Mark Bauerlein is Senior Editor at First Things and Professor of English at Emory University, where he has taught since earning his PhD in English at UCLA in 1989. For two years (2003-05) he served as Director of the Office of Research and Analysis at the National Endowment for the Arts. His books include Literary Criticism: An Autopsy (1997), The Pragmatic Mind: Explorations in the Psychology of Belief (1997), and The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (2008). His essays have appeared in PMLA, Partisan Review, Wilson Quarterly, Commentary, and New Criterion, and his commentaries and reviews in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Weekly Standard, The Guardian, Chronicle of Higher Education, and other national periodicals.
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Mark Bauerlein
If you teach high school or college students, or have kids who are passing through those places, and if your duties include grading papers, or you watch your kids struggle with writing assignments, I have a piece of advice. Tell them to try composing by hand, with pen and paper, not on the . . . . Continue Reading »
The frequency of my headaches has dropped to one every six weeks or so. (I never say that without giving thanks three times.) For twenty years, they hit every third or fourth day, a twinge at 10 a.m. spreading into a steel net circling my head and tightening slowly, slowly, until it hurt to blink. . . . . Continue Reading »
In an era of fake news, Americans are increasingly turning to anti-Establishment commentators. Continue Reading »
Bruce Cole, who led the National Endowment for the Humanities for many years, passed away on January 8. Continue Reading »
Mark Movsesian and senior editor Mark Bauerlein discuss the Supreme Court’s oral argument session regarding “Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.” Continue Reading »
First Things aims to bring the best of both sides into our pages: the press’s nose for news, plus the scholar’s patient analysis of present realities. Continue Reading »
Heather Mac Donald discusses how America’s high out-of-wedlock birthrate is at the heart of inner-city violence today. Continue Reading »
While I was talking with our longtime contributor Hadley Arkes this month, he quoted a statement that I haven’t been able to get out of my head: “One man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric.” It’s a simple maxim, easy to remember, with balance and brevity plus the air of a schoolmarm’s . . . . Continue Reading »
A recent study suggests that when there are more girls in the classroom, the performance of boys improves. Continue Reading »
Peter Meyer discusses the history of Catholic education in the United States from its heyday in the 1960s to its virtual dissolution in the twenty-first century. Continue Reading »
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