• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Zorina Khan

Professor of Economics, Bowdoin College

  • Home
  • Research Publications
  • Blog: Life on the Margin
  • Of Patents and Prizes
  • Podcasts
  • A Few of my Favourite Things

literary musings

Hanami: Cherry Blossom Time, in Perpetuity

April 10, 2022 By Zorina Khan

Can you guess the location of the International Cherry Blossom Festival? Wrong! it is held in Macon, Georgia, which is allegedly known as the “Cherry Blossom Capital of the World.” However, the Japanese undoubtedly should own the geographical indication rights to Sakura. Sakura are treasured as a reminder of the fleeting nature of life and the impermanence of the things we cherish most. So there is a decided irony to writing a post about cherry blossoms that will be captured in digital format in perpetuity.

Filed Under: A Few of my Favourite Things Tagged With: literary musings

Back to School for the “Spring” Semester (1861)

January 14, 2022 By Zorina Khan

How many aspects of life at Bowdoin College have remained unchanged since the days when faculty, president, and students all lived in Mass Hall? In January 2022, we can still fervently empathize with this account of the “spring” semester in the Journal of John Deering, Jr., class of 1864: “Find myself back to this honored institution after an absence of nine weeks… Nothing can be seen except a boundless expanse of snow… But after all, I suppose I can pursue my studies and carry out the objects for which I was sent just as well as if the grass were green and the birds singing.”

Filed Under: A Few of my Favourite Things, Old News: Bowdoin Then and Now Tagged With: Bowdoin College, education, literary musings

Crypt-ic Tales

October 31, 2021 By Zorina Khan

Don’t look now, but the life of the book club is the undead. Subscribers to streaming can rejoice that Elizabeth Bennet is being resuscitated in the realm of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Even books from the nineteenth century are being exhumed to satisfy the current craving. The genre in its current incarnation shows a great deal of variance. Six feet below average molders such entrants as Deadworld. No doubt there is a good explanation for why vampires are clustered in the American South, but please don’t text me about it. Replace “zombie virus” with covid-19, and these epics are immediately transformed into documentaries.

Filed Under: A Few of my Favourite Things Tagged With: literary musings

Publish and Perish

September 10, 2021 By Zorina Khan

Montparnasse, Paris on a chilly winter afternoon Murder can be elegant, but only if it takes place in foreign lands.  The most effective literature in this realm evokes a sense of place that is as central as the narrative or characters. This is the premise that guides my reading of murder mysteries and modern detective […]

Filed Under: A Few of my Favourite Things Tagged With: literary musings

Reading on Location

August 27, 2021 By Zorina Khan

The first thing I do in a new location is to secure a library card (no, this essay is not about Libraries I Have Known, although it could be). It is like going home, to review the familiar faces of volumes long cherished; this sense of physical place and proximity is inevitably absent from e-books. […]

Filed Under: A Few of my Favourite Things Tagged With: literary musings

The (New) Cultural Revolution in China

August 23, 2021 By Zorina Khan

A few years ago, I rated on Netflix over 1000 movies with which I was familiar. The top 10 included (in no particular order): Bladerunner, Woman in the Dunes (Suna no onna), Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, A Bout de Souffle, Pan’s Labyrinth, Das Leben der Anderen, Casablanca, Metropolis, 2001: a Space Odyssey, Chinatown.  (Lord of […]

Filed Under: A Few of my Favourite Things, Life on the Margin Tagged With: China, copyright, innovation, intellectual property, literary musings

Between the Covers

July 27, 2021 By Zorina Khan

I’ve always thought that being in college is the greatest obstacle to a good education, because nobody has time to read outside of class. Economists are not fond of Thomas Carlyle, a curmudgeon who called Economics “The Dismal Science,” and classed us with “sophists and calculators.” But I do agree with him that “What we become depends on what we read after all of the professors have finished with us. The greatest university of all is a collection of books.”

Filed Under: A Few of my Favourite Things Tagged With: literary musings

An Essay in Idleness

July 27, 2021 By Zorina Khan

Sushi in Boston means O Ya, sushi in New York means Soto, and sushi in Maine means Miyake of Portland. However,  I am not intolerant, so I did not hesitate to meet a cordial Asian Studies Professor (ASP) for lunch at Little Tokyo restaurant, in “downtown” Brunswick. My theory is that, in the absence of other information, one should […]

Filed Under: A Few of my Favourite Things Tagged With: literary musings

Primary Sidebar

Recent Posts

  • Notable Women Inventors in Britain February 21, 2023
  • The Mystery of the Missing Minority Millionairess February 1, 2023
  • A Pioneering Black Woman Patent Attorney February 1, 2023
  • Thomas Edison and the Bowdoin Inventors November 15, 2022
  • A Hallowe’en Debate: Diversity and Exclusion October 13, 2022
  • Who was the First U.S. Economics Professor? Samuel Newman, of Bowdoin College September 17, 2022
  • Old School? Apprenticeships in the 21st Century August 16, 2022
  • In Search of Hetty Green: Self-Made Women Millionaires July 12, 2022
  • Patent Waivers (or “Don’t know much about history…”) June 17, 2022
  • Is Technology a Race? Patents and National Security May 23, 2022
  • Hanami: Cherry Blossom Time, in Perpetuity April 10, 2022
  • Banking on Women March 2, 2022
  • Notable Women Inventors of Maine February 6, 2022
  • Back to School for the “Spring” Semester (1861) January 14, 2022
  • Looking Backward: From 5G to the Telegraph December 1, 2021
  • U.S. Patents: A Play in 10 Million Acts November 21, 2021
  • Crypt-ic Tales October 31, 2021
  • Women and Wealth in the New Gilded Age October 23, 2021
  • Travelling Light October 4, 2021
  • Patent Priority: the First Woman Patent Lawyer September 14, 2021
  • Publish and Perish September 10, 2021
  • Reading on Location August 27, 2021
  • Copyrighting the Cultural Revolution in China and America August 26, 2021
  • The (New) Cultural Revolution in China August 23, 2021
  • Women and Innovation in Developing Countries August 2, 2021
  • Who’s Afraid of Standard Oil? July 31, 2021
  • Are Patents Monopolies? July 28, 2021
  • Between the Covers July 27, 2021
  • An Essay in Idleness July 27, 2021

Categories

  • A Few of my Favourite Things
  • Antitrustworthy
  • Economics of/for The Common Good
  • Life on the Margin
  • Of Patents and Prizes
  • Old News: Bowdoin Then and Now
  • Women in the Republic of Enterprise

Tags

affirmative action antitrust Bowdoin College China constitution copyright diversity economics education finance gender innovation intellectual property literary musings monopolies monopsony open source patents predatory pricing Standard Oil technology vaccines waivers women

Notable Women Inventors in Britain

Copyright© 2023 · research.bowdoin.edu