bookporn #21: clare college, cambridge

Floor-to-ceiling books. I think the floor of the upper balcony is actually not much thicker than the height of one shelf — so parsimonious were this library’s architects with their wall-space. And rightly so, for it is so very pleasing to be barely able to cram that two-storey wall of books into a single photo [...]

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from historiography to history

when does historical writing go from being historiography to history? — or in other words: when do we stop regarding a piece of historical work as a piece of academic writing on some historical event, and start regarding it instead as a primary source in itself?
The most straightforward way to think about this might be [...]

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making that which is implicit, explicit

quick thought-stub –
Harold Bloom said that literary criticism was “the art of making what is implicit in the text as finely explicit as possible”. On a different sort of level, the same seems to ring true for (at least) moral philosophy, where I came to see that there is a lot of understanding to be [...]

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BA (Hons.), MPhil

as of yesterday afternoon! It’s been a rather busy week; apologies for the radio silence.

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links for 2007-10-12

AsiaSource Interview with Talal Asad
on religion, the nation-state and secularism
(tags: religion ideas history secularism islam)

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musing about conversation

right after I extol the virtues and benefits of conversation, I read an article in the NYT that exemplifies the vices and disadvantages thereof. An excerpt:
We like to think that people improve their judgment by putting their minds together, and sometimes they do. The studio audience at “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” usually [...]

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notes on a discussion

on the characteristics of interesting conversation.

Every participant brings (literally) a lifetime of disparate backgrounds, experiences, ideas, convictions and intellectual training to the table. The key to interesting conversation is being able to relevantly negotiate — adapt? — all of it into a common topic of conversation,
with flow, and some eloquence. Humour. Perhaps even an iota [...]

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bookporn #20: st john’s college library, cambridge (II)

african koran, loose-leaf & leatherbound, and painfully beautiful script — best viewed large, I think.

o why do they not make books like this anymore?

the Haftarah: selections from the Hebrew Bible (Tanach) to be read on the Sabbath. I fear the synagogues no longer read from ancient vellum scrolls, though I wish to be wrong about [...]

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bookporn #19: st john’s college library, cambridge (I)

I am an unfettered sucker for spiral staircases, and the spiral staircase in St John’s library is indeed glorious: wrought iron, ethereal, delicate. Pure art. But what I love about it is: it’s not only artistic — it’s artful, too. It wends its way upward in a lazy sweep, and is positioned in just the [...]

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links for 2007-10-02

Easily Distracted » Blog Archive » Harry Potter as Complex Event
harry potter & historical causation: what a combination. awesome! and one of those great posts where the comments are just as fascinating as the contents. (via gavin)
(tags: causation history ideas)

The Musical Cliché Figure Signifying The Far East: Whence, Wherefore, Whither?
martin nilsson traces the genealogy of [...]

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