Doing the Right Thing: Doing Things Right

I was privileged to be a part of the “birthing” of the Learning Exchange Networks (LENs) and am a veteran participant. I sat through many superb workshops and led a piece on social justice and advocacy. I had no idea that during year three of our endeavor, I would see how my world of work would so clearly intersect with the mutual learning that was happening with my colleagues in Boston and in Haifa. In my job as Director of Community Relations at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), I am responsible for the community relations activities of a 560-bed Harvard teaching hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. My personal philosophy about how to work with the community is very simple

Literary studies and the academy

In 1885 the University of Oxford invited applications for the newly created Merton Professorship of English Language and Literature. The holder of the chair was, according to the statutes, to ‘lecture and give instruction on the broad history and criticism of English Language and Literature, and on the works of approved English authors’. This was not in itself a particularly innovatory move, as the study of English vernacular literature had played some part in higher education in Britain for over a century. Oxford University had put English as a subject into its pass degree in 1873, had been participating since 1878 in extension teaching, of which literary study formed a significant part, and had since 1881 been setting special examinations in the subject for its non-graduating women students. What was new was the fact that this ancient university appeared to be on the verge of granting the solid academic legitimacy of an established chair to an institutionally marginal and often contentious intellectual pursuit, acknowledging the study of literary texts in English to be a fit subject not just for women and the educationally disadvantaged but also for university men

Robins Hits the Road: Trouping with O'Neill in the 1880s

Several years ago an article in this journal called attention to the Elizabeth Robins Collection then acquired by the Fales Library of New York University. In addition to her many other accomplishments, Robins was a gifted writer who kept extensive diaries and exchanged voluminous letters with her family, friends, and associates. All these, as well as her accounts, manuscripts, drafts, and scrapbooks, constitute a massive assemblage that had been barely sifted at the time of the article and that is still not fully catalogued. It comprises a treasure-trove for scholars of the history of the theatre, literature, and American and English history.</jats:p