Leigh M. Johnson

Sorry, Mom, I Won’t Be Home For The Holidays…

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Pop Culture/Film, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, Sports Comments Off on Sorry, Mom, I Won’t Be Home For The Holidays…

…because I’m scheduled to play in the Rose Bowl. I love this time of year. It’s “Bowl Season” for college football fans– great teams matched up in memorable games, heaps of pomp and tradition, endless battles over cryptic BCS rankings–and if you’re a fan, as I have been all my life, it just doesn’t get…

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When The Critic Outsmarts The Critiqued

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy 1 Comment

In Eduardo Mendieta’s recent review of Nicholas Adams’ philosophical text Habermas and Theology, Mendieta begins with the following: “Adjoining two nouns in the title of a book is like writing a blank check to “cash.” One better know who is receiving the check and one better make sure to have sufficient funds when it gets…

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Deconstructing Dubya

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Philosophy, Politics Comments Off on Deconstructing Dubya

Normally, I complain about the ubiquitous misuse of the term “deconstruction.” I find that, more often than not, when people say “deconstruction” they actually mean “destruction,” but they also want to show that they went to college. (See the “deconstructed” fashions hyped on Project Runway, for example, which are just ensembles of shredded or otherwise…

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Apotemnophilia

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

I love medical mysteries. About a year ago, I saw a “Dateline NBC” show on people who have a strange condition called Body Integrity Image Disorder (BIID) or apotemnophilia (from the Greek αποτέμνειν, “to cut off” and φιλία, “to love”). It is characterized by an overwhelming desire to amputate one or more healthy limbs or…

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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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