My “good read” for winter 2016 is actually a “good listen.” The text is the Charles Homer Haskins Prize Lecture, delivered annually at the meeting of the American Council of Learned Societies. The Haskins Lecture is dedicated to the theme, A Lifetime of Learning, and in it, the lecturer is asked, “to reflect on a lifetime of work as a scholar … the motives, the chance determinations, the satisfactions (and dissatisfactions) of the life of learning.” This year’s lecture–by Wendy Doniger, the Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions at University of Chicago–can be heard at https://www.acls.org/media/haskins/, and it’s truly remarkable. I was in the audience when it was delivered, and I was in tears by the end. The rest of the audience–composed entirely, mind, of cynical academics–was equally affected, as we all rose immediately to our feet when Wendy ended for a long and resounding ovation. It was easily one of the best lectures I have ever heard in my life.
