Page 2 - Ben Beard News Today

There was nothing inevitable about the Lyme epidemic. Then humans disrupted the environment and fueled an era of tick-borne diseases.

The ways pollution, health, climate change and racism blur together were in sharp focus last week during Loyola University Chicago's conferenc...

In Samuel Johnson's last great work, "The Lives of the Poets," there is a fascinating passage about the intellect and reading habits of one of Johnson's most important literary models, 17th-century poet John Dryden.

2020 One year ago

2020 One year ago

An organic compound that makes ticks "twitch to death" may offer the relief that tick magnets like Sam Venable have been seeking.

Movies about the South should help us atone and come to terms with our past, author says AL.com 1 hr ago Ben Flanagan, al.com From “The Birth of a Nation” to “Forrest Gump,” American filmmakers remain fascinated by the South, while the people actually born and raised in the region yearn to see the place depicted with at least a dollop of authenticity. But we’re too often served crummy accents and corny gimmicks, not to mention dated tropes that render the films probl...

4:00   Such a mass of material must of course be arranged, somehow. Not all films get or deserve equal time.  A good deal of the book is arranged by state, but Beard begins with chapters on “Birth of a Nation” and “Gone with the Wind,” two powerful films that set the South in the minds of millions of Americans, for better or worse.  Choose worse.   “The Birth of a Nation” is the first important American film—"for its technique and brio, but also for its po...

Published: 21 December 2020 What can we learn from the Southern films of the past? What can be done in the future to make new ones as multidimensional and as vast as the region really is? Last week on Watching America, Dr. Alan Campbell chats with author and film fanatic Ben Beard about his new book, The South Never Plays Itself: A Film Buffs Journey Through the South on Screen, and more.The film industrys idea of the South never seems to capture the true complexities, differences, ...