Archive for March, 2009

New Technologies for Essential Learning

Tuesday, March 17th, 2009

This Chronicle of Higher Education blog entry by Randy Bass and Bret Eynon gives thought to designing learning materials to meet well-defined liberal arts goals and objectives. The entry contains helpful links to a variety of resources, including AACU’s “Essential Learning Outcomes” and the Academic Commons Visible Knowledge Project.

Kali and the Pope

Monday, March 9th, 2009

Marvin H. Pope, my Yale dissertation director and advisor, of blessed memory, is famous for his professional interest in Love and Death. Among other writings, it came to expression in his monumental commentary on the Song of Songs. In class he would often wax eloquent on the parallels between the Hindu goddess Kali, the one he called the black goddess, and the Ugaritic goddess Anat. Both disturbingly violent.

So I was delighted to find Pope surfacing in the very entertaining and erudite mystery by Laurie R. King, entitled Night Work: A Kate Martinelli Novel (Bantam, 2000). Kate is a detective with the San Francisco police. Both Kali and “the Pope” come up in the course of her investigation of a series of homicides of misogynists and wife abusers. It turns out they were perpetrated by devotees linked to a Kali cult. (more…)