Phil Ochs

I am listening to Phil Ochs who died forty years ago this weekend. I remember that spring so clearly. There was so much foreboding, and there were so many elements and remnants left from a brighter past. These remnants were disappearing and I was a child growing with the sun and rain that filled us … More Phil Ochs

John Lowe

He has published a book on the relations between Southern and Caribbean literature, and now he is working on the tropical sublime. And a friend of mine got a Guggenheim this week. These are the kinds of activities that interest me. Axé.

What would help

What would help me would be not to have this constant feeling of doom. The university will be defunded, your program will close, your workload will rise, the things you do in good faith will turn out to be wrong. I have worked in stable environments and in environments where I did not have to … More What would help

Linda Hutcheon

On the policy of recycling a file a day, which I do not always remember to follow, today I am recycling a photocopy of several chapters of Linda Hutcheon’s A Poetics of Postmodernism (Routledge, 1988). It is an intelligent book that I would like to read again — as a book, however, not as a … More Linda Hutcheon

The slow professor

At last, someone agrees with me and does not needle, preach or scream about “time management.” I who graduated a year or two early from high school, I who finished college in four years and graduate school within “normative time,” I who took more than one unattractive tenure-track job over well-paid contingent positions in desirable … More The slow professor

On mestizaje, language purity and whiteness

I was reading an article about Ortiz and the founding of Latin American anthropology. Here is a quotation which fascinated me. La opción filológica de Henríquez Ureña se debía en parte a esta alternativa: mientras que los científicos se habían equivocado al argumentar a base de hechos empíricos, tales como la mezcla racial, los filólogos … More On mestizaje, language purity and whiteness