Here is what Rob Brezsny has to say to me this week — fortunately since I am going on vacation for FOUR DAYS, during which I will only do teaching related activity and no research. Let the boundaries blur a bit. Don’t stick too rigidly to the strict definitions. Play around with some good old-fashioned … More Still more on academic advice
The cultural identities consolidated by writers like José Vasconcelos, Fernando Ortiz, Nicolás Guillén, Gilberto Freyre, and Oswald de Andrade, and naturalized as national discourses from the 1920s forward, are derived from earlier formulations. But their cultural emphasis is new, as are their proclamations that the mestizo is superior rather than degraded. The mestizo nation of … More Let us see if this is less boring: 162 words
It is in the twentieth century that this racialized discourse becomes cultural, and mestizaje becomes a trope for the nation. The cultural identities consolidated by writers like José Vasconcelos, Fernando Ortiz, Nicolás Guillén, Gilberto Freyre, and Oswald de Andrade, and naturalized as national discourses from the 1920s through the 1960s and beyond, are derived from … More I do not like this paragraph after all, and must improve the prose
Here it is. Iceland is the best country, and Afghanistan the worst; Maine is the best state and Louisiana the worst. Number of police employees and persons incarcerated in Louisiana are what push us over the edge but we have many other indicators of a lack of peace. Within the United States, only Louisiana comes out red … More 2013 Global Peace Index
One difference between them — the ones who are not tenured or on the tenure track, and who are mad about it — and me is that they made enormous sacrifices to be in graduate school, in the form of moving across the country to some disagreeable place and taking out significant loans because inflation … More The new faculty majority
Yesterday because of all these meetings and teaching related activities I touched work but did not write anything. Today it took me nine hours, nine, to edit and reformat my other article. I will touch work late tonight to keep up some form of rhythm. Tomorrow is house cleaning, errands, yard, and guests. I will … More Writing group goals have to be revised this week
One of the results of adjunctification is that undergraduates meet few professors, if any, and many are officially advised by academic staff and who have not been faculty. As a result of this they have to pay for coaching on how to get into graduate school and things like that; there are services like The … More On adjunctification, coaches and consultants
…is that I have to use my Haiti paper as well for this book. And of course that fits marvelously with the New Orleans material. The good: everything I have fits. It all made sense, after all. The bad: it is too much material. Axé.
I need a really good image of a great ship putting out to sea and I do not see the right one, so you will have to imagine it. I am embarking on a large solidarity project. As I am about to call for one in print, I have to model it. It involves wresting … More Le projet
MIND AND MATTER This is Mark Griffith. I had a class from him in translation as an undergraduate and then later, in graduate school, a reading class on Horace. He is a good professor but what makes him unique in my life is that he was the only person, student or professor, who without need … More On academia and cultural exceptionalism
