I finally got around to watching folklore: the long pond studio sessions, a low-key, intimate concert of Taylor Swift’s folklore album. As is always the case, I am perpetually behind. The concert is from three years ago, recorded in pandemic year one. It’s Swift and her collaborators, Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff, not only playing […]
Lately, I’ve been thinking about the Pete Davidson bit on SNL (start at 2:28) that’s been making the rounds. Davidson talks about Kanye West and his own mental disorder.* There’s a line in there that I can’t get out of my head. He says, “No shame in the medicine game.”** Davidson, as y’all may know,
“No Shame in the Medicine Game” Read More
For years, I’ve been writing about how academia works—and particularly about contingent labor, gender, and the adjunctification of the modern university. I’ve advocated for the impermanent members of the faculty because my own work in academia was only ever off the tenure track. When I began reading Marc Bousquet’s How the University Works, I was
It’s that time after a visitation, in which everyone starts to leave, or maybe, to flee. They’ve seen the open casket. They’ve looked down upon the deceased; the funeral home has attempted to make the dead look as they did in life. (It hardly ever works.) Folks attending the visitation quietly but quickly move away
Yesterday, I learned that bell hooks passed away. And I, like so many others, was gutted by her loss. I didn’t know except through her writing. I never got to hear her speak. I only encountered her on the page. When I first picked up one of her books, I didn’t realize the impact that
Teaching As Liberation Read More
I’ve been writing for public audiences since 2007, when I starting writing posts for the Religion in American History Blog. I was a graduate student, who felt a little–or maybe a lot–stifled by the academic styles of writing that focused engaging a specialized audience, other experts. I was writing a dissertation that I hoped spoke
Writing for a Public Audience Read More