Knowledge Commons | Tom Durwood | Activity https://hcommons.org/members/empirestudiesmagazine/activity/ Activity feed for Tom Durwood. Sat, 04 Apr 2026 14:15:34 -0400 https://buddypress.org/?v=10.6.0 en-US 30 hourly 2 04a6083f6dc7e4cd4bf10e7ce4aa63ae Tom Durwood deposited Contemporary Children’s Lit + Empire Essay Contest (October 1 Deadline) https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1658935/ Sun, 28 Jul 2019 19:31:21 -0400 CFP / Essay Contest
Empire and Contemporary Children’s Literature
Empire Studies, an open-access online magazine, invites essays for a special issue on specific topics within a broad consideration of “Empire and Contemporary Children’s Literature.”
We are looking for student-friendly, jargon-free essays,
1600-2000 word count. The winning…[Read more]

]]> 0 8963e2a920579c2de7af1484378785f4 Tom Durwood's profile was updated https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1658933/ Sun, 28 Jul 2019 19:17:05 -0400 0 1409ddc64ae4b81587b5f0e47fc61921 Tom Durwood deposited WAR AND THE NATURAL WORLD: Discussion questions for “Scarred Lands and Wounded Lives: The Environmental Footprint of War” by Alice and Lincoln Day and related sources https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1658919/ Sun, 28 Jul 2019 18:10:15 -0400 WAR AND THE NATURAL WORLD: Discussion questions for “Scarred Lands and Wounded Lives: The Environmental Footprint of War” by Alice and Lincoln Day and related sources.

]]> 0 dd38564b04d326a3cfb406cc58e89c30 Tom Durwood deposited WAR AND THE NATURAL WORLD: Interview with filmmakers and producers Alice and Lincoln Day about their documentary “Scarred Lands and Wounded Lives: The Environmental Footprint of War” https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1658918/ Sun, 28 Jul 2019 18:07:26 -0400 WAR AND THE NATURAL WORLD: Interview with filmmakers and producers Alice and Lincoln Day about their documentary “Scarred Lands and Wounded Lives: The Environmental Footprint of War”

]]> 0 4fe0c2fdf713c79187e82ee4db4e8517 Tom Durwood deposited War and the Natural World - Introduction, Interview, and Lesson Plan with Filmmakers Day and Day https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1658913/ Sun, 28 Jul 2019 14:42:33 -0400 My cadets always listen carefully to the “Law of Unintended Consequences.” It is a law that applies in the most surprising of contexts, none more so than warfare.
The unintended consequences of war—both good and bad—are fascinating to my students. My cadets always engage with lesson plans on the technology that came out of World War II, for exa…[Read more]

]]> 0 365d8739ee0a02fa0d5dc97b0f92751c Tom Durwood deposited Lesson Plan: Nature and Empire - Discussion questions for “Kingdom Under Glass: A Tale of Obsession, Adventure, and One Man’s Quest to Preserve the World’s Great Animals” by Jay Kirk https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1658912/ Sun, 28 Jul 2019 14:28:01 -0400 Nature and Empire: Discussion questions for “Kingdom Under Glass: A Tale of Obsession, Adventure, and One Man’s Quest to Preserve the World’s Great Animals” by Jay Kirk

]]> 0 e59ceaf3b6f11941fcd809bef688e600 Tom Durwood deposited Nature and Empire Interview with Jay Kirk, the author of Kingdom Under Glass https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1658911/ Sun, 28 Jul 2019 14:00:49 -0400 Interview with Kirk on his work on Akeley.

]]> 0 c329a359e97676a120eba465b9d95552 Tom Durwood deposited Nature and Empire Jay Kirk's Kingdom Under Glass: A Tale of Obsession, Adventure, and One Man’s Quest to Preserve the World’s Great Animals, a Book Review https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1658909/ Sun, 28 Jul 2019 13:56:02 -0400 Jay Kirk’s Kingdom Under Glass examines the life and career of taxidermist/adventurer Carl Akeley. Kirk, a professor of creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania, follows Akeley on his life-long quest to perfect methods of the preservation and presentation of natural specimens, and to establish himself as an artistic talent within the b…[Read more]

]]> 0 fc1194bb3fffb78c2666c3bd934cd77a Tom Durwood deposited Nature and Empire: On Jay Kirk’s Kingdom Under Glass: A Tale of Obsession, Adventure, and One Man’s Quest to Preserve the World’s Great Animals https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1658903/ Sun, 28 Jul 2019 13:27:27 -0400 The relationship between man’s empire and nature is critical, as we are finding out today. Overwhelmingly the relationship is one of sheer exploitation, but the style and content of our attitude towards nature in all its forms has taken vastly different form in different societies.
Nature and empire is an impossibly sprawling and complex field, e…[Read more]

]]> 0 44de49739b60219d072c111c857e16d9 Tom Durwood deposited Discussion Questions for Women in Melville by Cynthia Nixon https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1658872/ Sun, 28 Jul 2019 00:42:47 -0400 Discussion Questions for Women in Melville by Cynthia Nixon

]]> 0 a9c8a8e6fbfc3542557c318552dd91fb Tom Durwood deposited Interview with Cynthia Dixon on the Women in Melville https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1658871/ Sun, 28 Jul 2019 00:39:33 -0400 Interview with Claudia A. Dixon, author of Bringing Her Home: The Woman in Herman Melville.

]]> 0 39fea47304c7b60d4dfe759276b95f2b Tom Durwood deposited The Woman in Melville https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1658870/ Sun, 28 Jul 2019 00:36:29 -0400 Claudia Dixon is a bold thinker and a natural writer. I wish writers like Claudia Dixon were producing all of our textbooks. In chapter three, she looks at Melville’s friendship with Nathaniel Hawthorne, and how much it meant to Melville that a fellow author understood what he was trying to do. In the following interview and excerpt from her d…[Read more]

]]> 0 e007c6756b8e1b81d964d7ee7f45d051 Tom Durwood deposited Interview with Nicholas Christopher, author of Somewhere in the Night: Film Noir and the American City https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1658869/ Sun, 28 Jul 2019 00:31:56 -0400 Interview with Nicholas Christopher, author of Somewhere in the Night: Film Noir and the American City

]]> 0 cfcfcc33a9c08b09c574af43a64fbd55 Tom Durwood deposited Review of Nicholas Christopher's Somewhere in the Night https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1658868/ Sun, 28 Jul 2019 00:28:27 -0400 “Somewhere in the Night” is an insightful look into one of the most influential genres of the
20th century. Poet and scholar Nicholas Christopher delivers to his readers a compelling
personal journey into the mysteries of movies as diverse as D.O.A., Sunset Boulevard, and even
Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life. It is a sprawling subject…[Read more]

]]> 0 cd84c438960628315f0a620d17cd693c Tom Durwood deposited Film Noir - Interview, Book Review, and Lesson Plan for Nicholas Christopher's Somewhere in the Night https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1658867/ Sun, 28 Jul 2019 00:25:11 -0400 In this interview and the subsequent book review, we try to introduce the general reader to the topic. Nicholas Christopher is a poet and scholar whose book Somewhere in the Night: Film Noir and the American City opens the door to noir riches.
Film noir’s lasting value to students, teachers and the general reader is in the depth and breadth of t…[Read more]

]]> 0 2e0f4ddc3adec64dfa7c99b359bccc2b Tom Durwood deposited Visigothic Architecture - How did Visigoth churches get to Ireland from Iberia? https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1658866/ Sun, 28 Jul 2019 00:20:34 -0400 How do cultural influences travel from place to place? It is sometimes easy to trace these lines of influence in the modern era, but how did this process work in the past? Looking at the past, how can we decipher which elements of architecture or music or literature came from which sub-culture? In her dissertation, the author looks closely at…[Read more]

]]> 0 424a3d62a114c6e41668043486bc59c2 Tom Durwood deposited New Dimensions in a Classic Novel: James Joyce https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1658865/ Sun, 28 Jul 2019 00:16:49 -0400 James Joyce is a fascinating writer, but he can be a most difficult author to teach. In her dissertation, Lynn Bongiovanni brings a recent viewpoint – empire theory – to bear on this most singular author and finds an interesting paradox. While Joyce inveighed against imperial rule – in this case, Ireland’s “colonization” by the British – he was ca…[Read more]

]]> 0 8bd6b01a50f4ba54af17c09bd93cf9cf Tom Durwood deposited NARRATIVES OF EMPIRE: Masked Fictions https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1658864/ Sun, 28 Jul 2019 00:13:57 -0400 Smart people like Edward Said, Harold Bloom and, here, Nalini Iyer, see elements of imperial narratives in novels like Robinson Crusoe and Lord of the Flies. The same elements can be identified in contemporary stories movies like Avatar. As empires change, so do the stories we tell to make sense of the machineries and processes that support…[Read more]

]]> 0 a9d54ae9fd0653332028722ee0295390 Tom Durwood deposited Nationality and Colonial Strategies: Germany and America – How the American Expansion Resonated in Germany https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1658863/ Sun, 28 Jul 2019 00:09:39 -0400 We all tend to see what we want to see — in ourselves, in our friends, in our culture, and in other cultures. In his dissertation, Jens-Uwe Guettel takes a penetrating look at how Germany viewed America over the course of the 19th century, the period of America’s great expansion westward.
In the following interview and excerpt, you will find hig…[Read more]

]]> 0 5a29cad333107c7b5658f327afa25986 Tom Durwood deposited Geometry, Radar and Empire: A History of Grids https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1658862/ Sun, 28 Jul 2019 00:01:58 -0400 My students always get a kick out of writing like this – provocative, smart, funny, and taking with a big idea. In this case, the idea is really big: that radar was a precursor to GPS in giving us a way to conceive of our universe, and to map ourselves within that universe (and that is only part of the thesis). Here are two typical s…[Read more]

]]> 0 a4f5f21d5afa7bbee812f393420ffe88 Tom Durwood deposited War, Society, and Commerce in World War II https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1643428/ Sat, 29 Jun 2019 20:43:00 -0400 The success of most wars depends in part on several important non-combat factors, and crucial among them is public support.
In her fascinating and ambitious 2006 book, From Submarines to Suburbs, Cynthia Henthorn examines both the relationship of commerce to war and the relationship of the citizen to war. It is a timely topic, since America is…[Read more]

]]> 0 9877ea314aa82da0db3016c7993f7b66 Tom Durwood deposited The Three Gorges Dam https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1643057/ Sat, 22 Jun 2019 17:14:08 -0400 In their ambitious book Empires of Food, authors Evan D.G. Fraser and Andrew Rimas take on a huge topic: the cause-and-effect relationship between food systems, societies and governments or, as they phrase it in the book’s subtitle, “feast, famine and the rise and fall of civilizations.” This is historical context as well as advice for colle…[Read more]

]]> 0 bc3d51c4b7dbb11f6c1e9c5cb6c31879 Tom Durwood deposited International Relations and A Partnership for Disorder https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1643056/ Sat, 22 Jun 2019 17:10:48 -0400 When I searched dissertation titles to find topics that relate to empire, I ran across a thesis entitled A Partnership for Disorder: China, the United States and their policies for a postwar disposition of the Japanese Empire 1941-1945. When I contacted the author, Xiaoyuan Liu, I found that the thesis had been turned into a book.

On our…[Read more]

]]> 0 4c5a8c540d25e2f6e564b4ae9ed2c5ba Tom Durwood deposited Mr. Gatling’s Terrible Marvel https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1642563/ Fri, 14 Jun 2019 18:45:57 -0400 It is easy to forget what a cultural sensation technology can produce – and perhaps no instance was greater than that of the Gatling gun.
In her outstanding 2006 book, Mr. Gatling’s Terrible Marvel, author Julia Keller gives a detailed and lucid account of Richard Gatling and his quest to create a true machine gun — and the unintended conse…[Read more]

]]> 0 78806ae6e0e51f0b0724f9a81143f9f5 Tom Durwood deposited Dracula as a Foretelling of WWI https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1642562/ Fri, 14 Jun 2019 18:41:41 -0400 We have long been fascinated with the connection between monsters and our underlying fears. Jerome Cohen’s 1996 book Monster Theory looks at horror stories as a sort of Rorschach test for the culture as a whole. If we look carefully, we can see in them our fears and anxieties about ourselves. According to this theory, each monster is specific to a…[Read more]

]]> 0 7bba6915a27c7c279ee3769b6e411e05 Tom Durwood deposited Melville, Orwell, and a Brief Theory of Empire https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1641817/ Wed, 05 Jun 2019 21:02:41 -0400 A brief comparison of the work of two authors who lived almost a century apart reveals two literatures driven by a common concern with the processes and consequence of empire. A review of their lives shows that both Herman Melville and Eric Blair (George Orwell) were disenfranchised children of empire — writers with a foot in both camps, the c…[Read more]

]]> 0 9668842ea6d3f9a983cec68e63396cd4 Tom Durwood's profile was updated https://hcommons.org/activity/p/1641381/ Sat, 01 Jun 2019 18:46:01 -0400 0