RMWMTMBM Archive

The Case for Having Students Memorize Poetry

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Open Source Pedagogy, Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive, Teaching 0 Comments

For the last couple of years, my policy with regard to students’ “extra credit” opportunities was entirely focused on incentivizing attendance for out-of-class lectures. If students attended a lecture and wrote a 2-page response essay, they could receive up to 5pts on their midterm or final exams.  If they attended and asked a question, they…

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The Wired Election, Part 2: “Follow The Money”

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Bernie Sanders, Democracy, Hillary Clinton, Philosophy, Politics, Pop Culture/Film/Literature, RMWMTMBM Archive, TheWiredElection2016, Women and Gender Issues 0 Comments

[This is the second installment of my series The Wired Election, employing insights gained from HBO television series The Wire to interpret 2016 Presidential election campaign events, persons and states of affair. The cheese stands alone.] Like many of my fellow web-citizens, I found myself doing a number of dramatic double-takes on Wednesday morning as I watched “news”-casters review…

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On Teaching Our Incapacity To Unexperience

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Aesthetics, Ethics, Film, Open Source Pedagogy, Philosophy, Public Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive, SPEP, Teaching, Thinking in Images, Trigger Warnings, Weak Humanism 0 Comments

They say you can’t “unring a bell.” It’s an analogy that is often used to illustrate our incapacity to un-experience things, to erase lived-experiences from our bodies and minds. What I discovered recently is how particularly true that is in the classroom. A few weeks ago in my Philosophy and Film course, we screened Werner…

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Closed Borders, Open Doors

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Democracy, Digital Humanities, Philosophy, Politics, Public Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive, Weak Humanism 0 Comments

Paris was ambushed by seven separate terrorist actions last night, a horrific set of events eerily reminiscent of both the Charlie Hebdo massacre less than a year ago and the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Any one of them– the mass shootings in various restaurants and bars, the suicide bombing outside of a soccer match at the Stade de…

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This Is Not A Retraction

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Codifying Civility and Collegiality, LGBTQ, Philosophy, Politics, Public Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive, SCOTUS, Women and Gender Issues 0 Comments

I’ve received a fair amount of pushback (mostly on Facebook and Twitter, but also in the comments section here) regarding my post on Saturday critical of the Supreme Court’s Ogerbefell decision. I may have been a little quick on the draw with my criticism, which I posted only one day after SCOTUS’ decision and while…

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Sixth Amendment, Unfunded

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson #BlackLivesMatter, Democracy, Human Rights, N, Politics, Race and Racism, RMWMTMBM Archive 0 Comments

This is just a short post motivated by my #BlackLivesMatter Reading Group session yesterday, where we discussed Albert Samaha‘s excellent essay “Indefensible: The Story of New Orleans’ Public Defenders.”  I thought I was long past being shocked by anything

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The Wired Election, Part 3: “A Man Got To Have A Code.”

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Democracy, Philosophy, Politics, Public Philosophy, RMWMTMBM Archive, TheWiredElection2016 0 Comments

[This is the third installment of my series The Wired Election, employing insights gained from HBO television series The Wire to interpret 2016 Presidential election campaign events, persons and states of affair. The cheese stands alone.]

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Reading Coates, Part 1: WPRs, Westgate and Weak Atheism

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson #BlackLivesMatter, Philosophy, Politics, Public Philosophy, Race and Racism, Reading Coates, RMWMTMBM Archive, Women and Gender Issues 0 Comments

I organized a reading/discussion group for Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me a few weeks ago and thought I’d post a few thoughts here as we go along.  By way of context, I’ll note that our group is small (8-10 people) and we’re a mixed bunch of (mostly, but not exclusively) academics– from Philosophy, History, Africana…

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How To Score An Academic Meeting

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson Codifying Civility and Collegiality, Professional Academy, Public Philosophy, Race and Racism, RMWMTMBM Archive, Women and Gender Issues 0 Comments

I do not, in principle, hate academic faculty or departmental meetings. In fact, as someone who (many of my friends have rightly dubbed) a “certifiably pathological proceduralist“– no kidding, I would voluntarily stand out on the corner and pass out Roberts Rules of Order like evangelists pass out Bible tracts– I genuinely (ahem, naively) look…

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30 Day Song Challenge, Day 30: A Song You Discovered This Month (During The Challenge)

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson 30 Day Song Challenge, 30 Day Song Challenge 2015, Music, RMWMTMBM Archive 0 Comments

They say all good things must come to an end, and since today is the last day of June, it’s time to put the finishing touch on this year’s 30 Day Song Challenge. If you’re interested in going back to check out my previous picks, I’ve collected them all at this link. I had a…

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