evening with William McGlaughlin |
1988-89 | Ivar Ivask | An Evening with Ivar Ivask |
1987-88 | Robert Hudson (KU, History of Medicine) | |
1986-87 | Victor Papanek (KU, Arch & Urban Design) | |
1985-86 | Elizabeth Shultz (KU, English) | |
1984-85 | Richard Schowen (KU, Biochemistry) | |
1983-84 | Frances Heller (KU, Law) | |
1982-83 | Frances Horowitz (KU, Human Development) | |
1981-82 | Jim Moeser (KU, Music) | |
1980-81 | Richard DeGeorge (KU, Philosophy) | |
1979-80 | Harold Orel (KU, English | |
1978-79 | William Griffith(KU, History) | |
1977-78 | Barbara Craig (KU, French) | |
1976-77 | Andrew Debicki (KU, Spanish & Portugeuse) | |
1975-76 | Stitt Robinson (KU, History) | |
1974-75 | George Lawner (KU, Music) | |
1973-74 | Marilyn Stokstad (KU, Art History) | |
1972-73 | William P. Albrecht (KU, English) | |
1971-72 | Oswald P. Backus (KU, History) | |
1970-71 | John Brushwood (KU, Spanish and Portugeuse) | |
1969-70 | Milton Steinhardt (KU, Music) | |
1968-69 | Donald R McCoy (KU, History) | |
1967-68 | Merrel D. Clubb (KU, English) | |
1966-67 | Clifford Griffin (KU, Hisotry) | |
1965-66 | Paul Roofe (KU, History of Medicine) | |
1964-65 | James Seaver (KU, History) | |
1963-64 | Richard DeGeorge (KU, Philosophy) | |
1962-63 | Errol Harris (KU, Philosophy) | |
1962-63 | Elmer Beth (KU, Journalism) | |
1961-62 | Mary Grant (KU, Classics) | |
1960-61 | W. Clarke Wescoe (KU, Chancellor) | |
1959-60 | Jan Chiapusso (KU, Music) | |
1958-59 | William Paden (KU, Englsh) | |
1957-58 | M. Carl Slough (KU, Law) | |
1956-57 | L. R. Lind (KU, Classics) | |
1955-56 | J. Neale Carman (KU, French) | |
1947-48 | T.V. Smith | The Humanities and Modern Life |