Women and Gender Issues

Morehouse Mean Girls

I’ll admit that I hesitated, more than once– more than a dozen times, to be honest– before posting this entry. So, allow me a few caveats here at the start. First, I’m not a Morehouse grad, not even a Spelman grad– two of the most prestigious HBCU’s in the country– and I can appreciate that…

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REPOST: Picking A Fight… Like A Girl

[NOTE: This is a post that was originally published on this blog a year ago (10/08/09), which I am re-posting now because of recent interest in the newly-developed and eminently revealing What Is It Like To Be A Woman In Philosophy? blog. It is interesting to me to see this issue resurface with such force…

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The Many Faces of You, America

I’ve tried to refrain from commenting here upon the complete train-wreck that is (“surprise” Senate primary winner from Delaware) Christine O’Donnell, but a self-respecting political blogger can only be reasonably expected to hold out for so long. We’re all aware of the catalog of crazy things that have somehow made their way out of Christine…

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Deconstructing Sasha Fierce

I’m guessing that many of us have those fleeting fantasies from time to time in which we conjure up what we imagine would be the AWESOMEST. COURSE. EVER. For example, my fantasy courses: “I’m Not Here To Make Friends: Ethics and Reality TV” (sort of a cross between ethical theory, applied ethics, and existentialism), or…

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Let The Right One In

If you’ve been stuck under a rock for the last couple of years, you may not be aware that vampires are all the rage right now. Since I’m not a huge fan of scary movies, scary monsters, or scary things in general, I’ve managed to sidestep any real exposure to the recent vampiremania, though a…

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Yes, Jessica, You CAN Do Anything Good

I’m not usually one to forward or re-post YouTube videos of cute kids doing cute things, of which there are literally hundreds of thousands, but I recently came across one that I just couldn’t resist. It’s a little girl named Jessica– I’m guessing around 4 or 5 years old, probably pre-school age– standing on her…

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The Deadly Serious Business of Tenure

Last week, University of Alabama-Huntsville Professor of Biology Amy Bishop opened fire in a faculty meeting, killing three of her colleagues and wounding three others. Despite our hopeful image of the Ivory Tower as a place far removed from the ugliness of “real world” violence, stories like these remind us that, regrettably, wishing doesn’t make…

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Battle of the Sexists?

First, my apologies to regular readers of this blog for my extended absence of late. As some of you know, my department is hiring for a new tenure-track line this semester, a process which has the tendency to eat up every last moment of “spare” time for everyone involved. Second, I hope that you don’t…

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“This Country Was Not Built By Men in Suits.” (So Say the Men in Suits)

I’ve been fascinated recently by the obvious change in tone of many television commercials. We’re in an economic downturn, in case you hadn’t heard, and so many of the major ad-men seem to have been forced to acquiesce to the hard fact of hard times. There’s a lot more emphasis on product “affordability,” a lot…

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