Why do books have chapters? With this seemingly simple question, Dr. Nicholas Dames embarks on a literary journey spanning two millennia, revealing how an ancient editorial technique became a universally recognized component of narrative art and a means to register the sensation of time.
In The Chapter: A Segmented History from Antiquity to the Twenty-First Century (Princeton University Press, 2023) Dr. Dames begins with the textual compilations of the Roman world, where chapters evolved as a tool to organise information. He goes on to discuss the earliest divisional systems of the Gospels and the segmentation of mediaeval romances, describing how the chapter took on new purpose when applied to narrative texts and how narrative segmentation gave rise to a host of aesthetic techniques. Dr. Dames shares engaging and in-depth readings of influential figures, from Sterne, Goethe, Tolstoy, and Dickens to George Eliot, Machado de Assis, B. S. Johnson, Agnès Varda, Uwe Johnson, Jennifer Egan, and László Krasznahorkai. He illuminates the sometimes tacit, sometimes dramatic ways in which the chapter became a kind of reckoning with time and a quiet but persistent feature of modernity.
Ranging from ancient tablets and scrolls to contemporary fiction and film, The Chapter provides a compelling, elegantly written history of a familiar compositional mode that readers often take for granted and offers a new theory of how this versatile means of dividing narrative sculpts our experience of time.
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his interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose
forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.
Located in the area between philosophy and mathematics is the realm of logic.
Logic permeates everything we do, from the work of Socrates to modern computer programming to the musings of Mister Spock.
However, there is more to logic than just making sense and avoiding fallacies. It can also be a highly formal system using symbols and variables to represent statements.
Learn more about formal logic, its ancient roots, and its modern applications on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.
We'll tell you how the U.S. has started retaliating against militia groups in the Middle East.
And we'll lay out the details of a new bill that includes some of the most significant border security restrictions Congress has considered in years.
Also, what's expected from a rare severe storm impacting millions of people across California?
Plus, we're talking about the booming business of beauty products for kids, alternative health strategies going mainstream, and several highlights from last night's Grammy Awards.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis admitted to having a personal relationship with Nathan Wade, the prosecutor she hired to handle the election interference case against Donald Trump. Meanwhile, the federal case against Trump is being delayed. And the Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments on Thursday deciding whether he can be left off the ballot in Colorado for his role in the January 6th insurrection.
Police in the city of Dearborn, Michigan were on high alert this weekend after an opinion piece published by the Wall Street Journal called the city “America’s Jihad Capital.” Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud said on Saturday that he was ramping up police presence across all places of worship and major infrastructure points. President Joe Biden even weighed in on Sunday in a post on X, writing, “Americans know that blaming a group of people based on the words of a small few is wrong.”
And in headlines: Senators released the long-awaited $118 billion border deal and foreign aid package, President Joe Biden won the South Carolina Democratic primary over the weekend, and more than a hundred people have been killed by the wildfires raging in Chile’s Pacific Coast.
In 1986 the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded, releasing radioactive material into northern Ukraine and Belarus. It was the most serious nuclear accident in history. Over one hundred thousand people were evacuated from the surrounding area. But local gray wolves never left — and their population has grown over the years. It's seven times denser than populations in protected lands elsewhere in Belarus. This fact has led scientists to wonder whether the wolves are genetically either resistant or resilient to cancer — or if the wolves are simply thriving because humans aren't interfering with them.
This episode, researchers Shane Campbell-Staton and Cara Love talk through what might be causing this population boom. Plus, why researchers in the field of human cancer are eager to collaborate with them.
Want to hear about other ways humans are impacting the planet? Email us at shortwave@npr.org.
What’s that model wearing? Uggs. The sheepskin boot brand’s sales have surged to an all-time high — Because nostalgia follows a 20-year life cycle.
It’s Facebook’s 20th birthday and Zuck’s baby just had its best week ever — Meta stock is up 5x in the last 14 months because of Meta’s metamorphosis: From people to profit.
And a new study just discovered the type of packaging that sells the best — Because it’s what’s on the “inside” that counts, but what’s on the “outside” that sells.
Donald Trump was, if nothing else, a boon for the news business. But this election cycle, even the “Trump bump” isn’t slowing the shrinking of the audience.
If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Dear Prudence—and you’ll be supporting the work we do here on What Next. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to help support our work.
This week the Supreme Court will hear arguments in the case about whether Donald Trump is eligible to run for president, or whether he's disqualified from doing so by a provision of the 14th Amendment that prevents individuals from holding public office if they've engaged in insurrection. As part of the preview of the arguments, Kate, Melissa, and Leah welcome Rick Hasen, author of A Real Right To Vote: How A Constitutional Amendment Can Safeguard Democracy.
Get tickets for STRICT SCRUTINY LIVE – The Bad Decisions Tour 2025!
Katelynn Perry sat in her bathtub doing Google searches on her phone. Was there a way to save her unborn baby?
She had taken the first chemical abortion pill that day and had decided she was not going to take the rest.
After visiting Planned Parenthood, Perry says, she “knew that taking that first pill was wrong,” adding, “I shouldn't have let them influence me.”
Perry already had four kids when she found out she was pregnant with her fifth child, and given the financial struggles she and her husband were facing, she had decided to visit Planned Parenthood to discuss her options.
“When I tried to ask questions, they were kind of shot down. They weren't really answered in full,” Perry said of her trip to the clinic. “They used a lot of medical terms that I didn't understand.”
After taking the first abortion pill at Planned Parenthood, Perry was instructed to go to her local pharmacy to pick up the other pills to complete the abortion, but she decided she wouldn't do that.
She called the number and spoke to a nurse who told her it was possible that her baby was still alive and could be saved. The nurse connected Perry with a pregnancy resource center about an hour away in Lynchburg, Virginia. When she arrived, the first step was an ultrasound to see whether the baby was still alive.
“We do the ultrasound; she still has a heartbeat,” Perry said of her baby. The medical staff at the pro-life center explained to Perry how the abortion pill reversal works through a 12-week hormone therapy.
Today, Perry’s baby girl, Aubrey, is just over a year old, healthy and “the sweetest little girl you would ever meet,” her mother says.
Perry joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to share her story and inform other women that the abortion-reversal pill can save the life of the unborn.
