This project originally began last Fall, 2016 as the date above suggests. Toward the end of last summer I labored to design the website, wrote a few posts, and planned my future wanderings through the forest of Love, excited to illuminate as many of the forest’s inhabitants and histories as possible. In due time, the November election hit – like a ton of bricks, and suddenly my enthusiasm for the project waned significantly. Something about posting my thoughts on books and ideas seemed terribly self-indulgent. Even as I wrote and studied I chose not to share. Then, as time went on “Love” became a significant part of our new civic conversation. The word appeared often as a response to some of the more shocking and disastrous political developments that occurred in the wake of the inauguration. “Love Trumps Hate” for example, became a slogan of the resistance. At times its use seemed frustratingly vague. How do we actually practice that love in our individual lives and communities? What does love look like when it confronts its excruciating opposite? Taken to its infinitude: what does love even mean? These questions bear down on us, and while this blog/project (bloject?) is not intended to be explicitly political perhaps some of the ideas and insights on love can be useful to the ongoing human project of inclusivity and the building of a beloved community.
E. L. Doctorow has a famous quote about writing being like driving a car at night, you can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way. I have a road map for the first few blog posts and from there the “Love Scholar” trip will continue on. My first post is about Joseph Campbell and his Mythologies of Love. Next I’ll be periodically posting the stories from my dissertation/book research regarding the lives of creative/intelligent/ambitious women who managed love relationships with more famous and renowned partners. History is an endless well spring of great stories and insights and I will share the best of both here. I have a couple of book reviews on tap as well as a couple of posts about expressions of love in music and how to travel as a lover. Various philosophies of Love are on board as well. If there is an aspect of Love that you are particularly interested in or would like me to cover please let me know!
The Love Scholar 