The University News (Irving, Tex.), Vol. 42, No. 12, Ed. 1 Wednesday, March 21, 2018 Page: 4 of 8
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C ommentary
The University News
March 21, 2018
4
aca-
What are we doing here at UD?
Jacob Newstreet
Contributing Writer
Teresa Fisher
Contributing Writer
quickly,
dashed
Politics
shares
the language as well.
“Why would any
English major not be
a classics major?” Beck
asked.
Excited as I was to
find a fray so
my hopes were
even more quickly.
“But I think [the
rivalry] is a very good-
natured thing,” Beck
concluded. As it turns
out, Beck is an English-
Classics double ma-
jor herself. She added
that even the chair of
the Classics Depart-
ment, Dr. Sweet, ma-
jored in English as
an undergraduate. In
other words, there is
too much friendship
between these two
self,” Robinson said.
Expressing the same
idea, Robinson adjusts
for her setting. That
her ideas are versatile is
indicative of their inex-
haustible value.
It is difficult to write
off Robinson due to
the sheer beauty of her
prose.
“I have come to the
conclusion that reality
in its nature precludes
nothing, that its opera-
tions might be taken
to reflect God’s free-
dom on the one hand
and his courtesy on the
other — freedom to act
outside the notion of
possibility we abstract
from the lawfulness of
departments for any
bloodshed to occur.
I had to look for it
elsewhere.
Thankfully, the
Politics Department
seemed to have plenty
of strife to offer. One
conflict pointed out
by politics major Ra-
chel Gernhardt was
between the politics
and the classics depart-
ments. In the eyes of
some scholars of the
classics, the
Department
with the English De-
partment the terrible
shame of reading texts
in English translations.
Gernhardt even quot-
ed Professor Taylor
Posey of the Classics
the world he gives us
to inhabit and courtesy
that makes the world in
fact lawful, allowing us
to be capable within the
limits of given reality to
build and plan, to see
our intentions through
to their effects, to pass
through the strange,
rich stages of mortal
life,” Robinson writes in
one lecture.
I only lament Rob-
inson’s belief that this
discussion is one “in
which, so far as I know,
I am the lone partici-
pant.” At UD, if not
elsewhere, I imagine
that she would find
many willing partici-
pants.
A t the Uni-
/% versity of
r—% Dallas, it is
.X. -A. contentious
to propose the addition
of new books to our
already extensive Gore
curriculum.
In light of this, I
unabashedly propose
the addition of a con-
temporary, liberal Prot-
estant to every UD stu-
dent’s reading list. The
novels and essays of
Marilynne Robinson
are rewarding and plea-
surable beyond mea-
sure.
Robinson abounds
in prizes and awards
that support this propo-
sition. She is the winner
of the Pulitzer Prize and
the Orange Prize for
her novels “Gilead” and
“Home.” She is famous
for a conversation be-
tween herself and for-
mer President Obama
that was published by
The New York Review
of Books.
Still, most UD stu-
dents may need further
convincing. After all,
Aquinas never won any
Pulitzers. Why should
we care about a novel-
ist who subscribes to
Calvinism, let alone one
who is living?
It may surprise stu-
dents to learn that Rob-
inson already has an au-
dience at UD. This past
fall, Professors Andrew
Osborn and Kenneth
Marchetti teamed up to
offer a seminar devoted
to Robinson’s works.
The class read her
novels and essays, meet-
ing once a week to dis-
cuss the works in ani-
mated, free-wheeling
as a higher, more com-
plex articulation of
truth that is in principle
available to being restat-
ed in other terms, then
there is nothing about
it to embarrass or of-
fend the rational mind,”
Robinson said.
In another speech,
given three days later,
the setting is more aca-
demic, and her lan-
guage is scholarly. She
states the purpose of
her lecture, a purpose
that extends through
the whole book.
“My interest here is
in reauthorizing experi-
ence, felt reality, as one
important testimony to
the nature of reality it-
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Marilynne Robinson speaks at the Covenant Fine Arts Center in
Michigan at the 2012 Festival of Faith and Writing.
Photo by Kaity Chaikowsky
Texts in the bookstore are organized by the classes and departments that require them,
though many texts are used for multiple courses or cross-listed classes.
conversations that were
simultaneously atten-
tive to detail and deeply
personal. These sorts of
conversations are what
Robinson demands
in her nonfiction and
imagines in her fiction.
“Robinson is an
original source scholar
and artist,” Marchetti,
a Ph.D. student at UD
who has written his dis-
sertation on Robinson,
said. “She does what we
champion at UD. She
goes back to the great
books and reads them
well and tries to bring
them into contempo-
rary conversation, re-
habilitating important
notions and language,
particularly about the
mind and soul and self.
“So much of the
fear and polarization
that is happening in our
contemporary politics
and ethics can be ame-
liorated if we simply
retrace our lost path
and go back to Puritan
sources and American
sources, particularly of
the 19th century.
“Emerson, Whit-
man, Dickinson, Mel-
ville — these are impor-
tant voices of our pecu-
liar form of American
democracy. Though
they may not as artists
give themselves to Pu-
ritan, Christian com-
mitments, they were still
informed by that rich,
vibrant, celebratory hu-
maneness, a true vision
of the humanities.”
Robinson’s retrac-
ing of our lost path is
clarified in her essays.
These essays cover the
horrors of nuclear pol-
lution at Sellafield in
England, the reduction-
ism of modern scientific
thought, and the pro-
foundly misinterpreted
“I
has no
no one can
us,” Gernhardt stated,
her words echoing like
a Germanic battlecry.
One wonders how
long such a peace will
last after those daring
words.
As the interviews
progressed, other de-
partments soon cast off
their pretend neutral-
ity in favor of the thrill
of competition. From
the Drama Depart-
ment, freshman Pedro
Barquin rode into the
/v pi^pedo
\/1not §°
▼ A around
looking for trouble. But
I do, and this past week
I went around looking
specifically for wars,
rivalries and enmities
between departments
on this peaceful cam-
pus.
What does an Eng-
lish major really think
of a classics major?
Which departments
have been waging a
war so brutal Achilleus
regrets he did not live
to fight in?
At great risk to
Departmental divisions and rivalries
Department as saying,
“If you really want to
study politics, read the
ancients.”
However, this ever-
polemic department
was not afraid to do
some fighting of its
own, namely with the
English Department.
“I think there are
more politically active
people in the English
Department than the
Politics Department,
and that leads to con-
flict between the two,”
said Gernhardt. An-
other source of friction
between the “Lords of
the Higher Floors of
Braniff’ that she cited
is the fact that they are
the two largest human-
ities departments, and
this created an
demic rivalry.
In the end, this
department, which
seemed to have a prom-
ising future as Mars,
god of war, disappoint-
ed as well, since Gern-
hardt explained that
these conflicts were
friendly differences.
think politics
rivals because
challenge
those I interviewed,
I have found the an-
swers.
I narrowed in on
a conflict immediately.
It turns out that some
students in the Glassies
Department regard
those in the English
Department as not ful-
ly studying literature.
Senior Ann Beck stat-
ed that English majors
lack a proper appre-
ciation of the language
when reading texts in
English, rather than in
the original language.
Glassies majors, on the
other hand, not only
devote themselves to
appreciating the liter-
ary value of a work,
but also engage with
fray, declaring English
majors once again in-
sufficient.
“Everyone knows
that English majors are
drama majors [who]
don’t like drama,”
Barquin said.
These inter-
views opened my eyes.
Maybe each of us
should make a resolu-
tion to take our next
step on campus as if
it were our last, since
we now know the full
extent of the drama,
arguments and hubris
that await us at every
corner.
Or do we?
I would not be a
science major if I were
not to add, in closing,
that happy are the crea-
tures who walk outside
of the science building,
throwing insults like a
toddler throws his toys.
They live ignorant of
the fight to elimina-
tion and the struggle
for dominance which
takes place among
STEM majors. After
all, no battle has truly
begun until a little hy-
drochloric acid and
a couple dozen Nerf
balls start to fly.
The rivalries and
divisions among the
departments are the
sign of a deeper unity.
This is acknowledged
by history major Katie
Tweedel.
“Fundamentally
we are all looking at
the same reality, and
the disciplines seem to
have a good-natured
debate about who sees
it most clearly,” Twee-
del said.
legacy of Puritanism.
On Feb. 20, she
published a new book,
“What Are We Doing
Here?” putting into
print a collection of re-
cently delivered lectures.
These lectures, while
reaffirming intellectual
positions that appeared
in earlier essays, employ
a prophetic voice.
“[This voice sees]
every closure as a new
opening, every ending
as a new beginning,”
Marchetti said.
“For a book that
so espouses the virtue
of mind interrogating
mind, there’s not much
evidence of it in this
book,” critic Parul Se-
hgal wrote in the New
York Times. “Her argu-
ments unspool neatly,
like silk off a spindle,
because they are fre-
quently arguments she
has made before.”
Consistency is ap-
parently a detriment.
Sehgal would have pre-
ferred to read essays that
derided Puritans and
decried religious senti-
ment. Sehgal describes
Robinson’s scholarly
historical research as
“dry and honorable
points of civics and the-
ology.” The truth is, to
most, quite boring, or
perhaps, to use Robin-
sonian language, ordi-
nary.
These essays are
not tired recapitulations
but the highest articula-
tions of an important
American voice. In one
speech, given at Har-
vard Memorial Church,
Robinson defends the
“divine,” invoking its
transmission from Gre-
co-Roman myth into
early Christianity.
“If myth, or mythos,
were really thought of
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The University News (Irving, Tex.), Vol. 42, No. 12, Ed. 1 Wednesday, March 21, 2018, newspaper, March 21, 2018; Irving, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1221157/m1/4/: accessed July 7, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting University of Dallas.