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.
-
Mark Bauerlein
To become an egalitarian in the area of beauty was to cancel your full appreciation of what is great and profound. We all like to slum it, sometimes, but to get too enthusiastic about pop culture materials or, worse, to take them seriously as objects of aesthetic judgment—well, that was an abdication of the critic's responsibilities, not to mention a sign of vulgar taste. Continue Reading »
Gerson calls Decius’s attitudes “prejudice,” the condition of “a certain kind of right-wing nationalist.” Isn't it fun for a conservative, for once, to be able to talk like this! Isn't it great that conservatives can play identity politics, too? Continue Reading »
Basket of Deplorables. So canned and promiscuous a characterization does precisely what progressives such as Mrs. Clinton claim the bigots do: generalize and demonize others to the point of dehumanization. Continue Reading »
In this regime that probes people’s minds for hidden assumptions, for biases concealed even from their holders, the custodians have an impossible task. Continue Reading »
Part 3, SERVICE. When you join a committee, you either make your colleagues' workdays easier or make them harder. If the latter, they will remember the fact and it may very well come up at tenure time. Continue Reading »
Part 2: TEACHING. Sage-on-the-stage, the flipped classroom? No need for that. Just avoid a few crucial missteps. Plus: How to raise your students’ grades without inflating them. Continue Reading »
Tenure recommendations for humanities professors have three parts: research, teaching, service. If you are an untenured humanities who is also a religious or social conservative, the bar is set higher for you. I will be offering advice for each category. First, RESEARCH. Continue Reading »
The ordeal is over; my niece has chosen Tulane. A buddy in Wisconsin has a daughter, and she’s headed to Washington University. Another friend lives in Chicago, but he’s in Boston this week accompanying a daughter on campus tours. For him, the application season has just begun. I see people like . . . . Continue Reading »
Last year, Adam Bellow and I edited a volume of essays entitled The State of the American Mind: 16 Leading Critics on the New Anti-Intellectualism. The contributions varied in subject matter and approach, but one motif ran more or less through them all. It is this: the knowledge and dispositions . . . . Continue Reading »
Yesterday, someone told me about a relative who lives in Middle America, struggles with a working-class job, is a religious conservative, and can't stand the sight or sound of Hillary Clinton. “I don't get it,” she said. “This guy needs help with just the kinds of programs Hillary supports, . . . . Continue Reading »
influential
journal of
religion and
public life
Subscribe
Latest Issue
Support First Things
Subscribe Today!
