Isabella stands before a tyrant dressed in blood-red clothes. Her feet are pressed into the ground as she looks him in the eye: An Antigone in modern dress. “Sir, believe this,” she says to him with her chin upraised, “I had rather give my body than my soul.” This is Isabella, the epic heroine of...
From Abraham Lincoln to Elvis Presley, the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” has been championed by a vast array of Americans in the nearly 157 years since its composition. Featured prominently at America’s definitive battles, funerals, rallies, and consecrations, it has been used to prompt, justify, and glorify all manners of American thought and action....
When Professor of English John Somerville took over the English department’s Visiting Writers Program in the 1990s, he took on a job he never would have anticipated. Twenty-five years later, however, he called the job “a surprise and a joy.” Beginning in the fall of 2019, Associate Professor of English Dutton Kearney will take over...
Shakespeare in the Arb promises to be different this year with one of Shakespeare’s weirdest and darkest plays, according to junior and director Andrew Kennedy. The annual performance will be held at 2 p.m. this Saturday and Sunday. The play is being held in the Mauck Solarium instead of the Slayton Arboretum, due to weather...
As the audience laughed softly at the story just told onstage by conductor Fred Radke, Radke turned from the microphone to the Harry James Orchestra and counted off, “One, two, a one, two, three,” and the sounds of trumpet, trombone, and saxophone filled the Searle Center. Off to the side of the stage, couples and...