Friday's Notes

Mary Beard responds to the question, "Do the Classics Have a Future?" NYRB, 12 January.

Adam Kirsch, "Mysteries and Masterpieces," Harvard Magazine, Jan/Feb, investigates "the latest stage in the ‘American conquest of the Middle Ages'."

T. J. Clark, "The Chill of Disillusion," LRB, 5 January, reviews "Leonardo Da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan," the extraordinary exhibit at London's National Gallery. Ken Johnson, "Getting Personal," NYT, 22 December, reviews "The Renaissance Portrait From Donatello to Bellini," an exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan.

Sam Adams, "Tintin's Father, Nobody's Son," Slate, 22 December, reviews Benoît Peeters' Hergé: Son of Tintin and the comics biography, The Adventures of Hergé.

Jennifer Howard, "Boston College Must Release Oral-History Records, but Court Will Review Them First," CHE, 19 December, and Jack Bouboushian, "Britain May Get Ahold of Secret IRA Interviews," Courthouse News Service, 22 December, report the latest developments in the Boston College/IRA oral history transcripts scandal. Bouboushian's reportage would have been improved had he read Chris Bray's careful study of the court documents here at Cliopatria. Boston College has utterly failed to defend privacy assurances its researchers gave witnesses and will apparently turn over vastly more oral history material than the court has even demanded. Will the American Association of University Professors, the American Historical Association, the American Sociological Association, the Oral History Association, and the Society of American Archivists act to safeguard obvious professional research interests in the case? If not, why not?