An Open Letter to Hugo Schwyzer

Published as a comment at his site, in response to this post. (Hat tip to Scott at Acephalous for reminding me of how these issues continue to simmer.) Hugo, You are wrong about… Continue reading →

In Response To Stanley Fish’s “Will The Humanities Save Us?”

(x-posted to The Valve) Bill Benzon calls our attention to a new blog entry by Stanley Fish, posted by The New York Times here. It is easy to imagine how, after a lifetime… Continue reading →

The Return of the SoCal Bloggers: Tomemos, Uncomplicatedly, Girl Detective, Surlacarte

Dear readers, Happy new year! Blogging is a reflection of brick-and-mortar communities, and it creates and sustains new communities of its own. Discussions begin through blogging that could never have happened otherwise, and… Continue reading →

Zizek the Embarrassment

(x-posted to The Valve) “Resistance is Surrender” –Headline of Slavoj Zizek’s new article for the London Review of Books There is a telling moment in the film Zizek! where Zizek discusses his own… Continue reading →

Academic Blogging Revisited

(x-posted to The Valve) Dear readers, It’s been a little more than a year since I began blogging under my own name, began contributing to The Valve, and generally took my first steps… Continue reading →

The Haunting Wordsworth: Romantic Poets and Monkeys With Typewriters

(x-posted to The Valve) (UPDATED: I recommend the full text of Ray Davis’s post on the matter, available here.) You might go on extending the list of explanations indefinitely, but you would find,… Continue reading →

I’m McLovin It: Sexuality in the Age of Advertising

(x-posted to The Valve) The setting is a mojitos-and-burgers place in the Lower East Side: shaded, pricey, with outdoor seating and fresh guacamole. I’m there with two friends, two other women I’ve just… Continue reading →

Culture, Fiction, and the Humanities

(x-posted to The Valve) Timothy Burke, at his blog Easily Distracted, wrote a post some time ago arguing for a Department of Everything Studies. Scott Eric Kaufman at Acephalous responded, and so did… Continue reading →

Taking Exception

Adam Kotsko writes, Take, for example, racism. It is perfectly fair to say that “white people” in the US are racist against African-Americans. The fact that an individual white person does not consciously… Continue reading →

There Is No Such Thing As Intelligence

(x-posted to The Valve) The abstract personal definition of “intelligence,” reified in our minds thanks to IQ tests and their derivatives, is a source of social ills and should be abandoned. It impedes… Continue reading →