Leigh M. Johnson

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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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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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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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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Gender Trouble: See Semenya Run

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Sports, Women and Gender Issues 1 Comment

Sure, we all know that Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt is the world’s fastest man, but who is the world’s fastest woman? That seems to be a matter of some debate… South African runner Caster Semenya (pictured left) recently ran 800 meters in less than two minutes, more than 2 seconds faster than the next-fastest female…

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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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iPod Nation

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Pop Culture/Film/Literature 3 Comments

As they say in France: Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. It turns out that this year marks the 30th aniversary of the invention of the Sony Walkman, what A. N. Wilson terms “the gadget that helped break Britain.” That’s right, 30 years ago we saw the forbear of the now-ubiquitous iPod, which…

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My Plato Is Better Than Your Plato

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Teaching, The Search for Values 2 Comments

I was very glad to receive all of your various contributions to the discussion about “small groups” in the classroom last week, so I thought I might impose on you again for your pedagogical insights. In the last few days of our core-humanities curriculum seminar, we were debating which translations of the core texts to…

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De jure is de facto’s slave…

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Human Rights, Politics, Torture 3 Comments

I was pleased to discover recently that Ethan Coen, of the famed Coen Brothers (screenwriters for some of the very best in contemporary film, like Fargo, O Brother! Where Art Thou?, No Country for Old Men, The Big Lebowski and Miller’s Crossing) has also published a book of poetry. One of the poems in that…

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Ahmadinejad and the U.N.

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Politics 1 Comment

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad prompted a ruckus (and a mass walk-out) this week at the Durban II Conference, the followup to the U.N.’s first anti-racism conference, the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenohobia and Related Intolerance, which was held in South Africa in 2001. Most of the protestors left before Ahmadinejad got started on…

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