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"Witchcraft and Magic in Europe"
Ancient Greece and Rome $24.95 Paper, 408 pages The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries $24.95 Paper, 376 pages The Twentieth Century $24.95 Paper, 256 pages Edited by Bengt Ankarloo and Stuart Clark For two millennia, European folklore and ritual have been imbued with the belief in the supernatural. Take the story of an elderly woman who, when stopped by customs officials outside of Naples in 1921, was found to be carrying the head of a goat with 42 nails driven into it and was not allowed to leave until the head was destroyed by a priest.
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Subjects matter at GSE
Did your ninth-grade biology teacher major in biology in college? Did your sixth-grade math teacher even have a minor in mathematics? Chances are, they did not. But increasingly, schools are looking for teachers who at least have a bachelor’s degree in the subjects they teach — particularly in the areas of math, science and foreign languages. That is why the Graduate School of Education is expanding its level of cooperation with other departments, allowing students, for example, to earn two degrees, one in their subject area and one in education.
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$11 million donated
The largest gift ever made to the University for undergraduate student financial aid was donated recently by Jay H. Baker (W’56), the president of Kohl’s Corporation, the Wisconsin-based specialty department store chain, and his wife, Patty. Three million dollars of the $11 million gift, announced Oct. 7 by President Judith Rodin, will endow the Baker Leadership Scholars Program, providing financial support to undergraduates throughout the University.
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Memoirist Maynard gets real
Literary bad girl Joyce Maynard, who has been publicly spanked by her numerous critics during the year since she published her memoir “At Home in the World,” spoke at Kelly Writers House on November 2. Her memoir deals with growing up in an alcoholic family, the expectations put on her by her brilliant parents and the affair she had, as an 18-year-old, with famed writer J.D. Salinger. It was her writing about this last item that drew vociferous criticism; many believed that the private life of Salinger, a known recluse, should not have been revealed.
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Take better aim with anti-crime dollars
Excerpts from testimony before the Subcommittee on Crime of the Committee on the Juidiciary of the U.S. House of Representatives Oct. 28
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Civil rights was on the air
World War II was a two-front battle of a different sort for African Americans. Like the rest of the country, they fought Nazism and fascism abroad, but at home, they also fought for the basic privileges of citizenship that were still denied them decades after emancipation.
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An audience with the King
The “King of the Blues,” B.B. King, still rules the roost after five decades of recording, and today on “The World Cafe,” he drops by to give host David Dye — and you, if you tune in — a sampling of the songs on his most recent album. Other special guests these next three weeks include composer Jonathan Elias and alt-rockers Ben Folds Five. Thursday, Nov. 11 B.B. King talks with Dye and performs, featuring music from his latest album, “Let the Good Times Roll”
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Claudia Gould
The new director turned the inside outside in her first event at the Institute of Contemporary Art. Claudia Gould draped the side of the building that faces Sansom Common with a plain white tarp to show passersby the videos being screened indoors by curators, video artists and whoever else was attracted by the event. Alas, the lights of Sansom Common made the videos hard to see, but the sound effects were loud and clear. And so was Gould’s message — that the ICA was of the people, by the people and for the people.
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The world turned upside down
It took a little effort, but Harcum College freshman Chrisnie Grobler (center) did find her homeland of South Africa on this map of the world. And if the people around her — (left to right) third-year School of Medicine student Kareem Zaghlool, University of Scranton junior Anthony Zamcho and Engineering doctoral student Kai Hynna — look bemused, that’s understandable: The map shows the world as someone from Sydney might view it.
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Math turns 100
Depending on how you want to count it, the mathematics department last month celebrated its 100th year or 250 years of math at Penn. Back in 1749, when 24 trustees were constituted as governors of the institution that would eventually become Penn, the School of Mathematics didn’t yet have a distinct personality. It included disciplines we now recognize as physics, astronomy and philosophy. In 1899, as both the discipline and the University evolved, a separate mathematics department emerged at Penn and the first chairman was named.