Above is a mounted guard and a prisoner picking cotton in 1998 (some guards have rifles). Below, the warden’s house in the same period. This is at Angola, the flagship prison, located on the former Angola Plantation. These images are not mine, nor is the one of the electric chair a post or two ago, … More Louisiana State Penitentiary
A friend says that the reason people in Louisiana so fear sex, despite having quite a lot of it (despite having it compulsively, I would say), is that they still regret losing the Civil War and slavery. So they are nostalgic for an earlier time, like the more reactionary Muslims of the Middle East, he … More María: yes, it is the patriarchy
From one Rafael Ramírez Mendoza, who seems to be really nice. “Deseos de modernidad y fronteras de lo primitivo: territorialidad y autenticidad en el debate por un nuevo imaginario peruano en Abril, Westphalen y Arguedas”. Revista de Crítica Literaria Latinoamericana 75 (2012): 253-82. (You can read this via academia.edu and Ebscohost.) A surrealist letter-poem you … More New and fascinating information on Moro
Here is a 1984 view of the Louisiana electric chair, from the witness room. What surprises me is how close the witnesses sit. I realize it must be the same for the lethal injection — I had thought witnesses chairs would be elevated, as in a theatre, and further away — but I see this … More Death chamber
Someone said, “If this question was asked in my class, I would ask them to think about how patriarchy creates mechanisms of punishment and reward in order to keep itself in power. Patriarchy believes it gets to have 24/7 access to the bodies of social subordinates – most often women – but also men who … More Cecilia Valdés — yes it is the patriarchy
So why has Wasserman Schultz been so opposed to the CFPB’s proposed rules? She has said, “Payday lending is unfortunately a necessary component of how people get access to capital, [people] that are the working poor.” But maybe it has something more to do with the $2.5 million or so the payday loan industry has … More Bill Moyers
As a summer project, let’s compile a bibliography here. Are you joining me? Adaeseño Gregory, H.F., on adaeseño, 1996. Isleño MacCurdy, Raymond R. The Spanish Dialect in St. Bernard Parish. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1950. Axé.
I had to write a professional blurb about myself and I wrote: I teach primarily X but have also taught Y, and I publish primarily on A but have also worked on B. This was ostensibly because the blurb was written in connection with a proposal on Y and B, not X and A (which … More On self-presentation and gender
Here is a reasonable point of view on the value of that classic study of Vallejo: Izquierdo Ríos saw that it was important to know Vallejo’s contexts, in part so as not to substitute one’s own contexts and assumptions; and the indigenous element is real and important. He also started the vallejista tradition of making … More Francisco Izquierdo Ríos
The institution of “the other slavery” — the thinking behind it, the ways in which laws were passed and interpreted, how the practice of slavery itself took on many different guises — is alive today and in a world where the richest people exercise so much authority (in the form of political influence, economic power, … More La otra esclavitud
