It was a symposium on the Atlantic world I went to at Rice years ago and I felt so intelligent, the papers were so intelligent. I have very fragmentary notes. Let’s just type them and see if they make sense later. Instabvility of race as signifier Racism as a condition under which freedom could be … More Race and Nation in the Age of Emancipations

Every time I go into files I find notes to self about working in my department at UL. I’d be doing research projects and needing access to self to do them and be having trouble with it, and have revelations about how the abuse in my department was eroding me. These are not very legible, … More Addendum to my December moulting

I hadn’t paid attention to him so far, and I am missing an interesting reading of some of his work in an interesting venue right now, but at least missing this reading has brought him to my attention, so at least there is that. I should get his Amazonian poems and use them in my … More Mazzotti

I can’t seem to comment on my other post so I will say here: What the grievance guy said: yes, the chair should be chair to the whole department and yes, you should say these things to him; All of Spanish, and the French graduate students, suffer from the practices of the elite-French, and they … More Meanwhile

The authoritarian mindset is hard to break. Here are things I would like to express to leadership in our department but don’t think I will be allowed to. I despair of being comprehensible, although I consider these things simple, so I’ll note them for the future. They are things are to save the department, whose … More Countering the Authoritarian Mindset

More on hiring. The hire I want, one person to replace a just-retired professor and a retiring instructor, will be a forward-looking person with at least some of these characteristics (and/or other similar ones): * a research program they like, and that they can bring students in on, including for undergraduate research * the ability … More On hiring

I should write an article for Academe on this. People in their effort to be kind to the NTT are ending up speaking ill of their fields. A fundamental point, perhaps, is that people, including alleged progressives and union members, forget that tenure is about INTEGRITY. The AAUP says academic freedom and shared governance but … More On the value of the PhD and tenure

I worked for hours on a draft that got lost due to some Internet freeze I don’t understand. It’s a short memo and a lot of notes. I want to send ISP’s piece on saving the humanities to leadership, to accompany the other piece and my other request. It offers a different and more hopeful … More Lost post

…our toxic department? It’s not that students are losing interest in the field, it’s that we are alienating them because the toxicity is so evident. What is needed? Graduate students. Faculty should not gossip about students to other students. Sharing good news, or giving information about opportunities others have taken and that are still available, … More What would it take to heal