digital humanities

Blurred Lines, Part Deux: Appropriation vs. Expropriation

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson 0 Comments

Yesterday, my good friend, fellow music-lover and ridiculously super-smart guy, Steven Thomas (Asst Professor of English and Director of Film and Media Minor, Wagner College), published on his blog a response to and critique of my post from a couple of days ago on the Thicke/Pharrell/Gaye lawsuit (“On Blurred Lines, Pop Music, Pirates/Thieves and Memphis’ Mustang Sally”). His…

On Blurred Lines, Pop Music, Pirates/Thieves and Memphis’ Mustang Sally

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson 0 Comments

Yesterday, a Los Angeles federal jury awarded $7.4 million to the family of late, great R&B singer Marvin Gaye for copyright infringement by contemporary pop-icons Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams. The jurors determined that Thicke’s 2013 chart-topper “Blurred Lines” copied elements of Gaye’s 1977 hit “Got to Give It Up.” Although they were instructed to consider only…

We’ll Get By With A Little Help From Our Friends: Dr. J’s 2015 Signal-Boosts

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson 0 Comments

Just a few months ago, in September, I somewhat unceremoniously celebrated my 8th year at the helm of this still-imperfect, though incrementally improving, work-in-progress blog. My first couple of years were an experiment, to be sure, but I found my stride here at RMWMTMBM around 2008 or so, and it’s been mostly gravy since. I’m…

Witch-Hunting in the Digital Age

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson 0 Comments

Much to my own embarrassment, I’ve neglected to post here on the Steven Salaita controversy thus far, an affair with far-reaching implications not only for how we determine what constitutes both the civic and academic limits to the “right to free speech,” but also for a number of hiring-and-firing practices that are customary within the Academy but…

#SPEP14 Tweeter/Absentee “Buddy System”

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson 0 Comments

Daniel Brunson (@danieljbrunson) asked me if I could figure out a way to connect (1) people who won’t be attending #SPEP14 but who are interested in hearing specific panels and (2) Tweeters who will be live-tweeting those same panels. I think something like a digital-philosophical “buddy system” is a great idea, especially for those unfortunate…

Philosophy’s Next Generation of Auteurs

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson 0 Comments

Once again this semester, I assigned short-film projects to the students in my Existentialism course. And once again, the products of that assignment (which I only just finished grading) were amazing. I’ve employed this assignment in select courses for the last several years and each year the students’ films have gotten more and more impressive. …

The “Real” and “True” You

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson 0 Comments

Last week, my Philosophy and Film class took up the theme of “documentary truth.” In preparation for our Tuesday night seminar, students were required to choose one film from a list of documentaries (Grizzly Man, The Thin Blue Line, Night and Fog, Bowling for Columbine, Capturing the Friedmans, Man on Wire, Super Size Me, Ghosts…

Facebook Privacy Dis-Agreement

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson 0 Comments

It’s been a little while since the inhabitants of Facebookistan got all fired up about something– where are you now Kony2012?— so I was half-delighted and half-disheartened to see the newest brouhaha to hit the social media site, which I’m calling the Facebook Privacy Dis-Agreement (FPD). As these things tend to happen, FPD had been…

Deny and Imply

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson 4 Comments

Gary Shteyngart’s new novel Super Sad True Love Story takes place in a not-too-distant future America that reads uncomfortably familiar and, consequently, entirely believable. There, America has suffered a sharp decline in global economic and political importance, and has refashioned itself as an almost unabashedly consumerist Security State– though the Horatio-Alger-esque resolve (and hubris) that…

Anonymity

June 9, 2024 Leigh M. Johnson 4 Comments

Listening to the Digital Dialogue conversation about Identity the other day, coupled with reading way-too-many of the “comments” sections on the Skip Gates’ arrest story, has gotten me thinking a lot about the merits and demerits of online anonymity. Anyone who spends more than a second on the Internet surely knows the drawbacks– “flame” wars,…

Blurred Lines, Part Deux: Appropriation vs. Expropriation

On Blurred Lines, Pop Music, Pirates/Thieves and Memphis’ Mustang Sally

We’ll Get By With A Little Help From Our Friends: Dr. J’s 2015 Signal-Boosts

Witch-Hunting in the Digital Age

#SPEP14 Tweeter/Absentee “Buddy System”

Philosophy’s Next Generation of Auteurs

The “Real” and “True” You

Facebook Privacy Dis-Agreement

Deny and Imply

Anonymity

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