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Teaching Big History, edited by Richard B. Simon, Mojgan Behmand, and Thomas Burke, and written by the Dominican University of California Big History faculty. Buy it here from University of California Press.

The glorious image you see here is from our book cover, a watercolor by the 19th Century biologist and illustrator Ernst Haeckel, from a still from the 2004 film Proteus (dir. David Lebrun).

Big History is a new field on a grand scale: it tells the story of the universe over time through a diverse range of disciplines that spans cosmology, physics, chemistry, astronomy, geology, evolutionary biology, anthropology, and archaeology, thereby reconciling traditional human history with environmental geography and natural history.

Weaving the myriad threads of evidence-based human knowledge into a master narrative that stretches from the beginning of the universe to the present, the Big History framework helps students make sense of their studies in all disciplines by illuminating the structures that underlie the universe and the connections among them.

Teaching Big History is a powerful analytic and pedagogical resource, and serves as a comprehensive guide for teaching Big History, as well for sharing ideas about the subject and planning a curriculum around it. Readers are also given helpful advice about the administrative and organizational challenges of instituting a general education program constructed around Big History. The book includes teaching materials, examples, and detailed sample exercises.

This book is also an engaging first-hand account of how a group of professors built an entire Big History general education curriculum for first-year students, demonstrating how this thoughtful integration of disciplines exemplifies liberal education at its best and illustrating how teaching and learning this incredible story can be transformative for professors and students alike.

“Nonfiction deals in facts. Fiction deals in truths.” -RBS

“CORRIDO” IN HUNGER MOUNTAIN REVIEW

New RBS Hybrid Short Story “Corrido” up amid great company in Hunger Mountain Review #30! Published on the day of the U.S. Supreme Court decision rendering the U.S. President immune for crimes committed in an “official” capacity, “Corrido” is the story of Alejandra “Alex” Hernandez, lead singer of the legendary San Francisco rock outfit Teen Rabbit.

Arrested for protesting the Dictator’s Immigrant Detention Camps and sprung from San Franciso City Jail by a team of resistance fighters, Alex is asked to make AgitProp holos for the movement.

But Alex has a better idea …

They are talking at me and telling me that in the short time I’ve been in jail, I’ve become a hero of the uprising, the rebellion, the revolution. They’re not sure yet still what to call it – that’s how fresh it is – but it’s finally happening.

Apparently, the holos of that crazy set with Funkfrolicious and Kirk and those guys from Durt Farmer where I got arrested and pulled offstage were all over the Mind, fan-shot and pro-shot, and some spinner put together a master synth of all of them, hi-res, lo-res, full-color, black-and-white, filtered, and it is super surreal and intense and visceral and millions of avatars have been in there and people are crazy about it.

Apparently, that same day, they broke up all the protest camps with trucks and men with guns and tanks – and the kids dissipated and melted back into the cities and re-formed into cells like this one. They hid themselves away and started arming up and preparing for the next action.

Apparently, the asshole has been vilifying me in his AgitProps as if I am the leader of this Revolución, and he has declared me an Enemy of The People, which of course makes no fucking sense whatsoever.

Oh—and apparently Teen Rabbit is going to tour without me.

Read “CORRIDO”, under HYBRID at Hunger Mountain Review …

Richard B. Simon Honored as Finalist for PEN/Bellwether Prize

I am quite honored that my (not yet published) novel The Dolphin Ambassador’s Daughter has been named a Finalist for the 2021 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction.

Jamila Minnicks Gleason won the 2021 prize for Hydrangeas of New Jessup — I’ll look forward to reading her work!

Being named a finalist (“on the short list”, as book folk say) is to be in pretty good company.

It is a deep, deep honor to have one’s work even considered in the same breath as the staggering list of great writers PEN/America honors, supports and defends, notably with advocacy for writers in peril in authoritarian countries — and in the U.S. …

PEN/America is an organization that I have long admired for its championing of free expression everywhere. So this is … quite humbling.

Here’s a little interview about it at Western Today:

https://westerntoday.wwu.edu/features/wwus-richard-simon-named-a-finalist-for-the-penbellwether-prize-for-socially-engaged

Read “The Joy You Feel” in Gulf Stream Magazine #27!

I am honored that my short story “The Joy You Feel” has been published in the excellent Gulf Stream Magazine.

Put it in your pocket don’t forget your keys you don’t need your keys, ding dong. Don’t call yourself ding dong that’s what they’d call you. They got big and you are nothing. It’s a duck hunting jacket. Deep in the deep pocket built for dead ducks. 

Keys smokes matches put on your boots tie them too tight untie them. Take the boots off, start again, pull wool socks up tight. Put the boots back on and tie them good. They’re all stretched out already slipping down. Can’t have that. New socks. Start again. Start again. Take a deep breath. Breathe. 

Stretch up to the ceiling like Dr. Marina says, get big like a bear now touch toes. There’s the eviction letter on the floor in dust and hair pick it up pick it up later stand up straight. Take a drink of whiskey for the walk. Two drinks. Put the flask in your klepto. Take it out. Set it on the counter. Put it back in your klepto. They’ll stop you and search you can’t have that. Set it on the little walnut entry table. Put on your hat, pull its black wool down to your rims. You don’t need a hat leave it no tuck your hair up into it. Out into the hall. Lock the door. This is why you need your keys, ding dong.

Don’t call yourself ding dong. 

…

Read the rest here, complete with stunningly gorgeous artwork by Roger Camp.

Listen to RBS story “You Always Have Been Centaurs”

You can listen to RBS read the short story “You Always Have Been Centaurs” — first published in Chicago Quarterly Review #27 — here! And it’s free!

Returning home from tour, a rock n roller finds himself landed in a San Francisco — and a reality — much changed …

“Your guitar is in its flight case under the plane, the custom redwood Mano built for you that cost so much it nearly broke your marriage. You keep replaying the fight with the band in Tokyo. Mostly over money. But also over music. Over control. Chafing at how you ride them. But you need everything to be just where you want it. Just where it needs to be. To make art. To get big. To make some money and take better care of Cin and rise up out of the goddamn grind so every record, every tour doesn’t have to be an existential crisis. Maybe finally have a kid … “

Try: @rbsimon  or @teachingbighist .

You can find me on Earth, third stone from the sun, most days.