The series has attracted large, enthusiastic audiences to each lecture. Lecturers have included Professors K. Anthony Appiah of Afro-American Studies and Philosophy, Mary Gaylord of Romance Languages and Literatures, Dudley Hershbach of Chemistry, Mark Kishlansky of History, Joseph Leo Koerner of the History of Art and Architecture, Gregory Nagy of Classics, Michael Sandel of Government, Theda Skocpol of Sociology and of Government, and Helen Vendler of English. If our students become able to write clearly and passionately, they can convey to others, by virtue of their prose, whatever they themselves have learned. Their wisdom will then not stop with them, but will radiate, in print, its own expository generosity and truth into the larger world. Aby Warburg verified that thought itself is crafted out of panic.
Writing often works best when it is passionate.
Rigid formulas don't work, because a researcher must go with his or her curiosities. What is more, a writer may need to plunge in, and then pull back to find her true calling in each effort. I always counsel students not to be afraid to go with their hunches, and to be willing to change course when they have discovered what they really have to say. There is no legitimate road to understanding the ideas allegedly contained in or promoted by a verbal text that does not route you through the center of that text. For me, this entails really working my way through the pulsing heart of it.