Leigh M. Johnson

Once More Into The Breach, Dear Friends

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive, Women and Gender Issues 0 Comments

Prompted by a recent piece on newAPPS, I’m (somewhat reluctantly) forced to acknowledge the renewed attention to a not-at-all-new phenomenon in the world of Philosophy over the last couple of years, namely, the dramatic under-representation of women in our profession.  Here’s what you need to know up front, assuming that some of you readers are…

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Tolerance Is Not A Virtue

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Open Source Pedagogy, Philosophy, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive, Teaching, Women and Gender Issues 0 Comments

Let me be clear at the outset: when I say that tolerance is not a virtue, I’m saying that as a philosopher for whom virtue has a conceptually substantive meaning.  I do not mean to imply that tolerance is a vice, a claim to which I think no reasonable moral agent, and no philosopher worth…

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31 Day Film Challenge, Day 14: A Film You Used To Love But Now Hate

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson 31 Day Film Challenge, Film, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive 0 Comments

My pick for today is American Beauty (1993), Sam Mendes’

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Working in Memphis: A Documentary (Part 2)

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Film, Memphis, Music, RMWMTMBM Archive, Working in Memphis Documentary 0 Comments

Vince Johnson of the Plantation AllStars So, I promised to update you readers occasionally on the progress of the documentary film that my student Sophie Osella and I are shooting this summer about working Memphis musicians… but, to be honest, I’ve barely had a free moment to do so.  As I said in the previous…

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Genius: Generative or Generic?

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive 0 Comments

I had the very good fortune of seeing historian Darrin McMahon (Florida State University), author of the recently published Divine Fury: A History of Genius, deliver a lecture last week as part of Rhodes College’s year-long Communities in Conversation lecture series. I want to write a bit here about some of the questions his book…

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Not With A Bang, But A Whimper: RIP Wild Bill’s Memphis

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Memphis, Music, RMWMTMBM Archive 0 Comments

Alas, it is with great sadness that I report that the long-anticipated but much-dreaded inevitability in my life finally came to pass. Wild Bill’s is officially closed. The doors closed without ceremony or fanfare early last month.  Like every other time before, there were a few weeks when I hoped that this was a false…

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AltAc, TransAc, PostAc and Just Plain Old ACK!

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive, Teaching 0 Comments

Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow published a piece a few days ago in the NYT entitled “The Repurposed Ph.D.,” which served as my first introduction to the neologism “post-academic.” The abbreviated (and eminently hashtaggable) version of that term– “PostAc”– is something like the poorer, sadder and less pretty twin of “AltAc” (“alternative academic”), which has for the last…

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Tweeting #SPEP13

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive 0 Comments

 “SPEP is not a mini-APA.” –Anthony Steinbock, 25 October 2013 That quote is from a plenary address delivered this past weekend by Tony Steinbock, Executive Co-Director of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, entitled “SPEP and the Continental Divide.”  SPEP is the second-largest organization for professional philosophers– the largest is the American Philosophical Association…

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Hate Crimes, Complicated: Or, Why It’s So Hard To Do What’s Right, Even When You’re “Right”

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive, Women and Gender Issues 0 Comments

I’ve never been in a fist-fight in my entire life  but, yesterday, I received my first black eye. I got my black eye roughly 48 hours ago now, on what just so happened to be the last day of my College’s Fall break, which ended Tuesday evening.  I spent the entire evening on Tuesday with…

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Doctor Nobody, or: How I Learned to Stop Sitting Passively By and Actually Fight the MOOC Machine

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Open Source Pedagogy, Philosophy, Politics, RMWMTMBM Archive, Teaching 61 Comments

As just-another college professor, it’s hard not to feel like the war against MOOCs is more than a little bit like the War on Drugs, or the War or Terror, or the War on Poverty.  The “enemy” is largely nonspecific, nonlocatable, plural, mutable, incredibly powerful and often invisible.  It’s hard to tell on which front…

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