(Picador USA, $24). The playfulness of post-modernism keeps house with cliffhanging narrative in these academic farces of scholarly ambition and human sacrifice.
Though skeptical of scholars who she feared would pigeonhole her father's work as kitsch, Vishniac Kohn, whom I met not long ago, was moved by the combination of Benton's youthful energy, scholarly ambition and Yiddish kindredness.
As demonstrated in the paper, the engagement of turn-of-the-century Jewish folklorists with early modern Yiddish did not derive merely from a scholarly ambition to encompass all aspects of Jewish culture, or from nostalgic longings to a bygone Jewish world.
In that case, told in Jonathan Harr's 2005 best seller "The Lost Painting," a restorer with scholarly ambitions, like Mr. Forcellino, not a curator or art historian, saw the painting, argued that its attribution to a follower of Caravaggio was wrong, and the notion was confirmed through historical research by two graduate students.
But now Steve Diner, who for the last two years has been the dean of the faculty of arts and sciences at the sprawling downtown campus, believes he can turn this view around and wed the school's presence here to scholarly ambitions as well.
And it too is impressive, not least because, as its president and one of its founders, Massimiliano Lisa, explained in an interview, it combines serious research, scholarly ambitions and an impressive publishing program with energetic showmanship and the international touring of exhibitions like this one.
They have scholarly ambitions, but they want to enter the workforce after their undergraduate degree, or perhaps they are already making their mark in the workplace.
Given the lofty scholarly ambitions of the new University and President William Rainey Harper's willingness to reach out to members of all religious groups, the institution quickly demonstrated a wider appeal than its predecessor and attracted the support of a broader circle of donors.
At the thesis reviews, I was impressed by the new level of scholarly rigor and intellectual ambition.
Another kind of reinterpretation may take place in the coming years, as the now antique ambitions of the founders are subjected to scholarly scrutiny, and the palace and its grounds are reinvented.
Putting the world's most advanced scholarly and scientific knowledge on the Internet has been a long-held ambition for Michael Keller, head librarian at Stanford University.
