Back in May, I published an essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education that I really loved. But it coincided both with end-of-term and with the summer hibernation of fcrp, and so was sort of forgotten on this space. So today and the next two days, I reprint it here for your reading pleasure, and/or vehement [...]
We needn’t sit helpless in front of the TV, of course; one of the great debates in cultural studies over the past couple decades has been waged over the notion that consumers of mass media might have access to real agency, real power. There are a couple of steps in becoming a self-conscious media consumer-cum-producer, [...]
Today’s the first day of classes back here at Pomona College, and I’ve been struck–heartened, embarrassed, surprised, flummoxed–by the number of students, faculty, staff (even parents) who have asked me about the blog. “Is it dead?” “Are you going to start again?” Certainly when I wrote my last post back in April, I had no [...]
It’s been so long since I posted, I hardly remember how. If John Lennon were still with us, I think he’d say that blog silence is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans. But at lunch today with a friend, I told a story that I realized might be of interest to [...]
It’s a post for another day, but you should follow up on how “The Profession” looks from the inside. I’m interested in your thoughts, and those of your colleagues from different parts of The Profession. Thanks. I saved that comment from a couple of weeks ago, meaning to return to it; it’s a big question, [...]
Yeah, OK: not really. This sounds like one of those titles bestowed upon one (then proudly shared with friends via Facebook) by playing Farmville, or some such. Maybe a post for another day, but can anyone explain the appeal of Farmville to me? I mean, really: isn’t this like those early electronic gadgets with a [...]
Not surprisingly—no surprise to me, anyway—discussions last night of Pierre Bayard’s How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read with our first-year students were very animated and very smart. Each year we assign one common book for all of our incoming students to read, ostensibly as a kind of community-building exercise: All of our first-year [...]
I’m going to write today’s posts in two parts: the pre-freshman portion and the post-freshman portion. (We don’t really use the word “freshman” anymore, of course, but the phrase “pre-first-year students” just doesn’t work. The eye is offended.) Tonight (Sunday night), along with a couple dozen of my colleagues at Pomona College, I’ll be leading [...]
With real regret I bid farewell Tuesday to my senior seminar students in “Irony in the Public Sphere.” They were a great class; the topic as I conceived it is a big, baggy one (which goes some way to explaining why the book is taking me so long to finish), and the students took my [...]
[It's late Thursday, and tomorrow's post should be a Mystery Science Auditorium post; and ordinarily, I don't post until 5:00 a.m. PST. But I have exciting news today, big enough to break both of those self-imposed rules, just this once. So here's Friday's post, on Thursday night.] For reasons both professional and personal, it’s a [...]