I’m interested in the wines of the Holy Land, for, um, scholarly reasons. Here’s some news. BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Israeli settlers on Friday destroyed over 300 newly planted grape vines in al-Khader village south of Bethlehem, locals said.Landowner Mohammad Ibrahim Sbeih told Ma’an that he saw settlers from the illegal Sde Boaz settlement on his…
The business-world is full of essays lauding the advent of the contingent worker, or at least prepping companies to take advantage of it (selling their services to companies trying to deal with contingency). I’m reading these in the context of adjunct labor and an essay I’m writing for Chronicle Vitae. I see strong parallels. Here…
Over the past few years, a number of books and essays linking adjuncts to other historically oppressed peoples have been published. I’m writing an essay on the topic (that’s largely critical). Here’s some of the material with which I’m working, starting with the most recent. Equality for Contingent Faculty: Overcoming the Two-Tier System, edited by…
Here is a tl;dr – Support ASAN over Autism Speaks, Ok? If you want to know why, read on. April is Autism Awareness Month. It’s also Sexual Assault Awareness Month, a fact for which I was not aware until after I wrote yesterday’s topical post. I wasn’t really aware of AAM either until yesterday’s tweets…
This is my rule about taking offense: You do not get to decide whether I should be offended by something you do or say; you only get to decide whether you care. I wrote about in the context of the Washington NFL obscenities, as well as Barilla’s homophobic comments, the ethicist Chuck Klosterman’s use of…
I was out of town this weekend, so here’s a late Sunday roundup. Kind of a grim week: From the academic side: I looked at faculty vs admin discourse, said I didn’t like it, then employed it by talking about the use of disability waivers for UCLA Deans to spend millions of dollars on first-class living….
Last night I had the pleasure of meeting Andrea Tarnowski, a professor of medieval French literature and a some-time public writer. I am at a conference all day today (on medieval French things), so I’ll just offer you her thoughtful piece on how we engage with the past, from Huffington Post. Forging a resolution —…
Not a case of beer The blog Police State USA does a fantastic job of tracking and writing up incidents of police brutality, overreach, abuse, and other nefarious conduct. I continue to focus on the cult of compliance. This story is from the summer of 2013: Three female college students went to the grocery story and…
Last May, I began an essay on gender norms and my daughter this way: When the rocket scientist Yvonne Brill died in March, The New York Times celebrated her as the maker of a “mean beef stroganoff” and “the world’s best mother.” When my 4-year-old daughter, Ellie, a wildly creative and interesting girl, finished a…
I am perpetually fascinated by the way that “medieval” is code for barbaric, backwards, savage, and the like. The phrase “get medieval” seems to have originated (or at least moved into widespread use) as a result of Pulp Fiction, in which Ving Rhames’ character, after being freed by Bruce Willis’ character, tells his rapist that…