Tag: Department of English
Multispectral imaging unlocks a Smithsonian treasure’s secrets
This tiny book was acquired by the Smithsonian in 1925. It’s made up of 147 folios of parchment, or treated animal hide, stitched together. The “over text”—the visible text—is of an Armenian prayer book, suspected to date from the 15th century. But there is also an “under text”—a work that was erased to recycle the parchment for the over text. The Smithsonian has turned to University of Rochester professor Gregory Heyworth and his Lazarus Project to help solve the mystery of what that long-ago effaced text might be.
Medals and teaching awards will honor outstanding achievement at 2019 Commencement
The University of Rochester will recognize the outstanding contributions of distinguished alumni, educators, and scientists by bestowing the Eastman Medal, Hutchison Medal, and awards for scholarship and teaching.
How do you make a poem?
Speakers of a language rely on its words to carry out even the most mundane acts of communication. But the same words are poets’ medium of creation. In his newest book, How Poems Get Made, James Longenbach asks how poets turn bare utterance into art.
Has the Renaissance warped our view of the Middle Ages?
The picture of the Middle Ages as “awful, smelly, stinky, [and] dangerous” is not accurate, says medievalist and University of Pennsylvania professor David Wallace, this year’s Ferrari Humanities Symposia visiting scholar.
Fairchild Award recognizes literature in translation
Kaija Straumanis ’12 (MA) has received the Lillian Fairchild Award—which recognizes artists for their commitment to the Rochester community—for her work bringing world literature to new audiences.
A national pastime must have a national presence
As the baseball season opens, the league is looking to change some rules to speed up the game. English lecturer and baseball authority Curt Smith presents his own five-point plan to save the sport he loves.
Saving the lost text of a Torah scroll
Professor Gregory Heyworth and his digital media students are using different wavelengths of light to reveal illegible text that could create a sacred, tangible link with Jewish congregations lost to the Holocaust.
Turning the gears of an early modern search engine
A collaboration between librarians and engineering students, the book wheel in Rossell Hope Robbins Library is a recreation of a 16th century design, solving the problem of needing access to multiple books at the same time.
Master of suspense: Thomas Perry ’74 (PhD) on the thrill of writing thrillers
Thomas Perry ’74 (PhD) is the acclaimed author of 26 suspense novels. His latest, The Burglar, follows The Bomb Maker, cited by The New York Times as one of 2018’s best thrillers.
What is belief in a secular age?
New books from Rochester scholars John Givens and John Michael examine the lives of iconic writers to ask what religious belief might look like in an age of science and secularism.