Note from the editor

Welcome to the launch of Transformations.

This new site, an online magazine featuring narrative essays, is inspired by our belief in the power of story and the value of chronicling and sharing how transformative experiences can influence the trajectory of our lives.

In this particular moment, a global pandemic asks each of us to rethink the lives we’ve had, the choices we’ve made, and the choices we need to make in the coming months and years. I hope that you find Transformations both a source for reflection and an engaging destination for good writing.

In the months leading up to this launch, we have been excited to witness the extraordinary enthusiasm of writers willing to share deeply personal and often heart-wrenching experiences. For many, they agreed to write about events that they have shared with few others. For this we are grateful.

We hope these stories will engage, even entertain, but also be an opportunity to learn from the author’s experiences and the choices they’ve made.

That’s the thing: This collection includes contributions from many university and college professors, smart and thoughtful people who live in the world of ideas and care deeply about teaching and learning. But that pursuit is not limited to the confines of the academy. Quite the contrary.

These essays should lay waste to the notion that professors are people who don’t live in the real world; I am grateful to know many who seek societal impact and work to ensure that their lives and work can positively touch the lives of others. While their academic output typically means leaving aside personal experience, these essays demonstrate how important the personal is to who they are and what they produce.

While the coming months will chiefly highlight narrative essays and video essays keyed to life-changing experiences and ideas, over the next year we also will introduce essays exploring the kinds of transformations needed in our societies—and in the world.

It seems to me, when we emerge from the throes of the coronavirus, we may either become a society that recognizes the need for greater global cooperation and engagement or one that becomes increasingly nationalistic, isolationist and inclined to blame others for our shared problems. In our view at Transformations, the better we understand each other, the more we encourage each other’s humanity, the more likely we’ll expand our capacity for cooperation and engagement.

Starting with the personal, Transformations intends to be a place where readers can consider both the world they want and the world that they can create.

Happy reading!

Steven Beschloss