Amherst College Events Multimedia Podcast

The title poem is an elegy for the heroes and mentors in the poet's life—from David Foster Wallace ’85 to the poet's father—and demonstrates a new, expansive range for the poet. Surprising and direct, Come on All You Ghosts wrestles with the desire to do well, to make art and to confront the vast events of the day.

Hear Professors Frank Couvares, Lawrence Douglas and Pat O’Hara in a discussion moderated by Dean of the Faculty Gregory Call.

The talk combines my memories of 9/11, especially of my 20th-Century American History class on the day after the attack, and a consideration of the ways in which historians have interpreted the events of that day and the years immediately thereafter. As the readings show, they generally extend the time frame to more than a half-century of U.S. engagement in the Middle East.

The agents at the IRS Regional Examination Center in Peoria, Ill., appear ordinary enough to newly arrived trainee David Foster Wallace. But as he immerses himself in a routine so tedious and repetitive that new employees receive boredom-survival training, he learns of the extraordinary variety of personalities drawn to this strange calling. The Pale King remained unfinished at the time of David Foster Wallace’s death in 2008, but it is a deeply intriguing and satisfying novel, hilarious and fearless and as original as anything Wallace ever undertook.

Hummel & Howe bestowed Gilded Age New York with wit and brio, and everyone from Theodore Roosevelt to Lola Montez had a part in their story. Through the windows of the dingy premises of Howe & Hummel, readers can glimpse the Gilded Age in all its grime and grandeur.

Recent debates over same-sex marriage have made the issue a political football in election after election, a cultural touchstone for anxieties about the status of the American family, and a signal moment in the history of civil rights litigation in the United States. In this lecture, Professor Umphrey will review debates – particularly those internal to the gay rights community – about the value and meaning of pursuing the right to same-sex marriage, and will discuss the pros and cons of trials as a forum for public deliberation on the subject.

Many of our most cherished environmental achievements - the National Parks, the protection of designated Wilderness Areas, and the recovery of many wildlife species - are fast becoming threadbare. Changes in the science of ecology increasingly call into question the continuing relevance of the policies that led to the Parks, Wilderness Areas, and wildlife management. These changes in the underlying science began before awareness of climate change came to the fore. Taken together, these two changes are leading to a fundamental rethinking of our relationship to the natural world.

Buddhist theories of emotions and mental experience treat love and friendship with great psychological subtlety. We’ll look closely at the 5th century Indian scholar Buddhaghosa, and his treatment of four kinds of love: lovingkindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity. These are called the four "immeasurables" because one can cultivate and expand them to embrace larger and larger circles of concern. The talk sketches out an important part of human life, that is, how we are connected emotionally to others’ experience, which is of interest for both psychology and ethics.

"Every building, of course, doesn't have to be a cathedral, but in my view at least, every building, no matter how humble should try to raise our spirits and make a contribution to the whole even if it's in a small way." In this interview Blair Kamin '79, Pulitzer-prize winning architecture critic for the Chicago Tribune, and Joel Upton, Professor of Art and the History of Art, thoughtfully and thoroughly discuss the emotional, cultural and artistic dimensions of architecture.

"Philosophy is a very dialogic activity. It's an activity that takes place between individuals. Somebody asking a question, somebody giving a response, somebody responding to that response and so on down through the ages. It's a very conversational activity. And in a way askphilosophers.org, and the books that it spawned, is just the first step in the conversation. That is how people's thoughts become deeper and more sophisticated, especially about philosophical matters. They bounce their ideas off of somebody who then comes back with something and it's in the course of that conversation that ideas come to be refined."

"What I planned to do was write the history of different waves of ethnic cleansing between 1880 and 1950 and for various reasons, I recognized that Greiser's life actually spanned all of those waves of ethnic cleansing. Because there were such interesting sources about Greiser it became much more interesting to me to tell the story through his life rather than to do the more dry social history of the different waves of ethnic cleansing." Listen as Professor Catherine Epstein and Pulitzer-prize wining biographer, William McFeely '52, discuss in fascinating detail the life and rise and fall from power of Arthur Greiser.

"What this family discovers in the novel is also how this drive to be independent and strong above anything else has also driven them apart from each other, because how do you connect, how do you find those bonds again when you don't have a language for talking about being hurt or being vulnerable or being scared or having failed at something so that's part of the journey that they have to face on this tour of China." A stunning debut, A Thread of Sky is the story of a family of women and the powerful thread that binds their lives. In following the paths chosen by six fiercely independent women, A Thread of Sky explores the terrain we must travel to recognize the strength and vulnerability of those closest to us.

"When we set the founding fathers on a pedestal we fail to appreciate the fact that these were real men with real human frailties and that they had to overcome their own weaknesses to found a nation. I think the founding fathers were extraordinary, but they were not always as worthy as the cause they fought for. I don't think our revolution succeeded because we were led by extraordinary men but because the men who did lead us rose to the challenge. My hope is that my book will empower people to believe they can make a difference even if they aren't so extraordinary."

"Sam was the one person who was not hiding his sexuality, was not pretending nothing had ever happened, and was in fact quite dynamic, expressive, funny, charming, outrageous in his descriptions of what he'd been getting up to.....and I began to think more and more that he would be the key to unlocking a whole period in American cultural history when we don't really hear interestingly or dynamically from what we now think of as the gay community. So Sam became to me the invisible man who could actually be the key to a whole lot of understanding" More than merely the story of one remarkable man, Secret Historian is a moving portrait of homosexual life long before Stonewall and gay liberation. Listen as Justin Spring '84 and Professor of English John Cameron discuss in wonderful depth the origins of this biography and the remarkable story of Phil Sparrow.

The Amherst Reads featured book offers readers an opportunity to engage more actively with books by Amherst authors. Between interviews, online discussions, full reviews and appearances by authors at Amherst Association events, we hope readers come away with a better sense of connection to the College and the wealth and breadth of its intellectual life.