Remember Han Solo? That smarmy, proud, devil-may-care mercenary from the “Stars Wars” movies? As best I can remember, I think he’s the first “anti-hero” I loved. After Han, I think the next one for me was the narrator of Dostoevsky’s Notes From Underground. Since then, I’ve been collecting them like some sort of neurotic hobbyist….
Read MoreFirst, a caveat: The following post is NOT intended, primarily, to advocate or oppose any particular Presidential candidate. A couple of days ago, NPR correspondent Robert Seigel interviewed Presidential candidate Mitt Romney. (You can read the transcript of the interview here.) Initially, it seemed like the main focus of Seigel’s questions was Romney’s health care…
Read MoreFor those of you who don’t know, I host a radio show on Sunday nights from 7-8 pm (Central time) on Rhodes Radio. My show is called “Americana the Beautiful” and is ostensibly devoted to American “roots” music (country, blues, jazz, rock n’ roll), but I often just play whatever I like. Anyway, we’ve now…
Read MoreWe concluded the semester in my “Search for Values” class with Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Specifically, we ended with the end of the Nic Ethics, Book X, in which Aristotle defends the life of contemplation as both the highest achievement for human beings and the “truly” happy and virtuous life. I always find that Book X…
Read MoreSeveral weeks ago, when my class was still reading Homer’s Iliad, I tried to goad my students into making comparisons between the Trojan War and our current war in Iraq. That didn’t go over so well, and at the time I wasn’t sure why. I suspected that it was still early in the semester and…
Read MoreMany of you have probably read the now-famous text by historian James Loewen Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. I find that many of my students, especially those who come from liberal or progressive backgrounds, read it in high school or in some other context before they reached college….
Read MoreI’ve been invited to speak as one of the panelists in a colloquium entitled “Violence: The American Tradition?” coming up in a little more than a week. I am still working out what it is that I want to say. My co-panelists are a historian and an artist, and we are each expected to address…
Read MoreAnyone who’s ever read Jacques Derrida’s The Gift of Death, one of the greatest books ever on secrecy, has certainly had to grapple with the aporia of the secret. Of course, the “secret” of that text (such that there is one) is that there is no Secret. This is partly true because, structurally speaking, someone…
Read MoreSeveral years ago, when I used to manage an independent bookstore/cafe in Midtown Memphis, I had the pleasure of reading the book to your left, How to Defend Yourself Against Alien Abduction. (Hey, what can I say? A woman cannot survive on Derrida alone!) The book doesn’t include a single hint of irony in all…
Read MorePrefatory disclaimer: I am fully aware that the following “crisis” only legitimately qualifies as a “crisis” for those of us in academia. Which, of course, means that it’s not a crisis at all. I hate, hate, HATE the practice of submitting panel or paper “proposals” for conferences. The way this always works out, or at…
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