Tag Archives: culture wars

Child Spy Rats Out English Teacher

By Robin Bates | Published: November 16, 2022

The child spy tip line in Virginia received a complaint about how a teacher was teaching “Beowulf.” Meanwhile, a Texas school has banned Neil Gaiman’s works.

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Is the Left Attacking the Bard? Nope

By Robin Bates | Published: February 8, 2022

Seeking to bring back the 1990s culture wars, an “American Conservative” article claims the left is attacking Shakespeare. Nope.

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The Bard Can Reopen the American Mind

By Robin Bates | Published: May 25, 2021

Allan Bloom’s “Shakespeare’s Politics” (1964) argues that, through the Bard, we better understand politics.

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The Embattled Classics

By Robin Bates | Published: May 2, 2021

The alt-right is trying to drag the Greek and Roman classics into culture wars again. Classicists are well positioned to fight back.

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Saving the Classics from Ideologues

By Robin Bates | Published: April 28, 2021

A Univ. of Chicago classicist fears the alt-right will appropriate the classics for their own ends.

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On Using Lit as a Cudgel

By Robin Bates | Published: January 14, 2019

Monday A conservative reader the other day accused me of relentlessly using this blog as “an anti-Trump cudgel,” which got me thinking about whether I was indeed guilty of losing perspective. Was I in the grip of what Balzac calls an “idée fixe”—which is to say, an obsession that defines a life? According to Encyclopedia […]

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Old Lit as a Transformational Experience

By Robin Bates | Published: February 20, 2015

The power of a “King Lear” passage is a refutation of Scott Walker’s attempt to redirect higher education to “work force needs.”

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Is Poetry in Decline? Nope

By Robin Bates | Published: June 18, 2014

A New York Times columnist laments the decline of poetry. Here’s why he’s full of it.

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Fighting Lit’s Culture Wars Again?!

By Robin Bates | Published: January 18, 2014

A recent Wall Street Journal column is attempting to revive the 1990s culture wars over literature.

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