Cross-cultural “Stuff”
Forgotten Women: A Reading List
Over the last month or two* I’ve been thinking about how women vanish from history. How their contributions are often erased. Rachel Swaby, whose book about women scientists is listed below, describes writing about their lives as “revealing a hidden history of the world.” Here are a few examples of books that bring otherwise forgotten…
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50 Years Before Hilary Clinton: Indira Gandhi
Fifty years ago, on January 24, 1966, Indira Gandhi was sworn into office as India’s third prime minister. She was not the first elected female head of state–that honor goes to Sirivamo Bandaraniake of Sri Lanka. But she was the first woman elected to her country’s highest position who played a visible role on the…
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Two Poets, Eight Centuries, One Poetic Masterpiece
Save Edward Fitzgerald’s translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is one of those books that some scholars love to be snotty about. Literary critics of a certain stamp dismiss it as bad poetry, apparently on the grounds that people love it who don’t otherwise read poetry.* Persian linguists rightly point out that Fitzgerald’s translation…
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