1) What do you think of going to a conference that would put you out of class for an entire week? The conference is W-F and I would have to travel on the Tuesday, which means missing four weekdays. On the one hand, it is research. On the other, that is a week of class. … More Planning
I cannot tolerate further work on this abstract so, despite my dissatisfaction with it I am sending it in. This is the literary version; the Spanish version will be more sociological. Its title is El lado oscuro del mestizaje: raza y estado en tres textos decimonónicos, and I like that better. This was hard to … More C’est tout fini
Actually it is a downright Gadamerian problem. A second look at this 19th century corpus may not support the romanticized readings it elicited after mestizaje was embraced as national ideology decades after its first publication. It is Gadamerian because the problem is what the readers bring; their assumptions, predilections, blind spots. Axé.
Those Brazilian scholars and their acolytes, who defend against any hint that racial inequality in Brazil might be an aspect of the racial state by saying that at least they do not classify races by hypo-descent as we truly unfair Americans do, really miss the point. There really are not only differences in ways of … More The darker side of mestizaje
Escuta o gazal que fiz, Darling, em louvor de Hafiz. –Manoel Bandeira To historians my perception about race and the state is not a new, tentative intuition but an established fact. Literary people do not see their own liberal prejudice (now that we are in enlightened democracies, vestiges of older orders can be cleared out … More …darling, em louvor dos historiadores
I had assigned the class to do some additional reading on Romanticism, and put each student in charge of introducing a poet and a representative poem. Here are some of the interesting comments and questions they had. ♦ Zorrilla was “financially unwise” and must have had a magnetic personality, to attract all those women looking … More In which my students may be unsophisticated, but do not lack insight
I did not know about this. Franco apparently had a mestizo theory of Spanish identity that was important to his conception of the nation. (Joshua Goode’s book is really good.) Axé.
This book is coming out. I have been saying such a book was needed. Is it really the first biography of Vallejo? I would not have said so but it may be the first of its kind. The flyer I got from the publisher today alleged the book could be had for $7.95, so look … More A literary biography of Vallejo
For nine days I have been under arrest for alleged teaching crimes but now charges have been dropped. Let us see: 1. Holding a review session in which I told a student that in college classes, rote learning was not be sufficient; the examination would ask students to use certain skills and work with certain … More Mais c’est le printemps quand même
I have just seen why in those days I was supposed to be so “unfeeling” and so much “in denial” … it had to do with being stable, which (a) was unfamiliar and (b) was hard to manipulate. “If you can remain calm, does that not mean you are emotionally numb, or that you have … More coldhearted scientist
