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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 Each hour-long show has been archived and is available for people who missed the live broadcast to listen to.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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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.
Tuesday, November 1, 2022A Tour de Force on T. S. Eliot's Poems, Plays, and Prose (REVIEW ESSAY) As part of my own ongoing personal commemoration of the centennial of the 1922 publication of T. S. Eliot's most famous poem "The Waste Land," I recently read the American Eliot specialist Jewel Spears Brooker's 2018 book T. S. Eliot's Dialectical Imagination (Johns Hopkins University Press) -- a tour de force on Eliot's poems, plays, and prose. If you are already familiar with his poems and plays, you might enjoy her book.
Thursday, October 27, 2022An Accessible and Learned History of Catholic Moral Theology (REVIEW ESSAY) The prolific American Jesuit theologian and ethicist James F. Keenan (born in 1953) of Boston College has written an accessible and learned history of Roman Catholic moral theology in his new 450-page 2022 book A History of Catholic Theological Ethics (Paulist Press). I learned a lot from his book, and I imagine that others will too.
Saturday, October 22, 2022Understanding T. S. Eliot's 1922 Poem "The Waste Land" (REVIEW ESSAY) The American-born Nobel Prize winning poet and influential literary critic Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965) published his challenging poem "The Waste Land" in 1922. So 2022 is the centennial years of its publication. To help me commemorate "The Waste Land," I consulted the book Reading "The Waste Land": Modernism and the Limits of Interpretation by Jewel Spears Brooker (born in 1940) and the late Joseph Bentley (1932-1988).
Sunday, October 9, 202260 Years of T. S. Eliot's Prose (REVIEW ESSAY) In the present review essay, I revisit certain aspects of my lengthy OEN article "The American-Born Conservative T. S. Eliot" (dated October 2, 2022). However, in the present review essay, I now call attention to the eight expertly introduced and annotated volumes of The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot, edited by Ronald Schuchard and others (Johns Hopkins University Press; Faber and Faber, 2021).
Sunday, October 2, 2022The American-Born Conservative T. S. Eliot (REVIEW ESSAY) OEN readers are progressives and liberals, not conservatives. Nevertheless, we should be concerned that our contemporary fellow Americans of a conservative bent might take a hard-right turn to illiberalism. As a result, we should urge conservative Americans today to read about the American-born conservative Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965), rather than embrace a hard-right turn to illiberalism.
Saturday, September 10, 2022John T. McGreevy on Catholicism (REVIEW ESSAY) The American Catholic historian John T. McGreevy (born in 1963; Ph.D. in history, Stanford University, 1992) of the University of Notre Dame has published a fascinating new 500-page book on Catholicism: A Global History from the French Revolution to Pope Francis. It is an admirable global survey of judiciously culled and splendidly narrated historical highlights. Probably almost everybody could learn something new from it.
Sunday, August 28, 2022Walter J. Ong on the World-as-Event Sense of Life (REVIEW ESSAY) The French Christian existentialist philosopher Louis Lavelle worked out a well-developed theistic metaphysics. The American Catholic philosopher James Collins discusses Lavelle's theistic metaphysics in his fine article "Louis Lavelle on Human Participation." I point out here that human participation involves what the American Jesuit cultural historian Walter J. Ong refers to as the world-as-event sense of life.
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