Leigh M. Johnson

Official Announcement…or… Why I Should’ve Been a Hegelian

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Memphis 1 Comment

Here are the mutliple options I was considering for opening this post. (I couldn’t decide, so they’re all here):“The universe is a funny, funny, thing….” “Ever since Odysseus, we’ve all been heading back home in some way or another…” “I always wondered how it would feel to actually come ’round full circle…” Whatever… the news…

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Anatomy of an Illusion

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

In the recent film “The Prestige” (based on the Christopher Priest novel of the same name), the narrator explains the structure of a standard magic trick. Every illusion, we are told, has three parts: First, there is the setup, or the “pledge,” in which the magician shows us something that appears ordinary but is probably…

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(yet another) Last King of Scotland

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Film, Film Reviews, Politics, Pop Culture/Film/Literature Comments Off on (yet another) Last King of Scotland

I just saw “The Last King of Scotland”, the film about Idi Amin (starring Forrest Whittaker). Although I think that Whittaker’s performance was impressive, I am slightly disturbed by a recent trend in filmmaking that portrays “African conflicts” in a reductively “nativist” kind of way. Here’s my problem– in the recent films I have seen…

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I Am Logical. Hear Me Roar!

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy 5 Comments

For those of you who have been following my trials and tribulations with finishing the last stages of the PhD, I am happy to announce that I have finally defeated my arch-nemesis, the Logic Exam. Yeah, that’s right, the sun even shines on a lame dog sometimes. Only one last (big) hoop to jump through…

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the problem with dumb questions

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

I was eager to read the “10 Questions About the Future of the Humanities in America” posed by Thomas Mallon in the current issue of The American Scholar. Then, alas, I actually read them. If you haven’t already seen them, here they are: ——————- 1. How can American professors learn to write about literature in…

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What Jesus Said

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Politics Comments Off on What Jesus Said

I want to give kudos to a friend of mine, Alex Stehn, for being such a fantastic teacher. He was telling me the other day about his desire to teach a class on Christianity and Marxism–a really fantastic proposition in my view–and it got us talking about the way many of our students think about…

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Please, History, Don’t Repeat Yourself…

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Film, Film Reviews, Human Rights, Politics, Pop Culture/Film/Literature 2 Comments

I recently viewed the excellent documentary “The Fall of Fujimori” about Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori. Fujimori was elected President in 1992 on a populist platform, during a time when Peru was being sacked by both radical insurgent groups and abject poverty. As you can probably see from the photo (left), Fujimori’s win was surprising, as…

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Ology-ologist

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Pop Culture/Film, Pop Culture/Film/Literature 2 Comments

[NOTE: I know all of my Greek-y friends are going to want to respond to this post with some elaborate explanation of logos. Please refrain. Please.] About a month ago, my housemate began making fun of my various pretensions of expertise by attaching the suffix “-ologist” to whatever it was that I was talking about….

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Death By Red Tape

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Politics 2 Comments

I know that we all have our own horror stories of bureaucratic asphyxiation…but recently in my life, I have found myself increasingly strangled by red tape. I suspect that it may be a particularly pronounced struggle in academia–maybe politics is as bad, but it can’t be much worse–and I’ve found my patience (and diplomacy) wearing…

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argh…. blogging.

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Uncategorized 2 Comments

so here’s the brief history of my attempts to keep any sort of diary. I start on some day in the first week of january, write for a max of four days atraight, revist the diary at some point in may and then discard the whole thing. basically, pathetic. however, since i am sitting at…

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