The American Scholar

Inspired by Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous speech, The American Scholar is the quarterly magazine of public affairs, literature, science, history, and culture published by the Phi Beta Kappa Society since 1932.

Anniversaries

The American Scholar

Portals to Eden • The gates on college campuses provide beauty and security, but they can also take on symbolic importance in times of campus tumult

Rules of Reciprocity • True empathy might be possible only if we can first get out of our own way

Here We Are Again • Helen Benedict’s novels about the Iraq war continue to resonate today

The Paper Chase • A quiet crisis threatens millions of historical documents in some of the nation’s premier archives

Lisbon, 1989 • How longing, melancholy, nostalgia, and song came together on one memorable night

It’s All in Your Head • What a remarkable thing it is to remember what you read

The Revolutionary Scholar • Meditations on Phi Beta Kappa and the futures we imagine

The Two Ladies of Vermont • In 1875, the debate over whether to induct women into Phi Beta Kappa exposed a crack in the foundation of Western education

The Synthesis Is Here • Our future depends on how successfully we fuse the liberal arts and technology

A Life in Stanzas • How Phi Beta Kappa shaped one poet’s beginnings

Welcome to the Bioemporium • Brain-dead bodies hold great promise for medical education and research, but how do we calculate the ethical cost?

Love the Blood • Exploring the complexity of a life with Carl Van Vechten, on the centennial of his most notorious work

The Spirit Seeker • Were it not for W. A. R. Goodwin, Williamsburg, Virginia, would look like a very different place today

Word Magic

Four Poems

My Two Front Teeth • Reflections on a lifetime of dental drama

The Art of Letting Go • On the poetics of loss

A Teacher and a Friend • The roots of Anthony Benezet’s campaign against slavery—and his belief in Black and white equality— can be traced to the remarkable school he ran out of his home

The Bread Loaf Diaries • A novelist’s record of many years spent at the famed summer conference reveals the joys to be found in the company of fellow writers and friends

The Caravaggio Whisperer • On a Roman holiday, an unexpected friend took me deep into the artist’s world

CHIEF MISUNDERSTANDING • A speculative, sputtering study of leadership

OUR ENERGETIC WORLD • Life is not an accident but an inevitable result of physical laws

FINDING MARTY • Zooming in on a storied director

DRAMATIC PAWS • On the trail of the elusive big cat of the Himalaya

SHOOTING FOR THE CAMERA • A portrait of the 20th century’s most infamous assassin

TRANSLATING THE PAST • Modern wit meets age-old wisdom

SOUND BARRIER • How Marian Anderson made and managed history

UNFRIENDLY EXCHANGE • The tale of a nuclear war that almost was

Commonplace Book

ANNIVERSARIES