Sarah Churchwell
Sarah Churchwell
Sarah Bartlett Churchwellis an American-born academic who is the Professor of American Literature and Public Understanding of the Humanities at the University of East Anglia, UK. She is known for her expertise in twentieth and twenty-first century fiction. She regularly appears on British television and radio and has also judged several literary prizes, including the Women'sPrize for Fiction and the David Cohen Prize for Literature...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEducator
CountryUnited States of America
racism slavery way
Racism is an effect of slavery, not the other way around. Once slavery was abolished, not only did racism not disappear, neither did the economic system it upheld.
intended kids pioneering spoilt
'Sesame Street' was a pioneering educational T.V. show, intended to help underprivileged children. But even those of us middle-class kids spoilt for pedagogical choice couldn't get enough of it.
guest history invited list people presence resembles takes whom whose
History resembles a guest list in that sense of the invited and the gatecrashers: the people for whom we have been waiting, and those whose presence takes us unawares.
commodity degrees enter failure perceive
Top-up fees mean that universities are increasingly under pressure to confer degrees upon students, who perceive the degree as a commodity they've purchased. Failure doesn't enter into anyone's calculations.
economic effort entire group legacy legal link mystify people serve slavery sustained systematic
The legacy of slavery comes from the sustained political, legal and economic effort to link permanently an entire group of people to poverty - and to mystify that systematic disenfranchisement by making up something called race, which could serve as a distraction.
power source tiger woods
In all likelihood, the only thing extraordinary about Tiger Woods was his golf: he had extraordinary coordination and extraordinary discipline - on the course, at any rate. That discipline was the source of his power.
continue dismiss distracted resentment
In one sense, Obama's point couldn't be clearer: race is a distraction from class-based inequities. And if we dismiss working-class resentment as camouflaged racism, we will continue to be distracted by the spectre of race.
given textbooks
Textbooks are no longer given to schoolchildren; they're too expensive. So they're given to the teachers, who probably need them more.
expression permits
Expression and thought are inextricably linked: crude language permits only crude thinking.
challenges mind might
Facts might be false if they challenge the conviction of a mind already made up.
fall america excellence
Fitzgerald could sense that America was poised on the edge of a vast transformation, and wrote a novel bridging his moment and ours. The Great Gatsby made manifest precisely what Fitzgerald’s contemporaries couldn’t bear to see, and thus it is not only the Jazz Age novel par excellence, but also the harbinger of its decline and fall.
art order revelations
Art cannot, perhaps, impose order on life—but it teaches us to admire even the unruliest of revelations.
struggle self expression
Pop music provides not just the soundtrack to our lives, as the cliche goes; it releases our emotions and helps us to articulate them. This is why music is so important to adolescents, who are struggling with questions of identity and self-expression.
sesame-street teach streets
There is nothing that 'Sesame Street' can't teach you, if you let it.