I helped develop a website for the PBS program Keeping Score, specifically for the second season. I did some editing on the sections about three compositions — Berlioz’ Symphonie fantastique, Ives’ Holidays Symphony and Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony — and worked a lot on a map feature that shows classical music milestones of various eras on…
Now online is a review I wrote of the Virtual Museum of Iraq. It’s a really beautiful, well thought out site but I hate it for reasons that become apparent in the review. Here’s the first paragraph: The Virtual Museum of Iraq serves as an excellent multimedia introduction to the history and archaeology of Iraq,…
The Journal of Near Eastern Studies has just published my article on Sumerian music (including singing and iconography). Here’s the citation and the first few hundred words: Jack Cheng, “A Review of Early Dynastic III Music: Man’s Animal Call,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies July 2009, Vol. 68, No. 3: 163-178. A review of the…
After my nephew Harrison came to visit us, I wrote a short essay about being an uncle vs. being a father and it was published in the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine yesterday. Here’s the link.
A review I wrote of “Art and Empire: Treasures from Assyria in the British Museum” has been published in the latest issue of Near Eastern Archaeology (vol. 71 #4, cover dated December 2008). It’s too late to see the show at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts and the review is not online, but it was…
Another post, this one about the amazing Tara Donovan, a sculptor who has her first one woman show at the ICA Boston.
My latest publication is as a contributor to World History Matters: A Student Guide to World History Online, a nicely illustrated and well organized guide to scholarly internet sites. Yes, you can cite these in your papers!
I have two new posts up at The Public Humanist. The first is on the traveling British Museum exhibition of Assyrian art, Art and Empire. The second is on the announcement of the Iraq Heritage Project. Please comment on both or either. I’m very curious to know what others think about these topics.
Babylon’s Ark by Lawrence Anthony is a memoir of a conservationist’s trip to Baghdad soon after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 to save the animals at the Baghdad Zoo. After reading a number of books on the topic, mostly on the archaeological looting, but also the excellent Imperial Life in the Emerald City, as…
For fans of Edward Tufte or other graphic designers (if you can name one, you are a fan): Movie box office charts. Well designed.
Jack Cheng, PhD 