Depression is driven partly by the environment,
Bit of a spoiler if you haven't finished reading, but I'm GOBSMACKED that anyone could write an article about depression in academia and fail to mention contingency even once! Nearly 75% of faculty in higher ed are contingent--and many are living in poverty and/or without basic healthcare. How is this not even acknowledged?
security personnel present?
I think this could be a double-edged sword. Some students do not feel safer in the presence of "security personnel."
Students from countries impacted by war or natural disaster
I've taught a surprising number of refugee students over the past few years, and I would like to learn more about serving their needs in my own classroom (particularly when they're writing about traumatic experiences in their personal essays).
on campus .
I am (and I think others are) specifically worried about what happens to these students when they graduate, especially now, as the immediate future of the US economy looks incredibly bleak. What do we owe those students, after sheltering (and simultaneously burdening them with debt) for years?
particularly for students with a history of exposure to trauma
This reminds me of an article I read from a while back about how students from very rural areas can have a particularly difficult time transitioning to college. Rural New England also has high rates of poverty, so I think some of our students are geographically disadvantaged (and even traumatized) in multiple ways. I know we lose a lot of these students in their first semester/year based on my experience, although I don't have the data. These students need to be seen, and not by A.I. success coach bots.
As colleges move from coping to planning for the fall and beyond, they should be guided by a consistent, mission-aligned framework, writes Robin DeRosa.
I just want to recommend this episode of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, which covers a lot of the same information and features the dulcet tones of Robin and Martha in conversation with the host, Bonnie Stachowiak: https://teachinginhighered.com/podcast/values-centered-instructional-planning/
Bearing in mind that we represent about 13% of the population, we only hold 2.6% of the country’s wealth, according to William A. (“Sandy”) Darity Jr, the Samuel DuBois Cook Professor of Public Policy, African and African American Studies, and Economics at Duke University. Moreover, the Urban Institute’s K Steven Brown found that over 40% of Black adults belong to families that experienced job loss, furloughs, or reduced income due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
These statistics make it apparent to me that we could (should?) be teaching about structural racism in every discipline: Business and economics, criminal justice, public health, STEM, social sciences, arts and humanities, education, etc.
Language about community feelings of sadness decenters Black students within a situation that disproportionally affects us and doesn’t convey an appreciation for the gravity of the situation
This is crucially important, especially at a predominantly white institution like ours.
Also, in the past few weeks, I've seen so many smart and well-intentioned white folks slide quickly from empathy to centering their own feelings about racism. I worry that this slide will continue into the school year, and that students of color will have to bear the burden of their white professors' feelings on top of their own lived experience of racism.
Trauma is not an add on. From everything we know about learning, if the trauma is not addressed, accounted for, and built into the course design, we fail.
I know that trauma-informed pedagogy exists, and I'm sure I can find some resources when I get a chance. But I wonder if we could have a trauma-informed, COVID/BLM-specific workshop led by an expert in the field (maybe from PSU's own Education department)?
Think about attending college without the social enhancements that help support students in schools.
One of the things I'm most concerned about is the loss of community our students have already experienced and will continue to experience when we try to return to campus under strict new social distancing rules. With a lot of work and the right support we can probably build classroom communities, but students are going to face a college experience that is nothing like the past or anything they may have imagined. Human connection will be strained and limited in so many ways.
laudanum
Laudanum is an opiate but was widely available without a prescription until the 20th century.
season of the assizes
The season the courts were open.
I lay for two months on the point of death
Frankenstein has another breakdown.
Hampden
One of the leaders of the resistance against Charles I in the English Civil War.
The colleges are ancient and picturesque;
The University of Oxford dates back until at least 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world, and the second-oldest continuously operating university in the entire world. 
Charles I
Charles I (1600-1649) of England, Scotland, and Ireland led the kingdom into the English Civil War. Eventually, he was defeated and executed, and the monarchy itself was abolished for about a decade.
Tower
The Tower of London has a long, dark history. Today, it's a popular tourist destination. According to legend, the kingdom will fall if the ravens who live at the tower ever leave, so they are well cared for today.
<br>By © User:Colin / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link
—— ——“The sounding cataract Haunted him like a passion: the tall rock, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, Their colours and their forms, were then to him An appetite; a feeling, and a love, That had no need of a remoter charm, By thought supplied, or any interest Unborrowed from the eye.”
From William Wordsworth's "Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey" (1778). 
Image: Joseph Mallord William Turner (1794) © Tate CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 (Unported) Link to Tate
This part of the Rhine, indeed, presents a singularly variegated landscape. In one spot you view rugged hills, ruined castles overlooking tremendous precipices, with the dark Rhine rushing beneath; and, on the sudden turn of a promontory, flourishing vineyards, with green sloping banks, and a meandering river, and populous towns, occupy the scene.
A picturesque landscape.
Elizabeth approved of the reasons of my departure, and only regretted that she had not the same opportunities of enlarging her experience, and cultivating her understanding.
How does Elizabeth feel about being left behind?
‘The path of my departure was free;’
From Percy Shelley's "Mutability."
Paradise Lost, a volume of Plutarch’s Lives, and the Sorrows of Werter.
Paradise Lost by John Milton (1608-1674) tells the story of Satan's rebellion and the "original sin" of Adam and Eve. Plutarch (c. 46-119 B.C.) was a biographer of the lives of Greek and Roman heroes. The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) is the romantic tale of a young poet tragically in love with a married woman.
“It is with considerable difficulty that I remember the original æra of my being:
At this point, the creature takes over the narration of his own story.
devoted
The Norton Critical Edition of Frankenstein notes that "devoted" here (and elsewhere in the text) means "doomed" (second edition, 2012, edited by J. Paul Hunter, page 68, footnote #5).
We rest; a dream has power to poison sleep. We rise; one wand’ring thought pollutes the day. We feel, conceive, or reason; laugh, or weep, Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away; It is the same: for, be it joy or sorrow, The path of its departure still is free. Man’s yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow; Nought may endure but mutability!
Lines from Percy Shelley's Mutability.
For some time I sat upon the rock that overlooks the sea of ice. A mist covered both that and the surrounding mountains.
This scene recalls artist Caspar David Friedrich's "Wanderer above a Sea of Fog," painted in 1818, the same year Frankenstein was published.
<br>By Caspar David Friedrich - The photographic reproduction was done by Cybershot800i. (Diff), Public Domain, Link
valley of Chamounix
Check this link out to see the places Victor mentions in his journeys through the valley of Chamounix. Click here!
Ever since I was condemned, my confessor has besieged me; he threatened and menaced, until I almost began to think that I was the monster that he said I was. He threatened excommunication and hell fire in my last moments, if I continued obdurate.
In other words, Justine was forced into a false confession by her priest.
She was a Roman Catholic
A confessor is a priest who hears confessions and offers spiritual guidance.
Justine's Catholicism (and the deference she shows to her "confessors") is important to her storyline.
Clerval was no natural philosopher. His imagination was too vivid for the minutiæ of science. Languages were his principal study; and he sought, by acquiring their elements, to open a field for self-instruction on his return to Geneva. Persian, Arabic, and Hebrew, gained his attention, after he had made himself perfectly master of Greek and Latin.
What Clerval studied at the university.
Six years had elapsed
It's been six years since Victor left home (two years of university; two years of work on the creature; two years of recovery from his breakdown).
While I watched the storm, so beautiful yet terrific, I wandered on with a hasty step. This noble war in the sky elevated my spirits; I clasped my hands, and exclaimed aloud, “William, dear angel! this is thy funeral, this thy dirge!”
Once again, Victor's mood aligns with the natural world (or is it vice versa?). The storminess of the skies matches the storminess of his emotions.
By very slow degrees, and with frequent relapses, that alarmed and grieved my friend, I recovered. I remember the first time I became capable of observing outward objects with any kind of pleasure, I perceived that the fallen leaves had disappeared, and that the young buds were shooting forth from the trees that shaded my window. It was a divine spring; and the season contributed greatly to my convalescence. I felt also sentiments of joy and affection revive in my bosom; my gloom disappeared, and in a short time I became as cheerful as before I was attacked by the fatal passion.
Here's an example of Victor's health aligning with the natural world: As spring brings the world back to life, Victor recovers from his breakdown.
Like one who, on a lonely road, Doth walk in fear and dread, And, having once turn’d round, walks on, And turns no more his head; Because he knows a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread.
More lines from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner."
Agrippa
Agrippa, along with Paracelcus and Albertus Magnus (mentioned just below) were late medieval/early modern (c. 1500) doctors and scientists (long before the scientific method was a thing), all of whom were interested in the workings of nature. Agrippa was particularly interested in alchemy and the occult. Their ideas were quite outdated even by the 19th century.
philosopher’s stone
A mythological substance that was thought to turn other elements into gold. (The original Harry Potter book is called Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone in England, but was changed for an American audience.)
Natural philosophy
What Victor calls "natural philosophy" today we'd probably call "science" (specifically biology and chemistry).
syndics
A "syndic" was a respected political position.
I am by birth a Genevese
At this point, we hear the story from Victor Frankenstein's point of view. "Genevese" means he was born in Geneva, Switzerland.
Even broken in spirit as he is, no one can feel more deeply than he does the beauties of nature. The starry sky, the sea, and every sight afforded by these wonderful regions, seems still to have the power of elevating his soul from earth.
The stranger seems like the quintessential Romantic hero here: deeply feeling, moved by the natural world, tortured by powerful emotions.
Letter I
These letters were written by Captain Robert Walton to his sister, Margaret Saville.
discovering a passage near the pole
Walton is joining a long tradition of explorers in search of the (then mythical) northwest passage, a way to access Asia and the East without having to sail around Africa or South America. Recently, due to a swiftly changing climate, the northwest passage has opened to large ships, including cruise ships (in 2016) and cargo ships (the first starting in September of 2018).
“the land of mist and snow;”
Line from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner."
keeping
Walton is emotional and ruled (to some extent) by his feelings.
The Iliad, the tragic poetry of Greece,—Shakespeare, in the Tempest and Midsummer Night’s Dream,—and most especially Milton, in Paradise Lost,
A defense of imaginative literature.
I passed the summer of 1816 in the environs of Geneva. The season was cold and rainy,
Mount Tambora, a volcano in Indonesia, had erupted in 1815, spreading such a tremendous amount of ash throughout the atmosphere that the following year (1816) was called the "Year Without a Summer" across the northern hemisphere. The effects of this event were profound and widespread. Read more here: "A Volcanic Eruption that Reverberates 200 Years Later"
Dr. Darwin
Grandfather of Charles Darwin, Dr. Erasmus Darwin also promoted the science of evolution.