Literary Worlds Come to Life through Art: Illustrator Andrew DeGraff has taken his skills with schematics and map-making and brought everyone’s favorite literary worlds to life in his new book Plotted. From the warrens of Watership Down to the twisting time continuum of A Wrinkle In Time, DeGraff brings fictional universes out of imagination and into reality. He sees his work as directly opposed to the modern world of digital mapping, saying: “I think the problem with [digital mapping] is that we get really useful, but incredibly homogenized maps…to the point that I’d call them cold.” DeGraff’s beautiful interpretations of literary worlds are certainly anything but cold, showing the amazing result when map-making technique meets passion and imagination.

Where Popular Media Meets Academia: “If you were a parent, would you want to pay for your child to take a college class on Game of Thrones?” This is the question a recent Newsweek article asks, in the wake of the University of California, Berkeley offering a course entitled “Film Genre: Game of Thrones.” Increasingly, popular culture (and especially television) is making its way into the classroom. The course at Berkeley is by no means the first of its kind– similar courses have been offered at the University of Virginia and Northern Illinois University. While the inclusion of popular television alongside literary classics has some scholars crying afoul, many argue for the merits of examining these television texts like any classic text. Associate Professor of English Lisa Woolfork at Virginia argues for GoT, saying: “There are a lot of things in the series that are very weighty, and very meaningful, and can be illuminated through the skills of literary analysis.” While the debate rages on over whether television is “worth studying,” the recent wave of modern quality television over the last couple decades certainly has more and more audience members acknowledging that the medium can be more than just an industry and may, in fact, be able to rise to the level of art.

Science Saving Art: Dr. Carl Haber of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (host to the Large Hadron Collider) has been using his scientific expertise to preserve and restore some of the world’s oldest and rarest recorded sounds. Initially inspired by an interview he heard on the radio in which former Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart was lamenting the loss of historic audio recordings due to deteriorating materials, Haber had a feeling he could help, by applying his knowledge of precision optical tools and subatomic particles. Haber, who won the 2013 MacArthur “genius” grant, has been employing a system dubbed “IRENE” (Image, Reconstruct, Erase Noise, Etcetera) since 2002 to save many of the rarest sounds and songs. Haber acknowledges that this work is far from his normal focus, but argues: “If you don’t explore ideas that come up, you don’t move forward.” Such open-mindedness about interdisciplinary work will certainly benefit both science and the arts going forward!

Syrian Expert Dies Protecting Beloved Archaeological Treasures: Khalid al-Asaad, the retired chief of antiquities for the city of Palmyra, was beheaded publicly after refusing to tell ISIS interrogators the location of the city’s hidden treasures. Mr. Asaad retired from his position more than a decade ago and recently turned 83. He was less of an official academic than “a self-taught scholar passionate about his hometown’s history,” leading one historian to dub him “Mr. Palmyra.” Yasser Tabbaa, a specialist on Islamic art and architecture in Syria and Iraq, argues: “He was a very important authority on possibly the most important archaeological site in Syria.” Mr. Asaad died protecting the history he spent his life exploring and enjoying.