April may be the cruellest month, not only for mixing memory and desire, but also for allergic rhinitis. For some people, a foreign substance (pollen) stimulates the body’s production of a reactive chemical, histamine. The allergic reaction can be mild (swelling of mucous membranes, production of mucous), or, in the case of some allergies, quite [...]
A recent visit to New Haven revealed that my favorite discount book outlet, Labyrinth Books, which had a very fine store on the north side of Yale, has closed that shop. Labyrinth describes itself as “an acclaimed independent bookstore for engaged readers” and observes that “Labyrinth serves Princeton University in all its course-book needs, taking [...]
Writing in the 22 March 2012 issue of the New York Review of Books, Diane Ravitch critiques America’s education-industrial complex, what Pasi Sahlberg calls “the Global Education Reform Movement” or GERM, whose central doctrine is teaching to the test, while she takes particular aim at the Wendy Kopp pyramid scheme, Teach for America (TFA). Like [...]
Keep in mind that Texas sets the textbook agenda for much of the US: Romney can tick off the failings of the president like any other Republican but he precedes each one with a friendly word or tip of the hat. It drives conservatives crazy, not only but also in Texas, where the preferred oratorical [...]
Twenty years ago I drew the ire of the governor of Virginia. I was an instructor at a public community college (the second lowest genus on the higher education food chain), and L. Douglas Wilder was the governor. Virginia’s economy had slipped into recession, and the US was in the midst of a presidential primary [...]
This news item comes under the “kulcha” category. Reported today, Rutgers University (chartered in 1766 as Queens College, opening in 1771) is bringing to its campus this week Nicole Polizzi, someone who is otherwise known as “Snooki.” No maven of pop kulcha, I even know that “Snooki” is a celebrity du jour on one of [...]
The reason that I bought the Barnes & Noble Nook Color e-book reader was that it seemed to provide an ample catalog of the kinds of books that I read (including scholarly books) and more important, that it seemed, in comparison to another reader that I’d used and other readers that I’d reviewed, more facile [...]
Many a kerfuffle among the punditocracy and in the blogosphere about “tenured radicals” corrupting the minds of our young people in college, with tenure as a guarantee of lifelong employment without conditions. Well, since only about a quarter of faculty are tenured or working for tenure (and the rest of us contingent labor), let’s dismiss [...]
Reminds me of the numerous times an eager undergraduate English major has sat in front of me (though on those occasions I was not nearly so jaundiced in my perspective as the professor avatar here).
Eva von Dassow, a professor of classical and Near Eastern studies, spoke at a recent public forum of the University of Minnesota Board of Regents. According to an article in today’s Inside Higher Ed, the video of her talk is inspiring many of her colleagues at Minnesota and elsewhere, many of them fed up with [...]
At a conference of scholars (mostly historians) on the Oldest State of the South. . . Uniformity. Unlike MLA meetings where blue jeans or black on black on black (with black Euro eyewear) prevails, the uniform of the day is the blue blazer and khaki pants (mostly men, but sometimes unisex). Depicted below, my uniformity: [...]
I’m at a scholarly conference at a small college with big pretensions, where Christian Lander could add to his list of Stuff White People Like: strip-mall neo-Colonial or convention hotel neo-Georgian architecture. In this case, this college started out as a junior college extension of Oldest Southern College, declared its independence, got a makeover with [...]
The last day of MLA’s annual convention. The conference has appeared in local and national news media, as always at this time of year, though this year the headlines have seemed less preoccupied with presenters’ clever or controversial paper titles and more on the deleterious effects of the grim economy and the challenges of digital [...]
Reunions Many spontaneous reunions occur at MLA, some planned, most serendipitous. I bump into Bob and Sylvia Scholnick (College of William & Mary) on the train. Attending Bob’s session that night, I catch up with John Miller (Longwood University) whose dissertation director was Bob Scholnick. I stop to say “Hi” to Richard Dellamora outside the [...]
Council of Editors of Learned Journals Meetings At the conclusion of the Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ) awards ceremony today, outgoing (in both senses of that term) CELJ president, Bonnie Wheeler (editor of Arthuriana), addressed several recurring questions of journal editors in recent years, particularly related to ownership and credentialing. What constitutes a [...]
TheLongView began two years ago this week (thanks to my brother Jim Long‘s birthday gift to me of the domain name and a Christmas gift later in the year of the Web server and blog design and setup) with my blogging on the Modern Language Association‘s annual meeting in Chicago in 2007. So like salmon [...]
(A paper to be presented at a panel of the Council of Editors of Learned Journals, Modern Language Association Annual Convention, 30 December 2009) As a professor of English appointed to a school of nursing and its Center for Nursing Scholarship, I wear several hats. A writing coach and editor, I support faculty members’ writing [...]
Two front-page articles in a recent edition of the Sunday New York Times (15 November 2009) caught my eye. Robert Pear’s ”In House Record, Many Spoke With One Voice: The Lobbyists” observes that, “In the official record of the historic House debate on overhauling health care, the speeches of many lawmakers echo with similarities. Often, [...]
As widely reported in the news media, the preeminent scholar of African-American studies, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., a public intellectual known to a large American audience for his PBS programs on Africa and on African-American genealogy, was arrested at his home in Cambridge, MA, after he allegedly yelled at police who had come [...]
It has been over twenty years since I visited my mother’s ancestral home (her father was a McVey) in Edinburgh, Scotland, but on my next journey there I will visit Broughton Street Bookshop. Proprietor Brian Rafferty opened the shop because he was unsuccessful in securing career employment in information technology for which he has the [...]
Here in Oxford for a three-day conference (Making Sense of Health, Illness and Disease) and to present a paper, “AIDS and the Paradigms of Dissent,” I began my visit by attending a concert in Exeter College chapel performed by Charivari Agréable and ended tonight with another concert by the same. The advantage of visiting a musical place (Oxford) in a [...]
Where is one so weak as in a bookstore? — a theme of a blog posting last year. I’m in Oxford presenting a paper at a global health conference at Mansfield College. Arriving a day early (on purpose) I spent the day wandering the streets and browsing in bookstores. Books and Oxford have been closely associated [...]
Douglas J. Amy, professor of Politics at Mount Holyoke College had a problem: An established scholar with three scholarly books on his curriculum vitae, Amy decided that he had another book to write but one that would reach a wide general audience. However, when he wrote the book, he found no trade press (which would [...]
Proctoring an exam on Saturday in the Information Technology Engineering Building, I discovered the office of The Oracle. Faculty and professional staff are unionized here, so apparently The Oracle does not work on Saturday. I had so wanted to meet her since I had read so much about her for years.
“Don’t be such an old poop!” Ethel Thayer to Norman Thayer in Mark Rydell’s film, On Golden Pond, based on Ernest Thompson’s play (screenplay by Ernest Thompson). Well I have become an old poop, perhaps, but the loons are not very welcoming. It is the prerogative of people in mid-life to lament the declension of [...]
