Best books for COVID-19 class — what would you add? 1. Boccaccio / Decameron — some say just first chapter 2. Camus / La peste 3. Mann / The magic mountain 4. Mann / Death in Venice 5. Anon. / Nibelungenlied (Bary, Chataeva) 6. GGM / Love in the time of cholera (Chataeva likes it) … More Plague course
Race is about politics. The concept of race was invented in Spain in the 14th century. Originally this was about religion (the Jews) but then it became about social and political power — the idea being not to share power with the conversos. So otherness then became about genealogy, not current religious difference, and Jewishness … More Spain, race as a global construct, and lagniappe
This is an important little piece to read. And I want this book Global Raciality, but not at its price. I wish we had a library, and that it kept up with things. They have it at LSU-S and I should get it by interlibrary loan. And finally, I have always admired this article on … More Reading stories like an underdog
I went to this NEH institute almost 20 years ago where I was a bad student. I was partly there because I needed the scholarship money to survive the summer. And as it turned out we were to stay in these depressing dorms, and the NEH was broke that summer so the coolest speakers could … More Recycling colonial Brazil, or, Colonial identity in the Atlantic world . . . and Ferreira da Silva, again
I am not a good consumer of novels, they seem long and not always interesting enough for the effort they take, but on the plane I started reading David Trueba’s Saber perder and I liked it. I have slightly ruined it by speed-reading and also reading ahead, skipping around. I should not do this because … More Reading novels
There is The Borders of Dominicanism, useful to me in that it invokes another borderland with the U.S. There is At the edges of states: Dynamics of state formation in the Indonesian borderlands (Michael Eilenberg) The book rests on the premise that remote border regions offer an exciting study arena that can tell us important … More Books and things on nations and borders
I thought I was just puttering around, rereading Adrienne Rich because someone sent me that essay, and reading about Oswaldo Costa because this article popped up, but actually: they are for my paper. Anzaldúa is a lesbian writer and following Rich, that is more important than her just being a defender of all supposedly “marginal” … More Compulsory heterosexuality and alternative anthropophagy
The July 29 New Yorker has a beautiful article about Natalia Ginzburg, who is wonderful, and a fascinating one about Melville. Ginzburg: imagination is stronger when you are happy – suffering makes the imagination weak and lazy – drowning in emotions, and in particular, in pain is NOT what women writers should do. This is … More Ginzburg, Melville
Ancient notes, I think from a conference 20 years ago, that I kept and kept. What did they say and why did I keep them? Postmodernism as grand récit flattens out the complexities of Latin American modernism, which had postmodern characteristics and also more, it was more complex. It tries to articulate national and continental … More Ancient
I was taken with this poem and discovered its author is well known. And it seems Herzog is still working, I do not necessarily approve of him or like all of his work but effectively he seems to be my favorite filmmaker, so what can one do. Life, pleasure, art. Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 