Author Archives: Dr. Diane Fortenberry

“Nineteen Eighty-Four was published in the spring of 1949, less than a year before its author’s death, in January 1950. In a statement published in Life magazine, addressed to the head of the United Auto Workers union in the US, he wrote, ‘I do not believe that the kind of society I describe necessarily will […]

“Antigone was a favorite play of ancient philosophers because it promotes debate (e.g. what is law, is Antigone as guilty of arrogant dogmatism as Creon, and how shall we think about the powerless?), and the centuries since have seen many translations, perhaps most notably by the Classicist and poet Anne Carson (Antigonick, Bloodaxe Books 2012). […]

“The usefulness of fungi is, for us, a lucky biproduct of their own independent lifeways, and their constancy, resourcefulness, and apparent equitability are reminders that we are not as special as we think. At a time when political and moral compasses seem broken and our lives themselves are at the mercy of a virus we […]

“The danger of mythology—not just Classical myth, but all myth, from Norse to Japanese to African to Native American—is that it is so deep-rooted in the contemporary cultures to which it is ancestral that ancient social practices and preferences and justifications have become part of the DNA of modern societies—mutations that we think of (when […]

“An ilbal is an instrument for seeing, a lens with which to view sacred relationships. In Native cultures it might comprise stories, traditions, ceremonies. Kimmerer suggests that science is the ilbal of modern Western society, through which lens we understand everything from chromosomes to galaxies. Science brings the material world into focus, but it blurs […]