Lots of broken patterns this time. This week’s post comes “early”: I’ve fallen into a Saturday posting rhythm, but it’s only Thursday, and I’m back at it. And the content isn’t some dusty old conference paper unearthed from back in the day, but a (Zoom) talk I gave just yesterday (so the digital ink is […]
Found in Translation
Last week, I said I’d share the other thing I did at the shoulda-been-2020-but-there-was-a-pandemic-so-it-was-2022-instead “Crossroads in Cultural Studies” conference. And so here it is. The “Giulia” who gets mentioned is my co-panelist, Giulia Pelillo-Hestermeyer, who only lacks a full name in my talk because she had spoken immediately before me, and the live audience presumably […]
Minneapolis 2020
Everyone has a crazy pandemic story (or three). Mine found me traveling to Heidelberg for a 12-day working vacation (part spring break, part set-up for a course I was hoping to co-teach in Heidelberg that summer) in March 2020, and then getting “stuck” there for 9 months. The same travel restrictions that kept me from […]
Fifty shades of red
The more I read about the Rachel Dolezal story, the angrier I get. But not at her. Because, as I mentioned before, none of us know enough to say with any certainty who or what she “really” is. Race isn’t that simple. Identity isn’t that simple. Yet all sorts of people — too many to […]
We are all criminals
Odds are good that you don’t think of yourself as a criminal. Odds are even better that you’re wrong about that. I have no doubt that you believe yourself to be a good, upstanding, law-abiding citizen. You’re not a murderer. You’ve never mugged anyone. You don’t steal cars or break into people’s homes. You’re not […]
Last month’s links
I’ve skipped this ritual for a few weeks. So, to make up for it, here’s a small flood of some of the best things I’ve read about Ferguson over the past few weeks (with some side dish on Bill Cosby sprinkled in here and there). Ta-Nehisi Coates Kiese Laymon Tressie McMillan Cottom Nick Mirzoeff Jennifer […]
Miss-iss-ouri goddamn
[photo by Jilly Ballistic] It’s hard to know what else to say about the miscarriage of justice that happened when the grand jury in Ferguson decided that Darren Wilson didn’t need to be indicted for killing Mike Brown. I wish I could say I was surprised. But I’m not. Like a lot of people — […]
Videos of the week
This week, three great tastes that taste great together.
Fun with surveillance [Rerun Sunday]
Yesterday, my car was involved in an accident. Sort of. It was parked on the street in front of the house at the front end of a series of three vehicles. Someone managed to drive their car into the back rear corner of the truck at the back end of that line. They did a […]
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