Sarah Klitenic Wear

In the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., hangs van Eyck’s The Annunciation, where a rainbow-winged Gabriel salutes Mary, blue-draped, arms open in prayer. Gabriel proclaims, Ave gratia plena, to which Mary responds, ecce ancilla domini. Her words are written in reverse because they are . . . . Continue Reading »

Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography by laura ingalls wilder edited by pamela smith hill south dakota historical society, 472 pages, $39.95 The South Dakota Historical Society released Pioneer Girl: The Annotated Autobiography of Laura Ingalls Wilder last fall. The book sold out in a matter of . . . . Continue Reading »

Teaching Dante’s Divine Comedy last semester, I hoped to cruise through the Purgatorio to make sure we completed the Paradiso by semester’s end. But my students wouldn’t let me skip canto 25—they stopped there, awestruck. I think we spent longer in the seventh cornice on the mount of . . . . Continue Reading »

Do Babies Matter? Gender and Family in the Ivory Tower by mary ann mason, nicholas h. wolfinger, and marc goulden rutgers, 188 pages, $25.95 When colleagues at academic conferences marvel at the latest of my seven pregnancies, my immediate reaction—so they don’t think I am the . . . . Continue Reading »