This episode first aired May 20, 2019.
Beloved USU professor Norm Jones has died. We remember him by revisiting our conversation from May 2019, talking about his book "Being Elizabethan: Understanding Shakespeare’s Neighbors."
Elizabethans lived through a time of cultural collapse and rejuvenation as the impacts of globalization, the religious Reformation, economic and scientific revolutions, wars, and religious dissent forced them to reformulate their ideas of God, nation, society and self. In "Being Elizabethan," Norm Jones shows how people’s lives were shaped and changed by the tension between a received belief in divine stability and new, destabilizing, ideas about physical and metaphysical truth.
In 40 years at USU, Norm Jones headed the history department, founded religious studies and classics, and taught thousands of students, who honored him as Teacher of the Year in 1982 and 2018. He chaired the Regents' General Education Task Force and for more than 20 years led Utah's "What is an Educated Person?" Conference. A veteran of national higher education boards and committees, he chaired the AP Higher Education Advisory Committee of the College Board. He was honored nationally and internationally for his leadership on undergraduate curricula.
