I got behind a bit on this #BloggingEveryDayFebruary project, so I’m playing catch up right now. If I’m being completely honest, I knew this would happen at some point during the month. Blogging every day is hard. It doesn’t take a lot of time to write a post each day, but it takes a lot…
Read MoreTonight, on Facebook and Twitter, I posted that I was “praying” for Minneapolis, for Chicago, for #BlackLivesMatters, for refugees fleeing violence and seeking safety and, more generically, for anyone and everyone who loves justice, defends and protects the most vulnerable among us, who is under assault, in danger and in need of not only our supportive solidarity, but our active advocacy. This was…
Read MoreThey 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…
Read MoreParis 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…
Read MoreAs someone who has spent the better part of her career researching, analyzing and teaching not only about the structure and nature of oppressive power regimes, but also better and worse ways to resist or transform such regimes, I’ve nevertheless been unable to settle in my own mind, to my own satisfaction, my position with…
Read MoreI had the very good fortune to attend my first Spillit event last night in (local photographer/visual anthropologist, Jamie Harmon‘s) Amurica studio space. Spillit is one of the newer additions to what has become, over the last several years, an incredibly rich, astoundingly diverse, mostly DIY and impressively self-sustaining (for lack of a better descriptor)…
Read MoreI was recently asked by a colleague, Dr. Lisa Guenther (Philosophy, Vanderbilt University), to add my signature to an open letter to Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam, petitioning him to suspend the scheduled execution of 10 inmates beginning in January. I agreed to lend my name to the petition alongside several others in a coalition named…
Read MoreSeveral weeks ago, I saw Beasts of the Southern Wild (adapted from the one-act play Juicy and Delicious by Lucy Alibar), the first feature-length film by director Benh Zeitlin and possibly one of the toughest films to characterize that I’ve ever seen. Whatever other faults it may have– and I will get to those shortly–…
Read MoreLast 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…
Read MoreI’m guessing I’m not the only one who saw the trailers for the new film Young Adult (directed by Up In The Air and Thank You For Smoking auteur Jason Reitman, penned by Juno screenwriter Diablo Cody) and thought to myself: that looks really funny! I want to see it! I mean, I didn’t expect…
Read More
Recent Comments