When I first arrived in Bahia I was picked up at the airport by a chauffeur driven Chevette and taken to the house, which turned out to have mango trees and a broad porch with large white columns. On the porch stage center was a matron Velasquez could have painted, holding a small dog, standing … More Visceral Whitemen
1. I am still busy flying the Barack Obama flag. Obama lost in Louisiana almost 2-1, but that does mean more than one in three people are Obama voters, many of them young. They say things like: I was born in 1988. When I heard Obama had won the election, I felt that a great … More On Autonomy
Students in English wishing to study Latin American literature in translation for their PhD are allowed to write their own reading lists and not required to take coursework. There are problems with this but as an American I find that we should read texts from other countries – as long as we are not simply … More Reading for School Wednesday: Open Thread
Tonight we go back to standard time. It is November, when the trees grow stark. The bricks, the sharp gables, and the iron balconies sprout new, ever more severe angles against the cloudy sky. Here the water slaps slowly against the sides of the piers but in our imaginations we are walking to Washington. We’re … More On Authors and Authority
I knew the first week of my first job that I did not want to be a professor, at least not in the kind of institution – and there is an archipelago of them, rather like a gulag – to which I was now bound. I looked about me and was horrified: all the other … More On Mental Slavery
Now I am writing a pre-piece of my new book and trying not to ignite my usual set of literary academic writing reactions, having to do with wishing I had always been doing more of this, and also wishing that when I decided I preferred to move on from it that I had honored my … More Chola soy, y no me compadezcan. Jacques Derrida. Paroles en liberté
Introducing Dr. Curmudgeon. I wish I had had his confidence when I was his age. Here’s the story. I’m 35 years old. I’m going into my fourth year of teaching at a small university somewhere in America. I get to discuss big ideas and controversial notions on an almost daily basis. I get to ask … More On Being A Professor
Everyone needs your time and money right now, I know. But it is important to DEFEAT MEASURE 11 IN SOUTH DAKOTA and women there need your help. Consider it, and consider phone banking for Obama this weekend. One point of phone banking now is to get people to vote early – that is that much … More Alert. En Vida
I have had another of those conversations with someone who likes teaching, in which I said I did not. But when I told her WHAT I was teaching she turned up her nose. “In my university we have other people to do that.” I thought, “Well, I rest my case.” But my graduate student does … More And Continuing
Now animated by a yogic comment from Hattie, I can keep on saying things and drawing pictures, these always having been some of my first goals in life. The immediate additional causes of my current malaise: a) so many students, including graduate students, need remedial work, but we are keeping up a certain fiction … … More On Precariousness and Destabilization
