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Thomas James Farrell is professor emeritus of writing studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD). He started teaching at UMD in Fall 1987, and he retired from UMD at the end of May 2009. He was born in 1944. He holds three degrees from Saint Louis University (SLU): B.A. in English, 1966; M.A.(T) in English 1968; Ph.D.in higher education, 1974. On May 16, 1969, the editors of the SLU student newspaper named him Man of the Year, an honor customarily conferred on an administrator or a faculty member, not on a graduate student -- nor on a woman up to that time. He is the proud author of the book WALTER ONG'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO CULTURAL STUDIES: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE WORD AND I-THOU COMMUNICATION (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2000; 2nd ed. 2009, forthcoming). The first edition won the 2001 Marshall McLuhan Award for Outstanding Book in the Field of Media Ecology conferred by the Media Ecology Association. For further information about his education and his publications, see his UMD homepage: Click here to visit Dr. Farrell's homepage.
On September 10 and 22, 2009, he discussed Walter Ong's work on the blog radio talk show "Ethics Talk" that is hosted by Hope May in philosophy at Central Michigan University. Each hour-long show has been archived and is available for people who missed the live broadcast to listen to. Here are the website addresses for the two archived shows:
Click here to listen the Technologizing of the Word Interview
Click here to listen the Ramus, Method & The Decay of Dialogue Interview
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Saturday, March 11, 2023Richard Reeves on Boys and Men Today (REVIEW ESSAY) Richard Reeves of the Brookings Institution published the deeply researched and thought-provoking book Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It (Brookings Institution Press, 2022). Recently Reeves was interviewed in a podcast by the American journalist and columnist for the New York Times, Ezra Klein. Unfortunately, Reeves appears not to be familiar with Walter J. Ong's work.
Monday, March 6, 2023Humanity, Technology, and American Society Today (REVIEW ESSAY) As a follow-up to my OEN article "Nathan Heller on 'The End of the English Major'" (dated March 3, 2023), I have now written "Humanity, Technology, and American Society Today." My follow-up essay is also my timely follow-up to Eric Schmidt's remarkable article "Innovation Power: Why Technology Will Define the Future of Geopolitics" in Foreign Affairs (published on February 28, 2023).
Friday, March 3, 2023Nathan Heller on "The End of the English Major" (REVIEW ESSAY) Nathan Heller's article "The End of the English Major" in The New Yorker magazine (issue dated March 6, 2023) is a probing discussion of the precipitous decline in English and history and other humanities majors in American colleges and universities since 2013. What happened to the humanities -- and why? What, if anything, can be done about the declining numbers of humanities majors?
Wednesday, March 1, 2023Commemorating the Ten Years of Pope Francis' Papacy (REVIEW ESSAY) The late Pope Benedict XVI surprised the world by resigning in 2013. The cardinal-electors then surprised the world by electing the Argentine Jesuit Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires to be the new Pope Francis in March 2013. As the tenth anniversary of his election approaches, it is time to look back over some highlights of the doctrinally conservative Pope Francis' papacy thus far.
Thursday, February 23, 2023Walter J. Ong's Expansive Relationist Spirit (REVIEW ESSAY) In my 6,675-word review essay, I aim to persuade you to adopt Walter J. Ong's expansive relationist spirit as your own spirit as you proceed in your own efforts to understand our contemporary Western world today -- in short, make Ong's relationist way of proceeding to understand the Western world your own way of proceeding to understand the Western world.
Thursday, February 16, 2023A Cogently Argued Book about Dante's "Divine Comedy" (REVIEW ESSAY) If you are interested in Dante's "Divine Comedy," you may want to read Sheila J. Nayar's exploratory book Dante's Sacred Poem: Flesh and the Centrality of the Eucharist to Dante's "Divine Comedy" (Bloomsbury Academic, 2014). It is the most cogently argued literary study that I have ever read.
Thursday, February 9, 2023Pope Francis on the Joy of Love (REVIEW ESSAY) In 2016, Pope Francis issued the post-synodal apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love): On Love in the Family. In the op-ed commentary titled "Conservative defense of Humanae Vitae is not just about contraception" (dated February 6, 2023) in the National Catholic Reporter, the American Catholic moral theologians Todd A. Salzman and Michael G. Lawler of Creighton University highlight Pope Francis 2016 document.
Sunday, February 5, 2023Words of Wisdom from Walter J. Ong, S.J. (REVIEW ESSAY) My favorite scholar is the American Jesuit Renaissance specialist and pioneering media ecology theorist Walter J. Ong (1912-2003; Ph.D. in English, Harvard University, 1955). My favorite book is his 1967 seminal book The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History (Yale University Press), the expanded version of his 1964 Terry Lectures at Yale University. It is a book of great wisdom.
Friday, January 27, 2023Vittorio Montemaggi on Dante's "Commedia" (REVIEW ESSAY) The Italian-born Cambridge-University-educated Dante specialist Vittorio Montemaggi published the book Reading Dante's "Commedia" as Theology: Divinity Realized as Human Encounter (Oxford University Press, 2016). It serves as a handy counterpoint to Warwick Wadlington's book Reading Faulknerian Tragedy (Cornell University Press, 1987). Dantean comedy versus Faulknerian tragedy.
Sunday, January 22, 2023Rabbi Jonathan Sacks on the Hebrew Bible (REVIEW ESSAY) The late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks (1948-2020; Ph.D., University of London) was a respected conservative English Jewish leader and a prolific public intellectual. The essay collection The Power of Ideas: Words of Faith and Wisdom (Hodder & Stoughton, 2021) brings together a wide-ranging sampling of 91 selections of his learned writings over the years 1981 to 2020, grouped into five chronologically arranged parts.
Friday, January 13, 2023Temple Grandin's New 2022 Autobiographical Book (REVIEW ESSAY) In my OEN article "Temple Grandin on Thinking with Words versus Thinking with Images" (dated January 10, 2023), I discussed her op-ed piece in the New York Times (dated January 9, 2023). In the present review essay, I discuss her new 2022 autobiographical book Visual Thinking: The Hidden Gifts of People Who Think in Pictures, Patterns, and Abstractions (Riverhead Books) in connection with Walter J. Ong's mature work.
Tuesday, January 10, 2023Temple Grandin on Thinking with Words versus Thinking with Images (REVIEW ESSAY) On January 9, 2023, Temple Grandin (born in 1947) of Colorado State University, who is famous for writing about autism, published the op-ed piece titled "Temple Grandin: Society Is Failing Visual Thinkers, and That Hurts Us All" in the New York Time. What she refers to in her title as "Visual Thinkers" think with images. She contrasts them with people who think with words, not images. I discuss the history of this contrast.
Monday, January 9, 2023The American Indian Paul Buffalo on Oral Storytelling (REVIEW ESSAY) In my OEN article "American Indian Hunter-Gatherer-Foragers of Minnesota" (dated November 27, 2022), I highlighted what the Medicine Doctor Paul Buffalo (c.1900-1977) says in his autobiography that was published in 2019 about listening at meetings. In the present essay, I now highlight what he says about listening to stories told by old Indians.
Wednesday, January 4, 2023Remembering Pope Ratzinger/Benedict XVI (REVIEW ESSAY) To commemorate the recent death of the retired Pope Ratzinger/ Benedict XVI that is in the news, I am now here recycling my OEN article dated June 25, 2011: "Matthew Fox's Critique of the Roman Catholic Church," a meditation on Fox's 2011 book The Pope's War: Why Ratzinger's Secret Crusade Has Imperiled the Church and How It Can Be Saved (Sterling Ethos) -- about Pope Ratzinger/Benedict's greatest hits, figuratively speaking.
Saturday, December 24, 2022Paul A. Soukup, S.J., on a Media Ecology of Christian Theology (REVIEW ESSAY) The American Jesuit Paul A. Soukup (born in 1950; Ph.D. in communication studies, University of Texas at Austin, 1985) in communication studies at Santa Clara University in California explores a media ecology of Christian theology in his new 2022 book A Media Ecology of Theology: Communicating Faith throughout the Christian Tradition (Baylor University Press), in which he draws of the American Jesuit Walter J. Ong's thought.
Sunday, December 11, 2022Anna Rowlands on Catholic Social Teaching (REVIEW ESSAY) The young English Catholic religion scholar Anna Rowlands of Durham University has published the new 2021 book Towards a Politics of Communion: Catholic Social Teaching in Dark Times (T&T Clark). Even though OEN readers may be familiar with the term Catholic social teaching (CST), they may be impressed by Rowlands' meticulous and incisive discussion of the theological principles of CST.
Sunday, November 27, 2022American Indian Hunter-Gatherer-Foragers of Minnesota (REVIEW ESSAY) In the spirit of celebrating our Native American Heritage in Minnesota, I am writing to call attention to the Ojibwe Medicine Doctor Paul Peter Buffalo (c.1900-1977). Over the last twelve years of his life, he recorded his memoirs for the anthropologist Timothy G. Roufs of the University of Minnesota Duluth to transcribe and annotate and eventually publish in three volumes spanning 1,900 pages. Pope Francis should read them.
Thursday, November 17, 2022Four Women in T. S. Eliot's Life (REVIEW ESSAY) The prolific South African-born biographer Lyndall Gordon's gracefully written and nicely illustrated new book The Hyacinth Girl: T. S. Eliot's Hidden Muse (W. W. Norton) is about four women in the life of the American-born Nobel Prize winning poet Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965): (1) Emily Hale (1891-1969); (2) Vivienne Hugh-Wood Eliot (1888-1947); (3) Mary Trevelyan (1897-1983); and (4) Valerie Fletcher Eliot (1926-2012).
Saturday, November 12, 2022John Dominic Crossan on the Power of Parable (REVIEW ESSAY) The Irish-born New Testament scholar and historical Jesus specialist John Dominic Crossan (born in 1934) explores the expansive category of parable in his admirably lucid and learned book The Power of Parable: How Fiction by Jesus Became Fiction about Jesus (2012). His expansive understanding of parable can help us understand the fascination of the American-born Nobel Prize winning poet T. S. Eliot's 1922 poem The Waste Land.
Friday, November 4, 2022A 1922 Poem That Is Still Worth Reading in 2022! (REVIEW ESSAY) The American-born Nobel Prize winning poet Thomas Stearns Eliot's famous 1922 poem "The Waste Land" is still worth reading in 2022. Fortunately, the new 2022 Second Norton Critical Edition titled T. S. Eliot: "The Waste Land" and Other Poems (W. W. Norton & Company) makes Eliot's 1922 poem available in a reasonably priced paperback edition. But I need to tell you how to read Eliot's 1922 poem.
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