Life During Wartime

These are David Byrne and the Talking Heads. This musical selection has been inspired by the general situation and Momo’s Byrne post. Reading for today is the Feminist Reprise, Joanna Russ on Marriage and Capitalism. Axé.

Unchain My Heart

Our featured post for this evening is Lumpenprofessoriat’s Academic Love. It is of course right up my alley since it discusses the vicissitudes to which interdisciplinary programs are subjected, in the context of “academic rigor and standards” – principles to which we subscribe, but which are often ignored when they ought not to be, and … More Unchain My Heart

AAUP

I do not know whether it will be interesting as this mural, but the new date for the annual meeting of the Louisiana Conference of the AAUP is April 21, from 12:00 to 3:00. The meeting will be held on the Tulane University campus, in the Faculty/Staff Dining Room of the Lavin-Bernick Center for University … More AAUP

Jazz Ambassadors

Always of interest to me are the ways in which folk and ethnic musics are deployed in the service of national projects. Penny M. Von Eschen’s Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War (Harvard, 2005) discusses one such case. From Brian Morton’s review (The Nation, June 27, 2005, 38-41): Between 1956 … More Jazz Ambassadors

Aventurera

Oso Raro illustrates his description of this blog with a still from Alberto Gout’s film Aventurera (Mexico, 1949). Actually Ninón Sevilla’s dress would fit me just right and is in my style. I like his general description of the blog, too: This blog is the most like poetry than any of the others here, a … More Aventurera

Acad-agonists

The pervasiveness of agonism, that is, ritualized adversativeness, in contemporary western academic discourse is the source of both obfuscation of knowledge and personal suffering in academia. Framing academic discourse as a metaphorical battle leads to a variety of negative consequences, many of which have ethical as well as personal dimensions. Among these consequences is a … More Acad-agonists