Leigh M. Johnson

Frankly, my dear…

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Politics, Teaching, The Search for Values 1 Comment

Last year, in my section of our College’s great books program (which is called “The Search for Values”), I taught Michel Foucault’s Fearless Speech for the first time. The book is an edited volume comprised of six lectures that Foucault delivered at the University of California-Berkeley in the fall of 1983, all centered around the…

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Gitmo Soldiers On

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Obama, Politics Comments Off on Gitmo Soldiers On

Just a reminder that the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay is still open and operating. President Obama, as one of his first acts in office, vowed to close the facility within the year… but there are still over 200 detainees waiting there. It’s still unclear what awaits them, though, when they are released. The…

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You Are Not Going To Be Famous

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Open Source Pedagogy, Politics, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, Teaching 3 Comments

Take a look at this short lecture (only about 10 minutes) that Jim Hanas delivered as a part of the “useless lecture series” that he helps curate. According to Hanas, the point of his address was to debunk what he calls “America’s Big Lie,” the one perhaps best epitomized by Andy Warhol’s famous remark about…

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Gates-gate

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Obama, Politics 8 Comments

As you have probably heard by now, Harvard professor and academic superstar Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was arrested at his home in Cambridge today in a completely bizarre story. It’s still not clear what exactly transpired–though you can read the police report here— but Gates got cuffed-n-stuffed for “exhibiting loud and tumultuous behavior” in the…

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Digital Dialogues

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy Comments Off on Digital Dialogues

Friend and fellow philosopher-blogger Chris Long (Pennsylvania State University) has started a really interesting project that he’s calling “Socratic Politics in Digital Dialogue,” which is a series of philosophical conversations/interviews that Chris is making available as podcasts. (You can subscribe on iTunes by searching for “Digital Dialogues” under the podcast section.) This is a summer…

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Anonymity

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Digital Humanities, Philosophy, Politics, Pop Culture/Film/Literature 4 Comments

Listening to the Digital Dialogue conversation about Identity the other day, coupled with reading way-too-many of the “comments” sections on the Skip Gates’ arrest story, has gotten me thinking a lot about the merits and demerits of online anonymity. Anyone who spends more than a second on the Internet surely knows the drawbacks– “flame” wars,…

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Same Old, Same Old?

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy 3 Comments

Mark Bauerlin’s asks some interesting questions in his recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education (“Diminishing Returns in Humanities Research”). Questions like: with 4,230 new academic publications on Hamlet appearing in just the last fifty years, is there really anything else to say about it? He raises legitimate concerns about the “publish or perish”…

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Video Killed the Philosophy Professor

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Memphis, Music, Pop Culture/Film/Literature 1 Comment

As some of you know, I got to film a music video for my original song “Heart of Stone” last week with my best friend from college, Dana Gabrion (Co-Executive Producer of America’s Next Top Model) and musician/composer/videographer and all-around artistic genius, Chris Morgan. I should say, first, that the whole idea of shooting a…

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In Praise of Bulgarians

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Memphis, Music 2 Comments

My good friend (and one of my favorite bloggers), Petya, recently moved to Memphis with her husband, who is my new colleague at work. I have been anxiously anticipating their arrival all summer, and especially anticipating introducing them to Memphis. Now, I love this city and I love showing people around here, but after many…

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Teaching Naked

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Open Source Pedagogy, Philosophy, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, Teaching 3 Comments

In an article from The Chronicle of Higher Education entitled “When Computers Leave Classrooms, So Does Boredom”, Jeffrey Young reports that the Dean of Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University has recently banned all “machines” from classrooms and challenged his faculty to “teach naked” … by which he means, to teach without…

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