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Archive: May 2015 (8 Posts)

Sweeping view from the floor of a great room, looking upwards past marble columns and arches to a grand golden-colored dome

New Scholars at the Kluge Center – May 2015

Posted by: Travis Hensley

May has been one of the busiest months I can remember at the Center. Preparations for the Kluge Center’s 15th anniversary celebration, #ScholarFest, are nearing completion. Summer lectures are being planned, meetings are being arranged, and the Center is “sprucing-up” its environs as we prepare to welcome hundreds of summer visitors. During all of this …

Sweeping view from the floor of a great room, looking upwards past marble columns and arches to a grand golden-colored dome

Rethinking Life on Earth and Beyond: Astrobiology and the Role of Paradigm Shifts in Science and Human Self-Understanding

Posted by: Dan Turello

Scientific discoveries have always had the potential to be contentious, and this has been especially true in phases of transition, when new areas of knowledge have been glimpsed but not yet fully explored, classified, or agreed upon. It is during these transitions that thick debates often ensue. Discoveries can sometimes be threatening because new evidence …

Sweeping view from the floor of a great room, looking upwards past marble columns and arches to a grand golden-colored dome

Yü Ying-shih: The Pursuit of Historical Inquiry

Posted by: Jason Steinhauer

The following is a guest post by Dongfang Shao, Chief of the Asian Division of the Library of Congress. The 2014 Tang Prize in Sinology was awarded to Yü Ying-shih. The Tang Prize Committee hailed Yü for “his mastery of and insight into Chinese intellectual, political, and cultural history with an emphasis on his profound …

Sweeping view from the floor of a great room, looking upwards past marble columns and arches to a grand golden-colored dome

Let’s Do Lunch

Posted by: Mary Lou Reker

It’s Wednesday, and in the Kluge Center that means lunch. In a tradition that dates back to the earliest days of the Center, scholars and staff gather each Wednesday for a brown-bag lunch that fosters collegiality and a lively exchange of ideas. Romila Thapar was the first person to suggest we meet regularly over lunch, …

Sweeping view from the floor of a great room, looking upwards past marble columns and arches to a grand golden-colored dome

Introducing #ScholarFest, June 11 at the Library of Congress

Posted by: Jason Steinhauer

This post originally appeared on AHA Today, a blog of the American Historical Association. What happens when you take 70 scholars from multiple disciplines, put them in a room together, and ask them to exchange knowledge, wisdom, and ideas? We don’t know. But we’ll find out on June 11, 2015, at the first-ever ScholarFest. Technically …

Sweeping view from the floor of a great room, looking upwards past marble columns and arches to a grand golden-colored dome

The True Costs of 100 Years of War

Posted by: Jason Steinhauer

Kissinger Chair Bradford Lee arrived at the Kluge Center this fall with an ambitious research question: were the results of one hundred years of American military interventions in foreign conflicts worth the costs of achieving them? He sat down with Jason Steinhauer to discuss his research, in particular his analysis of World War I, a …