Athletics and Academics In the current economic climate of the United States, public institutions are finding themselves having to make harsher and harsher budget cuts. Teaching positions are minimized, class sizes are increased, and fees are rising to nearly unaffordable regions. The English Department at a certain university or high school may drop from twenty-five professors to a dozen or so. It is the harsh reality of living in an era

Renaissance Sculpture The division of Renaissance art into three distinct periods began with Giorgio Vasari, the great Florentine art historian and chronicler of the lives of the artists. Vasari concluded, based on his universally accepted perception of Michelangelo as "Il Divino," that Renaissance art reached its most sublime expression in the works of Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. However, some modern art historians wonder how valid or valuable this categorization and

Bauhaus After World War I, the nation state of Germany under the direction of architect Walter Gropius created a "consulting art center for industry and the trades" (Bayer 12). Called Bauhaus, "house for building," the school combined the role of artisans and craftspeople and included everything from architecture to theater to typography. When the school was forced to close during the Nazi regime in 1932, many of its artists moved to

Otter -- Crockett -- cook Is William Otter's a History of My Own Time a rags-to-riches success story? To what extent does it conform to the themes associated with the Cult of the Self-Made Man and to what extent does it deviate? William Otter's autobiographical work A History of My Own Time (1835) is truly what one would call a "rags-to-riches" tale, yet it can also be viewed as being quite the

There are different moments in the day that are captured by the painter, be it a sundown or a moonrise in "Nocturne" (Granville Redmond, n.d.). At the same time, he tried to capture most of the elements of the natural landscape, the violent yet harmonious waves in "Opalescent Sea" or the wild bushes of the traditional secluded areas of California, which inspire the feeling of a certain end of

Even the much despised soccer is popular amongst American youths. Yet Americans cheer on their favorite individual stars in all of these sports, especially if the starts engage in charity efforts to justify their bloated salaries. The tension remains about what good sports do for both the individual or society, and Americans today are clearly using sports as a means of practical self-improvement like the Greeks as well as