Lora D. Burnett teaches Global Arts, Media and Writing Studies at University of California, Merced

Higher Ed

Counting the Social Cost of What College Costs

The financial burden of higher education is not an unfortunate accident, nor is it a “fact of life” or a “natural consequence” of going to college

February 15, 2023 • by Lora Burnett

Now many of the students with the most motivation to work towards a more equitable and just society feel the least liberty to do so....

Counting the Social Cost of What College Costs

Education

The Reviews Are In

Will Durant’s The Life of Greece

August 14, 2019 • by Lora Burnett

Will Durant’s The Life of Greece, the second volume in the “Story of Civilization” series, was published in 1939, a grim year for “Western Civilization.” Despite -- or perhaps because -- the book was such a popular success, it was reviewed in a handful of academic journals. Two reviews of this volume ...

Education

The Scholarly Reach of Popular History

Will and Ariel Durant’s Story of Civilization

July 13, 2019 • by Lora Burnett

The full eleven volumes of The Story of Civilization, Will and Ariel Durant’s popular history of (mostly) the “Western world,” take up exactly 22” of shelf space, fitting perfectly on the top shelf of one of a couple of unfinished pine bookcases I recently bought to accommodate the spillover from my ...

Feature

Jesse Lemisch, 1936-2018

Activist, Historian, Friend

August 25, 2018 • by Lora Burnett

I just learned the sad news that Jesse Lemisch has passed away. Readers of Public Seminar and historians have known Jesse as a friend and/or a sparring partner for decades, and many more have known his name and work. I met Jesse late in his life, but at a crucial juncture in mine. ...

Feature

Rethinking Academic Jargon

New tweets from an old culture war

December 1, 2017 • by Lora Burnett

This was, by and large, a well-received tweet. But there was some pushback from a couple of folks (okay, a couple of guys) who separately invoked the terrifying specter of "critical jargon" or "academic jargon" – without, ironically enough, defining what they meant. But whatever they thought they were saying, ...

Feature

Margaret Fuller’s “Conversations” as 19th Century Podcasts

The Best is Lost

June 23, 2017 • by Lora Burnett

If the ante-bellum nineteenth century journalist, Transcendentalist, and feminist Margaret Fuller were alive today, she would have a podcast. Before Fuller’s premature death in 1850, female intellectuals had few outlets for expressing their ideas. Hers was conversation, written and spoken. In conversation with others -- Horace Greeley, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo ...