What we do, in English, and in the humanities more broadly, what we teach, what we celebrate and investigate, is human particularity.

Death of an English Major
By Gary Taylor

This piece devastated me.

(Not unlike the feeling of heartbreak I felt after reading this piece commemorating the life of a boy killed in the Newtown mass shooting.)

So, SO, beautifully written and unique to the author and his (and the victim's) experience.

Thought it especially important to give it a lift given the terrible news lately—I'm feeling the gravity of the loss of life and of the indifference to the lives of black people and POC, of women and children. A whole, vast universe with all its potential is lost after each person is killed and it's a huge, ugly shame.

"But Maura, unlike the others, was an English major. She was many other things, too; she was a treasury of particulars and potentials." 

"What we do, in English, and in the humanities more broadly, what we teach, what we celebrate and investigate, is human particularity ... We grieve, now, the loss of all the “brave, bold and kind” particularities of Maura Binkley."