My friend Elena likes to tell a story about grading student papers while some Jacques Cousteau special was playing on the TV as background noise. While she was gawking at what her charges had managed to do to logic, reason, and the English language, Cousteau was commenting on one of the eternal mysteries of the […]
Making conferences worthwhile
It’s the gap in between the 2014 versions of two academic conferences — the American Studies Association and the National Communication Association — that I attend with some regularity. Not this year, though. Seattical is too precious to leave more often than I absolutely have to. But seeing my Twitter and Facebook feeds fill up […]
Crossroads 2008 [Rerun Sunday]
Several people (including many blog-less friends not linked here) have asked me about the Crossroads in Cultural Studies conference in Kingston, Jamaica that wrapped up early last week. And I would be hard-pressed to do better than Melissa Gregg’s summary of the event . . . except, perhaps, to simply say to all those people […]
Monday not-quite-randomness: Labor Day edition [Rerun Sunday]
As mentioned in this space last week, the University is facing a strike by clerical, technical, and health-care workers that’s slated to start Wednesday. Last week’s bargaining[sic] session found the University coming back to the table without budging from the very same offer that workers had rejected when they declared their intent to strike. So […]
3rd ACS Institute — 7-12 December 2015
The formal announcement of the keynote lineup for the next ACS Institute is below. But I want to add an extra plug for the event. To be sure, as ACS Chair, I’m a little biased. That said, I’ve been a part of the first two Institutes — in Ghent and in Klagenfurt — and they […]
Last week’s links
Call off the dogs! We’re back up to a half dozen this week. What goes around comes around? What goes around doesn’t quite come around What goes around could be made to come around What goes around makes pretty pictures Digital music distribution… …and other copyright conundrums
Grades. What are they good for?
One of my all-time favorite stories to come out of my teaching dates back at least a decade, when I was still living in Tampa and working at USF. It was a lazy Saturday afternoon, and I was having a bite to eat at a restaurant a short walk from my house. It was sometime […]
Baby’s first theory [Rerun Sunday]
You can find a brief explanation of “Rerun Sunday” here. The post below originally appeared on 26 Apr 2007. Ted Striphas is running a caption contest on his blog involving a photo of a baby holding a book by every toddler’s favorite French philosopher, Gilles Deleuze. I’m still working on my entry (how could I […]
Adventures in bookkeeping
I’m on sabbatical for the 2014-15 academic year, and spending it in Seattle: i.e., 1900 miles away from Minneapolis. Relocating for ~15 months poses a number of logistical problems — most of which I won’t bore you with — but there’s one that I suspect will resonate with many of the folks who are likely […]
Why Cultural Studies?: A short tease
Last week, my friend Ted Striphas (so cool that he has two blogs) stumbled across an Amazon link for my really-really-long-time-coming-but-finally-almost-here book, Why Cultural Studies? and posted some nice words of congratulations about it to Facebook. My friend Kembrew McLeod called it “the cultural studies equivalent of waiting for GnR’s Chinese Democracy.” My friend Timothy […]