A Message from Deborah
When I was in first and second grade, my favorite game was playing school with my best friend Lara. We propped our dolls on little chairs around a little table and stood over our pupils spouting lessons and handing out assignments. We even stole paper, pencils and worksheets from the supply cabinets in our real classrooms.
So, you might say it was always in the cards that I would grow up to be a professor. I get paid to play with ideas, and to have you—my readers, students and colleagues—as real live playmates.
Teaching, writing, and doing research are how I chase my curiosities. Everything I do starts with wonder and, if I’m lucky, ends with awe. Although my union card is a PhD in Political Science, I’m free to roam the universe of ideas and emotions. That’s why you’ll find a wide range of topics on my website, from perennial social problems to reflections on nature, learning, small-town life, morality, relationships, and how our minds work.
I hope you’ll join me on my adventures and become as excited as I am by new ways of seeing. If you want a quick feel for what this means, check out my essay “On Seeing Things for the First Time.“
My current project, Life in Translation, is a memoir about the deep human need to express ourselves and feel understood. I’ve learned eight foreign languages, and as I reviewed my life through the lens of language learning, I discovered something ridiculously obvious and stunningly magical. Language is the silken thread we spin to make sense of our lives and connect with other souls. We spin these threads during hum-drum chit-chat, intense conversation, and everything in between— even when we don’t speak the same language. Language is a miracle we perform everyday.
