tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80775802024-03-07T22:39:07.632-05:00lefter, warmerprocrastinating just for yourebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03384242746548343890noreply@blogger.comBlogger713125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8077580.post-84363828876442920152019-08-11T10:34:00.001-04:002019-08-12T09:13:57.627-04:00The U.S. Left and the Self-Own<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
There is always a risk to publicly criticizing a group you belong to if your group has a minority status in the broader society. These days, people like to joke that the left is always forming a "circular firing squad." The old name for it is airing dirty laundry in public. It is a real dilemma, as it's inevitable that criticisms based on internal differences will become weapons in the hands of a hostile majority. Here are some of the many examples of criticisms from within the left that have been adopted as right-wing and or liberal hammers against the left during my own life-time;<br />
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<ul>
<li> The term 'politically correct" began on the left in the 1970s as an earnest description of the 'correct' line, and by the 1980s was a way to mock self-righteousness and rigidity among leftists</li>
<li> The term "special snowflake" to criticize college students began as an apolitical reference to unreasonable expectations by students depicted as privileged and whining on the (mostly liberal to left) faculty-run website about academia, <a href="http://rateyourstudents.blogspot.com/2007/11/snowflake-essays_7755.html">Rate Your Students</a>, though it was a term they borrowed from <u>Fight Club. </u></li>
<li> The criticism of "identity politics" began on the left as a positive term for building politics from complex experiences within the working class, but became a term of derision in the context of "class-first" Marxists, social democrats, and liberals, as well as anti-essentialist post-modern theorists within academia. </li>
<li> The term "brocialist' was used by socialist feminists in the British SWP as part of a larger internal critique of sexism on the left, and later became an anti-left weapon in the hands of liberal feminist Hillary Clinton supporters. It wasn't new. The idea, often promoted by liberals, that the Marxist left is irredeemably sexist and racist is drawn from anti-racist and feminist critiques of internal dynamics by women and people of color within leftist organizations. Appropriations of such criticism goes way back, and usually ignores the underlying politics of the original critics. Consider for example, the cherry-picking of Richard Wright's work for anti-Communist content.</li>
</ul>
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And yet, the ability to argue, to have rigorous internal discussion, and to acknowledge mistakes is vital to any project that is trying to achieve a goal. There must be room to address the replication of social hierarchies from the larger society within socialist organizations. Ideally those discussions would be an honest and fearless hashing out of a variety of perspectives in order to understand what is happening within the organization. In reality, those discussions often lead to anxiety, defensiveness, and can also be a an opportunity for power games and grandstanding. Liberals and those further right will always seize on internal differences to score points. However, while there is probably no way to avoid having internal debates magnified and distorted from the outside, it does seem to me that there are better and worse ways, to engage in criticisms of left organizations in public. I'm going to start with an example of what not to do, as exemplified by the recent circulation and commentary of some out-takes from the national DSA convention in Atlanta on the weekend of August.<br />
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<b>You're Doing it Wrong</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
For those who haven't been following, here is what happened. The DSA live-streamed their 2019 conference. A few people who were watching found certain moments during the two days of political debates "cringe worthy." The first video clip that was held up for derision was an opening announcement of convention guidelines, edited with an acoustic guitar soundtrack. The rule from that clip most mentioned in left social media has been the use of ASL applause instead of clapping as a disability accommodation for people who might suffer from "sensory overload" and a quick reminder not to wear "aggressive scents" (perfume) in a "quiet room." The lefty side of the internet mockery chorus were much less likely to mention that these opening guidelines also included more common rules on the left: "don't talk to cops"; "don't talk to the press." The video clip that got the most push back was a 49 second clip during the discussion during which a young man asks, nervously, and apologetically: "Guys, please can we keep the chatter to a minimum?.... It's limiting my ability to focus," while adding that he is "one of those people prone to sensory overload." Immediately after this, a more agitated person asks that people not use "gendered language," referring to the previous speaker's use of the word "guys." In the video, some people signal their agreement with these points by raising their arms and waving their fingers, the ASL method of applauding, sometimes called "twinkling" which has been used in political meetings to reduce applause interruptions for more than twenty years. No one at the meeting seems especially bothered by this, and the clip ends, presumably as the group moves on to discuss politics.<br />
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According to much left internet commentary, these clips are evidence of the total bankruptcy of the DSA. Here is an example of some of the things said in the subreddit, r/stupidpol in the name of saving the reputation of the left from scorn: the two people making brief requests at the mic were described as "literal crying man-babies perpetually offended by everything." Responses about what to do to fix the left included such a mix of joking wishes for them to be executed, as in : "we need the DSA-NKVD to rid us of these retards", and more practical speculation about how to exclude "these trash people" for the sake of the left's image: "these people are an absolute joke and it is really embarrassing to share (some) ideology with them." "There has to be a process that weeds out retarded shit like this." Someone who claims to be defending the DSA because the people in the clip are not 'representative" of the organization does make clear that he shares the views of others in the subreddit by explaining, of the person complaining about chattering: "he sounded gay and I hate identity politics, so fuck that dude"<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNNuJIh2Cew5uOZvFI0vLH2rPvZh02ymqqkDSaNbhrNxDIWIExu1WQTNl5WXmleB4QhtmJ1UDpKo2JFak94Z63ME1uSj_xwdgBn8pNbAvroPZMaMiBxLJaqIBDvH3z35Du1FJu/s1600/stupidpol+on+DSA+2.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="763" data-original-width="712" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNNuJIh2Cew5uOZvFI0vLH2rPvZh02ymqqkDSaNbhrNxDIWIExu1WQTNl5WXmleB4QhtmJ1UDpKo2JFak94Z63ME1uSj_xwdgBn8pNbAvroPZMaMiBxLJaqIBDvH3z35Du1FJu/s320/stupidpol+on+DSA+2.PNG" width="298" /></a></div>
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Redditors and others on social media went so far as to mock the <a href="http://diphi.web.unc.edu/files/2012/02/MSG-ROBERTS_RULES_CHEAT_SHEET.pdf">Robert's Rules </a>phrase "point of personal privilege" as if it were a "narcissistic" practice invented by the "woke"privileged college students, or the DSA itself, rather than part of a guide to parliamentary procedure that has been used in a wide variety of contexts in the U.S. since <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert%27s_Rules_of_Order">1876</a>. (Hell, they even joke about Robert's Rules on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xO1zxPRRf4g">the Wire</a>.) The fact that people did "jazz hands" and didn't just immediately tell the two men to shut up was evidence that the DSA was "spineless" in the face of "bullies" and had been "hijacked." This mockery was being done in forums where people supposedly identify as socialists.<br />
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The result of the hyperbolic representation of this "embarrassing-to-the-left" video was that it went viral. In other words, it was a colossal 'self own' if the goal of the Stupidpol people and their ilk was to avoid having something they were embarrassed by be used by the right as a weapon against the left. It's doubtful, however, that this concern for the left's image was really central to these folks, since Stupidpol brought the clip to the attention of 'left conservative" scold, Angela Nagle, who went on to Tucker Carlson's show to join him in mocking the DSA for being narcissistic, privileged weirdos, perhaps more palatable terms for a TV audience than the Stupidpol's favorite terms; "gay," "memtally ill" "autistic", "retards" and "fags"<br />
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<h3 style="text-align: left;">
<b>What can be learned from this episode? Some suggestions for dealing with being annoyed by things that happen at meetings</b></h3>
<b><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="giphy-embed" frameborder="0" height="271" src="https://giphy.com/embed/ki1X172sb8x7uLyfYl" width="480"></iframe><a href="https://giphy.com/gifs/wwe-no-yes-ki1X172sb8x7uLyfYl">via GIPHY</a></b><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>When annoyed by something in a meeting, stop to consider: is the behavior that bothers you hurting someone? If not, why is it bothering you so much?</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
It would have been nice if the people on Stupidpol and similar sites had explored why seeing someone ask for an accommodation bothered them so much. The people mocking the DSA clips are full of emotion and catastrophism. They express contempt, disgust and disdain for people who they describe as weird and weak. You can see this in the use of adolescent terms of derision: "fag," "retard," and "gay," which suggest the people are weak and not masculine enough. The redditors are doing as much as possible to distance themselves from association with behavior that they see as personally embarrassing, when they imagine other people looking at them and judging them by association.<br />
In her interview with Tucker Carlson, Angela Nagle describes the pathology of people asking for accommodations of invisible disabilities as "bourgeois narcissism." However, in psychology literature, it is not expressing vulnerability, but expressions of contempt, disdain, and disgust that are identified with classic narcissism. What is so upsetting to me about these threads is that the mockers call for the DSA to share their mean-spirited views of people in the organization in order to be real socialists. They identify the meeting's decision to err on the side of sympathy and generosity with people who seem weak and "uncool" in other settings as itself 'weak." The representation of left disability activists as unpleasantly vulnerable suffuses Nagle's book <i>Kill All Normies</i>, despite her purported friendship with the late Mark Fisher, who himself advocated writing more, rather than less about why <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/jul/16/mental-health-political-issue">mental illness</a> (an invisible disability) is a political issue.. If you find yourself wishing for a "tougher" socialist organization that would put such people in their rightful places, maybe you're reacting because challenging existing norms, regardless of their political consequences, makes you uncomfortable.<br />
If you argue, "no it isn't hurting me, it's hurting the cause of "THE LEFT" note that this claim is used disingenuously all the time. People say that a lot of things hurt the left, including whatever your agenda is. Dig deeper and explain why, in political terms that don't include juvenile insults.<br />
<br />
<b>When something is hurting someone, maybe even you, what the most effective way to deal with it?</b> <b> </b><br />
<b><br /></b>
Of course it could be that you are feeling annoyed because someone's behavior is hurting someone, maybe that person is you. If that's the case, try to address it in a constructive way, directly with the person who's doing it, at a time and place that will deescalate the situation, with compassion that recognizes their point of view. Also, ask yourself if this needs to be addressed RIGHT NOW (to the extent of interrupting the discussion at hand) or can it wait till later? People are often annoying. You are also annoying, to someone. Decide how important the annoying thing is before going ballistic.That doesn't mean it never has to be addressed "right now" or that your "right now' will be the same as everyone else's. If you happen to be on the other end of that from someone else - like someone else decided that your use of the word "guys" was inappropriate, are you so bothered that you need to make it a big deal, or can you accept the criticism and move on? It may be that some criticisms are themselves harmful. There's just no good rule except to give people the benefit of the doubt and try to act with consistent political principles in mind.<br />
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<b>What purpose does this serve for the group? </b><br />
If you are making criticisms of a group or a person in it, ask yourself what larger purpose it serves the organization. Will what you are asking improve the organization? Have you lost sight of a larger goal because you want to be right? Are you trying to punish people for harms done to you in the past? All these things happen in groups for a variety of reasons, and no one ideology is exempt.<br />
<br />
<b>Consider the consequences of public statements </b><br />
I wrote most of this with public meetings in mind, but it's also something to think about when writing about internal conflicts in groups. Consider the consequences and implications of what you're saying, and writing and how these will be read by unfriendly audiences as well as by friendly ones. Since it's likely that you'll leave something out or say something that from someone else's perspective could contribute to something bad, be willing to seriously consider criticism when you get it<br />
<br />
<b>OBVIOUSLY, IN CLOSING: </b><br />
Don't take your BS to <i>Fox News</i>, or to <i>CNN</i>, or <i>the Atlantic</i>, or any other media source that doesn't give a shit about building the left. If it gets to those places, only go there to dispute right wing or liberal misrepresentations of the conflict.<br />
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<br /></div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>rebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03384242746548343890noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8077580.post-81109270985159687262016-02-12T16:58:00.000-05:002016-02-12T17:08:43.818-05:00The Revolution Will Not Be _____Splained<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">This primary season has inspired many accusations of various forms
of _____-splaining. We've had call-outs of “Bernie-Bros” for the original tactic of
"mansplaining”; responses to those call-outs as white feminist “Old-Splaining”
or “Boomer-splaining” and most recently, a reference to white "Bernie-Splaining"
to Black voters.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">I won't get into the origin-story of the term, which you can read <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175584/rebecca_solnit_the_archipelago_of_ignorance">here</a>.
What interests me is that on all sides, it seems that political arguments go
wrong when they are perceived to be
patronizing attempts to tell other people what their real interests are.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">That is, if I'm being Boomer-splained, as a woman, I am supposed
to know that my REAL interest, my most important interest is to preserve<span class="apple-converted-space"><i> </i></span><i>Roe v. Wade</i>, in internet
parlance "because, the Supreme Court" and that the only way to do
that is to vote for a viable Democrat. Thus, the only reason to explain why I
would not vote for Hillary Clinton would be that having grown up after<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Roe</i>, I must take this right for
granted. For these particular
splainers, I am both ignorant and a traitor to womankind if I don't reach the
same conclusions they do about my interests in this political campaign season.
My political behavior can only be explained by "not knowing my real
interests". My interpretation of my experience is wrong; theirs is
right. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Another popular argument that "Boomer" voters make to
younger leftists (regardless of what election season it is) is that they are
too young to have learned the vital lesson from the election of 1972, that ANY
left candidate, would, like George McGovern inevitably lose in the general election. Thus,
any vote for a leftist candidate in the Democratic primaries is a vote for the
Republican party. This lesson has fueled a great deal of the strategy of the
contemporary Democratic leadership as well as its rank and file since 1976.
That there might be another <a href="http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/34807-why-bernie-sanders-is-not-george-mcgovern">interpretation</a> of the 1972 election is not
considered. To suggest that electing a conservative <a href="http://www.salon.com/2011/02/08/lind_reaganism_carter/">Democrat</a> might be as bad as
electing an actual Republican provokes exasperated exclamation. That the person who fails to learn this “McGovern
lesson” is not ignorant, but has a different interpretation of recent history
along with a different experience of the last several democratic administrations
is not considered. Only one interpretation of the past can be right. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">A final patronizing "splaining" politics that I have
encountered in my voting life, which began when I voted for Jesse Jackson in
the 1988 primaries, is the argument to people who don't vote at all that they are
failing to recognize<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>their<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></i>real interests and are letting the
country go to the dogs because of their stupidity and apathy. These
non-voters are the most 'Splained" of all during election seasons. “Just
get out and vote,” the mantra goes. Therefore, I find it somewhat ironic
to hear the supporters of the Democratic Party's center-right wing accusing
those on the left, who have been "splained" and "splained"
to for their entire voting and non-voting lives, of being the new
Splainers-in-Chief. No one is up in arms about "splaining" to non-voters about how much <a href="http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/13279-noam-chomsky-post-election-we-need-more-organization-education-activism">difference</a> a vote makes. There
is plenty of evidence that it barely matters who you vote for, and that you can
make change more effectively by joining social movements regardless of the year
or season, than you can by throwing your energy into a political campaign. However,
to argue for the rationality of non-voters instead of denouncing them is to
evoke hyperventilation among believers in the electoral process. I am not spitting on voters who see it in their interest to do so. However...let the splainin begin.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">My focus on boomers and democrats above, is not meant to imply that the
Left has not often done a great deal of patronizing "splaining” of their
own. The most odious form of splaining I’ve
encountered comes from those who deny the significance of race relative to
class or deride what they call "cultural politics." These splainers share a goal with me, but they have a different analysis of why it's failing to materialize. Based on what they write, and where they focus their energy, they seem to believe that the biggest obstacle to the creation of a strong multi-racial left is a
competing left for whom race, gender and/or sexuality are as important, or more
important, or even just inextricably intertwined with, the United States class structure. “If only
these people would stop believing that race/gender/sexuality matter so much and
realize that class was a more significant determiner of their experience,”
these class-first analysts argue, “we could all join together and change the
world.” Most of these splainers don't go quite so far as to blame
working-class women, Blacks or queer people for what they see as bad analyses.
Instead they describe the bad Black, women and /or queer leaders as bourgeois hucksters who
are successfully bamboozling working-class members of these "cultural" groups to foreground these other aspects of their identity, ally against their own class interests and hitch themselves to the parties and agendas of wealthy
Black people, women, queers, etc. Now
there are of course real examples of such politics of bourgeois nationalism,
feminism, etc. but not everything that places race, gender, or sexuality first is a bourgeois trap. Moreover, even in cases where there is BS going on, just telling people "here's what's really happening to you" is not a good way to engage in movement building.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">To insist, and insist, and insist again that people's felt experience of race, gender, or sexual inequality is wrong only
replicates the dismissal of their reality that they already experience from people who they see as their direct oppressors. This version of splaining is, in my
view, a bigger obstacle to the growth of a multi-racial left coalition than any
Beyoncé video. The biggest obstacle to building a multi-racial socialist
movement in the US is what appears to be the continuing insistence of some socialist activists on adhering to a color-blind class politics that aggressively
denies the lived experience of people of color. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">My point is not that people's interpretations of their own
experience cannot be questioned or that we cannot engage in conversations with
people in which we try to get them to reconsider how they interpret their own experiences. I have engaged in many such conversations with white working-class conservatives; I have learned a lot when doing so. How things “really are” is often much
more complicated than it appears in our day-to-day lives. But how we make political decisions is not
usually based on sifting through the very complex nature of that reality
either. The fact is that people get excited about a political message if it
resonates with the way they interpret their own experiences in some way. We
cross into the territory of patronizing "splaining" when instead of
listening seriously to what someone else is saying about how they reached a particular political conclusion, we treat their analyses as inexplicable,
pathological, malicious, the product of bamboozlement or stupidity. I mean this
even for Trump supporters. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"> I know from the thrill I got when hearing Bernie Sanders say
"political revolution against the billionaire class" and from seeing
that Together <a href="http://matadornetwork.com/tv/bernie-sanders-campaign-just-released-video-will-give-goosebumps/">video</a> that my own political attachments are not just
rational and fact based. Why should I expect anyone else's to be? Our own
experiences inform what resonates with us. When we disagree with someone and get offended, it's worth asking ourselves: Could it be that we are
missing something because we have blind spots based on inevitably limited
experience? Could this person know facts that I do not know or have forgotten? I was recently swept up
in the "free tuition" plank of Bernie Sanders' program as a purely
populist one based on my history at CUNY until a friend reminded me that given
the whitening of many state universities (which is not just about tuition),
that this particular plan of redistribution could continue to advantage
middle-class white people.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">We know this: people are emotionally invested in particular
interpretations of what has happened to them during their lives for complex
reasons that cannot be "splained" away. If we are interested in
building a strong multi-racial feminist socialist movement, we will never get
there by splaining. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Finally, “ splaining” and argument aren’t the same thing. Not everyone who offers an
alternative analysis or a new set of facts about something that happened, even
if it is something that happened <i>to us </i>and not to them, is guilty of ----splaining. If we roll our eyes
and call "SPLAINING!" every time we encounter someone who disagrees with us, if we
can’t get past a defensive reaction to even an angry articulation of someone
else’s point of view, we will never be engaged in real politics at all. <a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="_GoBack"></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>rebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03384242746548343890noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8077580.post-18252303180983844952016-02-01T17:47:00.001-05:002016-02-01T18:16:00.851-05:00The Left Wing of the Possible, Hope vs. Fear, and what Happens in Jan 2017<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<br />
Today is the day of the Iowa primaries of 2016, and everyone is watching to see what will happen. To me, this is one of the most significant primary elections of my lifetime because I see the Sanders' candidacy as doing something that no other Democrat has successfully done. He appears to have built a pretty broad-based electoral <a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/01/bernie-sanders-democratic-president-primary-new-hampshire-iowa-caucus/">coalition</a> by suggesting real economic reforms, thus repudiating the Reagan Revolution that many of us lived through and which we are still living with. The New Democrats strategy was to "steal the issues" of the Reaganite Republicans, aka Neoliberals. They reduced taxes, they cut welfare, they talked about personal responsibility and threw more people in jail.<br />
Sanders is running against this version of the Democratic party has been against the odds, polling close to an opponent who once appeared unbeatable, and on an issues that people have described as "impossible": Single-Payer healthcare, free College tuition, A total ban on fracking, and of course, a serious attempt to regulate Wall St.. Hell, it's a small point, but I thought of him when I paid a $3 <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/05/investing/bernie-sanders-wall-street-atm-fees/">ATM fee</a> today. To top it off, Sanders has built his numbers while relying primarily on individual contributions and bucking "Super-pacs." He is not running as a symbol, he is running to win. As many have said, he is polling well against <a href="http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_sanders-5565.html">Republicans</a>, and it doesn't seem impossible anymore. He is doing it.<br />
<br />
My post the other day, which was not as forthright as the above in my support for Sanders' candidacy led some of my readers to conclude that I am primarily seeing Sanders from the perspective of a glass half empty. I posted this update there to clarify.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; line-height: 18.48px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; line-height: 18.48px;">Because of a few people who have communicated questions to me about this in other venues I want to be clear. The point of this post is not to attack Sanders, whose candidacy I see as important and valuable because he is bringing meaningful proposals for economic justice into mainstream electoral politics for the first time in my lifetime. That said, I think it is wrong to characterize the current primary contest as a referendum on class vs. 'identity politics" as the way forward politically, as some Sanders supporters have done.</span></blockquote>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; line-height: 18.48px;"> So, I admit it, I am "Feelin' the Bern." I was invigorated by hearing Sanders use the word "socialism" and attack big money in the first debate, and I have been increasingly optimistic as I have seen momentum grow behind Sanders' advocacy for Single-Payer <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pyT44Vmb0Io">insurance</a> which I've <a href="http://redredbecca.blogspot.com/2009/08/what-to-do-what-to-do.html">supported</a> since I first heard a speech about it in the mid-1990s. That Sanders has made this alternative to our absurd healthcare bureaucracy into a viable policy is a huge deal. He's beating Republicans in national polls even though he explicitly says he will raise taxes. He is making what seemed like political "third rail" positions into stuff people talk about on the corner. In this moment, his campaign to me represents what some call <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/books/00/05/28/reviews/000528.28navaskt.html">the left wing of the possible</a>. It is a shame that the main argument against him is that he is "unelectable." In an excellent <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anthony-conwright/what-the-bernie-sanders-u_b_9132890.html">piece</a> over at Huffington Post, Anthony Conwright says: </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; line-height: 18.48px;">When people say Bernie Sanders' ideas are not politically viable, what they are really saying is:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; line-height: 18.48px;">Satisfying the needs of the people his policies would support is not politically viable, therefore, we should not vote for him. Not only does this language illegitimize the needs of those people, but the language implies there is something unviable <em style="box-sizing: inherit;">about those people</em>--at least politically. Sanders' proposals of providing health care to all Americans, making public colleges tuition free, and decriminalizing marijuana are all initiatives that would positively impact black Americans, and help close the equality gap in America. In 2013, <a data-beacon="{"p":{"mnid":"entry_text","lnid":"citation","mpid":1}}" href="http://apps.urban.org/features/wealth-inequality-charts/)" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #2e7061;" target="_hplink">42 percent of African Americans ages 25 to 55 had student loan debt, compared to 28 percent of white Americans</a>. In Iowa, an African American was<a data-beacon="{"p":{"mnid":"entry_text","lnid":"citation","mpid":2}}" href="https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/1114413-mj-report-rfs-rel1.pdf#11" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #2e7061;" target="_hplink"> 8.34 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana position than white Americans, according to a 2013 study by the ACLU </a>.According to the 2014 National Healthcare Quality & Disparities Report, <a data-beacon="{"p":{"mnid":"entry_text","lnid":"citation","mpid":3}}" href="http://www.ahrq.gov/research/findings/nhqrdr/nhqdr14/key1.html" style="box-sizing: inherit; color: #2e7061;" target="_hplink">African Americans and Hispanic Americans still have higher uninsured rates than white Americans.</a> If addressing the needs of black Americans and minorities in this country is too radical, whose needs are politically viable?</span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13.2px; line-height: 18.48px;">When it comes to electoral strategy, I agree with Tom Frank. It's not a good idea to just write-off the white working class voters for a number of reasons. Nonetheless, i</span></span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13.2px; line-height: 18.48px;">t is a bad idea politically and also strategically to wrap the Sanders campaign into a battle within the left that is based on attacking and <a href="http://johnhalle.com/outragesandinterludes/?p=741">dismissing</a> the politics of racial justice or gender equality as violations of working-class thinking. It is not only necessary to make the argument the way Conwright does above to be specific about how economic policies benefit specific disadvantged groups, but more importantly, for parties and movements to include people who aren't white men - (even if they are working-class) in the process of defining what the unifying issues are. This kind of strategy will keep us away from the bad class politics of the New Deal era, which brought us such limited reforms that we can still see the long term fall out from in the recent mortgage collapse, which </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; line-height: 18.48px;">disproportionately hurt </span><a href="http://prospect.org/article/staggering-loss-black-wealth-due-subprime-scandal-continues-unabated" style="font-family: arial, tahoma, helvetica, freesans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; line-height: 18.48px;">Black </a>homeowners who were the <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; line-height: 18.48px;">hardest hit by the 2008 crash.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; line-height: 18.48px;"> </span><br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13.2px; line-height: 18.48px;"> At the same time, just as it is worth talking about the imbrication of race, gender and class, especially in the process of crafting broadly unifying demands, it seems unrealistic to argue for an issue that does not have the possibility of gaining a wide swathe of the electorate as part of a national election campaign. Coates seemed to do with his call to Sanders campaign to put reparations for slavery on their platform. This only holds up because Coates describes Sanders as running a symbolic rather than a serious campaign, but as we can see above, this is not the case. it's also worth pointing out that while </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; line-height: 18.48px;">Coates himself has since changed his own mind on reparations, he once said it was "racist" to demand that Obama support reparations when he was campaigning in </span><a href="http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1584736,00.html" style="font-family: arial, tahoma, helvetica, freesans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; line-height: 18.48px;">2007</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; line-height: 18.48px;">, If it was a struggle for <i>Coates </i>to get behind reparations,it seems like no matter how <a href="http://www.phillytrib.com/metros/u-n-panel-suggests-slavery-reparations-in-u-s/article_3f4a7074-e9d0-52db-8509-2a456bd993d5.html">right</a> this policy is, it is a hard issue to include in the kind of electoral campaigns that exist in the United States in the current moment.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; line-height: 18.48px;"><b>The question is not, "If not now, when?" the question is "if not here, where?" </b></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; line-height: 18.48px;"><b> </b></span><br />
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13.2px; line-height: 18.48px;"><br /></span></span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 13.2px; line-height: 18.48px;">We need hope and idealism and big goals, but only inclusive discussions about how to define and push broadly unifying demands can build real power. </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; line-height: 18.48px;">Single-Payer is not a white man's" issue - it is legitimately a policy that will help the 99%. The same is true for other issues that Sanders' supports, and this is why he is gaining support from so many people. I think that real criminal justice policy reform is also a broadly unifying issue, since a racist policy that disproportionately hurts minorities ALSO has begun to capture more and more white people into its net, which may be why we are seeing increasing opposition to mass incarceration from white people. The trick is to make sure that any policy reforms that do happen don't disproportionately soften up the pressure on white people, leaving people of color behind. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , "tahoma" , "helvetica" , "freesans" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px; line-height: 18.48px; text-align: left;">In the longer term, the place for pushing the "divisive" demands is simply not the national presidential campaign. The place where those battles happen and are still happening is not waiting, and let's hope it does not go away tomorrow or next year. it's in social movements where people can get together to push whoever is elected to do what they think needs to be done. We hear of the disaster that hope created in 1972, but Nixon is now lauded for legislation, such as the Clean Air Act, that was passed during his second term,without any seeming comprehension that the reason these reforms passed was that there was a waning, but still robust social movement alive in America at that time.McGovern lost, but movements won. And where do people think the Sanders surge came from?</span></div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>rebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03384242746548343890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8077580.post-80424863370655287172016-01-30T12:54:00.002-05:002016-02-02T17:31:14.583-05:00What's the Matter With Kansas, Neoliberal Multiculturalism and what's left of an American Left<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
In the past few days, I've become increasingly interested in what seems to be an internal discussion among Democratic Party supporters, and those further to the left who are <a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/01/bernie-sanders-demographics-base-liberals-moderates-iowa-new-hampshire/">energized</a> by the seeming <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/01/29/inevitability-lost-the-clintonites-strike-back/">viability</a> of the Bernie Sanders campaign and may wind up voting for Democrats for the first time in several years.<br />
Late Update: Because of a few people who have communicated questions to me about this in other venues I want to be clear. The point of this post is not to attack Sanders, whose candidacy I see as important and valuable because he is bringing meaningful proposals for economic justice into mainstream electoral politics for the first time in recent memory. That said, I think it is wrong to characterize the current primary contest as a referendum on class vs. 'identity politics" as the way forward politically, as some Sanders supporters have done.<br />
I will say more about this in a subsequent post on the meaning of what it means to build an electoral coalition on broadly unifying demands as opposed to what the priorities within the left are when we talk about movement building and organizing outside the electoral process, which I believe must remain central regardless of who is elected.<br />
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Here's what I'm seeing.<br />
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Sanders has been running his campaign with the strategy that Tom Frank advocated in his book <a href="http://www.tcfrank.com/books/whats-the-matter-with-kansas/">What's the Matter with Kansas</a>. In it, Frank argues that the far right has captured white working class men, winning elections by playing culture war issues (guns, gays and abortion) and targeting class antagonism at "entitled" racial minorities. There are problems with Frank's book, and Frank's politics, in that they play to that "class first" argument that downgrades racism, sexism and homophobia into "cultural" issues that have divided an otherwise <a href="http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/1418_reg.html">grand</a> <a href="http://www.davidroediger.org/books/working-toward-whiteness.html">coalition</a> The argument's flaw is that it is not race or gender neutral It sets up a class coalition dominated by the interests of white working class men and then invites everyone else in the working class to get behind their banner as if all people in the working class had identical interests. I've noticed that some white socialist organizations who make these class-first arguments tend to be slightly better on gender and sexuality in this regard than they are on race, which most likely has to do with the fact that these socialist organizations include white women who have forced them to consider the seriousness of their positions, but very, very few Black people who have been able to do the same.<br />
To me, this not an economic prioritizing, but a way of thinking about class issues that is based on white working-class male experience. It misses the fact that white working class people have received privileges and "psychological wages" that W.E.B Du Bois <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=7IjA4g0kyNQC&printsec=frontcover&dq=du+bois+white+black+reconstruction&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj5672x7tHKAhXKbj4KHQWtAUkQ6AEIJTAA#v=onepage&q=du%20bois%20white%20black%20reconstruction&f=false">explained</a> many years ago and which many subsequent historians have drawn upon and explained some <a href="http://www.versobooks.com/books/453-how-race-survived-us-history">more</a>.<br />
In terms of agenda-setting, this way of understanding economic populism ignores the fact that for Black working class people, police violence and incarceration may be more immediately pressing working-class issues even than access to decent health care. The same was true for anti-lynching politics which were wrongly interpreted as "merely symbolic" by white leftists and labor activists until they themselves started getting mobbed by vigilantes during WWI. The point is, you can't protest if you can be killed on the street without a trial. It's a basic issue of democracy. While we would like to have better access to health care, the criminal justice system has targeted enough Black people that incarceration could be considered a genuine state of emergency for working class Blacks. That is, even if you are broke, sick, and can't afford health care, you might be more worried about prison than healthcare if you know someone in <a href="http://www.washington.edu/news/2015/06/11/nearly-half-of-african-american-women-know-someone-in-prison/">prison</a>, especially if that person is a member of your family.<br />
Ta-Nehisi <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/01/bernie-sanders-reparations/424602/">Coates</a> was naming this white economic populist blindspot as it is manifested in the Sanders campaign in his article on Sanders and reparations that has gotten so much attention over the last week.<br />
In a similar vein, feminism has often been described on the left as a "bourgeois" movement, merely interested in getting women to the same place in the ruling-class as "their husbands" as if working-class women did not exist, or more importantly, as if women's interests were identical with men's, thus white women have the same rights as white men, black women have the same interests as black men, etc. This would ignore all interests that are particular to women as women, regardless of class and race: such as rights to have or not have children, status in relation to men in the workplace, rights in relation to husbands within marriage, and vulnerability to sexual violence. Gender is not symbolic if you're in a state where "marital rape" is a legal impossibility or where you cannot get an abortion no matter what your class status is. Of course, poor and working class people are much more vulnerable to racism and sexism than rich people in the same race and class. When Henry Louis Gates is arrested at his own front door, he gets a meeting with the president. When a white woman is raped in Central Park it's a national issue. On slightly less exemplary level, rich women who get beaten by their husbands might have alternatives beyond domestic violence shelters,.but even rich women can be financially dependent on their husbands because of the way that many domestic abusers control their wives' access to property.<br />
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Sanders appears to be trying to win the election by creating a working class coalition based on those economic issues that unify working class voters as working class people regardless of race and class (health care, minimum wage, education access, environmental safety) , rather than playing to explicitly racist and sexist "culture war" voters (as the Republicans are doing) or by attacking those aspects of working class experience that are unique to Black people (Reparations). He's obviously doing this in order to keep racist white voters with similar class interests in the fold, His strategy on gun-control, which is an anti-racist issue as far as I'm concerned, as well as an economic one, is a case in point of seeing these voters as a crucial constituency:<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: "georgia" , serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 25.1429px;">Coming from a rural state, which has almost no gun control, I think I can get beyond the noise and all of these arguments and people shouting at each other and come up with real constructive gun control legislation, which most significantly gets guns out of the hands of people who should not have them."</span></blockquote>
The New Democrats, as led by the Clintons and now Obama, have dealt with the problem of the white working class voter in a different way, by mixing hard right positions against working class people of color with appeals to the liberal side of the culture wars. re-branding itself as the party that can be counted to cater to suburbanite and gentrifying urbanite wishes on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b44oTMRK4MI">crime</a>, <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/11/liberals-are-losing-the-culture-war/414175/">gun</a>s, <a href="http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-obama-deportations-20160108-story.html">immigrant</a>s, <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/antiterrorism_and_effective_death_penalty_act_of_1996_aedpa">terror</a>, <a href="http://billmoyers.com/2014/05/12/how-bill-clintons-welfare-reform-created-a-system-rife-with-racial-biases/">welfare</a>.while simultaneously supporting limited affirmative action, <a href="http://www.bustle.com/articles/75548-whats-hillary-clintons-position-on-abortion-the-presidential-candidate-may-be-pro-choice-but-her-message-could">abortion</a> with qualifications, and increasing support for Gay rights as public opinion has shifted. Republicans have ever since been crying about Clinton's triangulation as "stealing our issues," a policy that has continued in the Obama presidency and with most congressional democrats.<br />
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What these democrats represent is not the limit of anti-racism or left cultural politics of any stripe. They are not calling for a working-class agenda that DOES understand gender and race. They are arguing for an integrated capitalist class that does away with glass ceilings for professional women and includes non-white representation in corporate, state and military leadership, but that retains all the class inequality of the current system. This defines the limits of what some cultural studies scholars describe as "neoliberal multiculturalism." As a recent summary of Jodi Melamed's excellent <a href="http://www.darkmatter101.org/site/2012/09/04/represent-and-destroy-rationalizing-violence-in-the-new-racial-capitalism/">book </a>on the subject explains:<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "lucida grande" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.44px; line-height: 20.832px;">By severing race from material conditions, official antiracisms make it possible to </span><em style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', 'Lucida Grande', Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13.44px; line-height: 20.832px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">seem</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #545454; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , "lucida grande" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.44px; line-height: 20.832px;"> antiracist while furthering neoliberal capitalism, which is reliant on racialized bodies that fall outside of neoliberalism’s ideal subject. This dematerialization of anti-racist discourse enables the negation of social movement efforts (particularly those of formations like women of color feminism) and legitimizes grossly asymmetrical material conditions, all while appearing antiracist.</span></blockquote>
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That is, while appearing officially anti-racist on certain noticeable issues that are dividing points between parties, but also supporting bipartisan policies such as "welfare reform" anti-sex trafficking legislation (which disproportionately affects immigrants) and wars, the modern day Democratic party has kept minority voters and women of all races in the fold based on advocacy of an integrated ruling class and the fear of a victory by explicitly racist and sexist whack jobs who run on the other side.<br />
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Or, as Tom Frank put it in a 2014 article:<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "open sans" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;"> These days, the big thinkers of the Democratic Party have concluded that they can safely ignore the things I described. They’ve got a new bunch of voters these days — the famous </span><a href="http://www.nationaljournal.com/columns/political-connections/a-new-budget-for-a-new-party-20130411" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: red; font-family: 'Open Sans', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“coalition of the ascendant,”</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "open sans" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;"> made up of professionals, minorities and “millennials” — and it pleases them to imagine that with this unstoppable army at their back they will win elections from here to eternity. There is no need to resolve the dilemmas I outlined in “Kansas,” no need to win back working-class voters or solve wrenching economic problems. In fact, there is no need to lift a finger to do much of anything, since vast, impersonal demographic forces are what rescued them from the trap I identified. They now have the luxury of saying, as</span><a href="http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/07/the-real-real-america/" style="background: rgb(255, 255, 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: red; font-family: 'Open Sans', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Paul Krugman did</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "open sans" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px;"> on the day after the 2012 election, “Who cares what’s the matter with Kansas?”</span></blockquote>
Sanders' campaign is trying to switch the neoliberal multicultural discourse of the Democrats out for an an attack on Wall St. and Student loan debt in the wake of Occupy, perhaps with the belief, that as with gun control, big, unifying economic reforms that help the entire working class will create space to negotiate for more controversial arguments where interests are different within the working class. One could argue that this was the case with the New Deal, which was remedied by extensions of state support as won by the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. Black Lives Matter has fairly successfully pushed both Clinton and Sanders to more significant criminal justice reform positions - although both campaigns appear to me to fall within neoliberal limits.<br />
And this is telling. Sanders may be rallying for unifying economic reforms, but he's not actually a revolutionary in the broader sense. Not everyone on the left sees a ray of <a href="http://www.blackagendareport.com/white_democrats_in_liberal_college_town">hope</a> in Sanders' campaign but instead, view his current surge in popularity as the bamboozlement of starry-eyed white liberals who see him as more different from the Democratic establishment candidates than he really is. The key to his similarity to Clinton is his continued support for U.S. militarism and empire building, which Melamed's book, mentioned above, identifies as the anchor of neoliberal multicultural policy-making. As Noam Chonsky once said in response to a question about what he'd do if elected to the U.S. presidency, "have myself arrested as a war criminal." </div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>rebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03384242746548343890noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8077580.post-68775705813969589572015-01-10T16:48:00.002-05:002015-01-10T16:48:24.444-05:00New Year's Academic Reading Challenge 2015<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><b>The first challenge I organized went well. Some day I'll write a blog post about it, but most of the people who participated did all their reporting on Facebook. Now I've learned this reading challenge idea is a "thing." I found another one at <a href="http://bookriot.com/2014/12/15/book-riot-2015-read-harder-challenge/">Book Riot</a> That I like. However, if I keep doing so many reading challenges to keep myself limber and not over-specialized, I may wind up not actually doing all that reading for work that I have to do. With that, here's my......</b></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Winter-Spring Reading
Challenge 2015 <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<table border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoTableGrid" style="border-collapse: collapse; border: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-padding-alt: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-yfti-tbllook: 1184;">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 138.45pt;" valign="top" width="185">
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Challenge Categories</div>
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<td style="border-left: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 168.45pt;" valign="top" width="225">
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Author, Title, date published; pp. #</div>
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<td style="border-left: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 64.25pt;" valign="top" width="86">
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Date read</div>
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<td style="border-left: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 107.65pt;" valign="top" width="144">
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Points</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<!--[if supportFields]><span style='mso-element:field-begin'></span><span
style='mso-bookmark:Check1'><span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>FORMCHECKBOX <span style='mso-element:field-separator'></span></span><![endif]--><!--[if !supportNestedAnchors]--><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="Check1"></a><!--[endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:data>FFFFFFFF650000001400060043006800650063006B003100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000</w:data>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if supportFields]><span style='mso-bookmark:
Check1'></span><span style='mso-element:field-end'></span><![endif]--> any book for teaching/research 200 pp.</div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 168.45pt;" valign="top" width="225">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 64.25pt;" valign="top" width="86">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 107.65pt;" valign="top" width="144">
<div class="MsoNormal">
5</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 138.45pt;" valign="top" width="185">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<!--[if supportFields]><span style='mso-element:field-begin'></span><span
style='mso-bookmark:Check2'><span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>FORMCHECKBOX <span style='mso-element:field-separator'></span></span><![endif]--><!--[if !supportNestedAnchors]--><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="Check2"></a><!--[endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:data>FFFFFFFF650000001400060043006800650063006B003200000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000</w:data>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if supportFields]><span style='mso-bookmark:
Check2'></span><span style='mso-element:field-end'></span><![endif]-->book written by someone you saw give a
lecture or present at a conference</div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 168.45pt;" valign="top" width="225">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 64.25pt;" valign="top" width="86">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 107.65pt;" valign="top" width="144">
<div class="MsoNormal">
10</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 138.45pt;" valign="top" width="185">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<!--[if supportFields]><span style='mso-element:field-begin'></span><span
style='mso-bookmark:Check3'><span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>FORMCHECKBOX <span style='mso-element:field-separator'></span></span><![endif]--><!--[if !supportNestedAnchors]--><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="Check3"></a><!--[endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:data>FFFFFFFF650000001400060043006800650063006B003300000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000</w:data>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if supportFields]><span style='mso-bookmark:
Check3'></span><span style='mso-element:field-end'></span><![endif]--> book
by a current colleague, coworker, or friend</div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 168.45pt;" valign="top" width="225">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 64.25pt;" valign="top" width="86">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 107.65pt;" valign="top" width="144">
<div class="MsoNormal">
10</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 138.45pt;" valign="top" width="185">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<!--[if supportFields]><span style='mso-element:field-begin'></span><span
style='mso-bookmark:Check4'><span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>FORMCHECKBOX <span style='mso-element:field-separator'></span></span><![endif]--><!--[if !supportNestedAnchors]--><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="Check4"></a><!--[endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:data>FFFFFFFF650000001400060043006800650063006B003400000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000</w:data>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if supportFields]><span style='mso-bookmark:
Check4'></span><span style='mso-element:field-end'></span><![endif]--> Academic
book someone else recommended to you</div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 168.45pt;" valign="top" width="225">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 64.25pt;" valign="top" width="86">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 107.65pt;" valign="top" width="144">
<div class="MsoNormal">
10</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 138.45pt;" valign="top" width="185">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<!--[if supportFields]><span style='mso-element:field-begin'></span><span
style='mso-bookmark:Check5'><span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>FORMCHECKBOX <span style='mso-element:field-separator'></span></span><![endif]--><!--[if !supportNestedAnchors]--><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="Check5"></a><!--[endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:data>FFFFFFFF650000001400060043006800650063006B003500000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000</w:data>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if supportFields]><span style='mso-bookmark:
Check5'></span><span style='mso-element:field-end'></span><![endif]--> Book
from a “Best of 2014” list</div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 168.45pt;" valign="top" width="225">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 64.25pt;" valign="top" width="86">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 107.65pt;" valign="top" width="144">
<div class="MsoNormal">
15</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 138.45pt;" valign="top" width="185">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<!--[if supportFields]><span style='mso-element:field-begin'></span><span
style='mso-bookmark:Check6'><span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>FORMCHECKBOX <span style='mso-element:field-separator'></span></span><![endif]--><!--[if !supportNestedAnchors]--><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="Check6"></a><!--[endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:data>FFFFFFFF650000001400060043006800650063006B003600000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000</w:data>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if supportFields]><span style='mso-bookmark:
Check6'></span><span style='mso-element:field-end'></span><![endif]--> book about the history or culture of a city,
town or neighborhood in the United States</div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 168.45pt;" valign="top" width="225">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 64.25pt;" valign="top" width="86">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 107.65pt;" valign="top" width="144">
<div class="MsoNormal">
15</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 138.45pt;" valign="top" width="185">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<!--[if supportFields]><span style='mso-element:field-begin'></span><span
style='mso-bookmark:Check7'><span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>FORMCHECKBOX <span style='mso-element:field-separator'></span></span><![endif]--><!--[if !supportNestedAnchors]--><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="Check7"></a><!--[endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:data>FFFFFFFF650000001400060043006800650063006B003700000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000</w:data>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if supportFields]><span style='mso-bookmark:
Check7'></span><span style='mso-element:field-end'></span><![endif]--> academic
book that’s considered a classic in your field (that you’ve never read)
OR Book that you always see cited but
haven’t read.</div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 168.45pt;" valign="top" width="225">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 64.25pt;" valign="top" width="86">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 107.65pt;" valign="top" width="144">
<div class="MsoNormal">
15</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 138.45pt;" valign="top" width="185">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<!--[if supportFields]><span style='mso-element:field-begin'></span><span
style='mso-bookmark:Check8'><span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>FORMCHECKBOX <span style='mso-element:field-separator'></span></span><![endif]--><!--[if !supportNestedAnchors]--><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="Check8"></a><!--[endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:data>FFFFFFFF650000001400060043006800650063006B003800000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000</w:data>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if supportFields]><span style='mso-bookmark:
Check8'></span><span style='mso-element:field-end'></span><![endif]--> Book
with a color in the title </div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 168.45pt;" valign="top" width="225">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 64.25pt;" valign="top" width="86">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 107.65pt;" valign="top" width="144">
<div class="MsoNormal">
20</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 138.45pt;" valign="top" width="185">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<!--[if supportFields]><span style='mso-element:field-begin'></span><span
style='mso-bookmark:Check16'><span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>FORMCHECKBOX <span style='mso-element:field-separator'></span></span><![endif]--><!--[if !supportNestedAnchors]--><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="Check16"></a><!--[endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:data>FFFFFFFF650000001400070043006800650063006B0031003600000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000</w:data>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if supportFields]><span style='mso-bookmark:
Check16'></span><span style='mso-element:field-end'></span><![endif]-->Journalistic or popular book about any
place outside the United States</div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 168.45pt;" valign="top" width="225">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 64.25pt;" valign="top" width="86">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 107.65pt;" valign="top" width="144">
<div class="MsoNormal">
20</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 138.45pt;" valign="top" width="185">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<!--[if supportFields]><span style='mso-element:field-begin'></span><span
style='mso-bookmark:Check9'><span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>FORMCHECKBOX <span style='mso-element:field-separator'></span></span><![endif]--><!--[if !supportNestedAnchors]--><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="Check9"></a><!--[endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:data>FFFFFFFF650000001400060043006800650063006B003900000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000</w:data>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if supportFields]><span style='mso-bookmark:
Check9'></span><span style='mso-element:field-end'></span><![endif]--> Special Issue of any academic journal</div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 168.45pt;" valign="top" width="225">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 64.25pt;" valign="top" width="86">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 107.65pt;" valign="top" width="144">
<div class="MsoNormal">
25</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 138.45pt;" valign="top" width="185">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<!--[if supportFields]><span style='mso-element:field-begin'></span><span
style='mso-bookmark:Check10'><span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>FORMCHECKBOX <span style='mso-element:field-separator'></span></span><![endif]--><!--[if !supportNestedAnchors]--><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="Check10"></a><!--[endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:data>FFFFFFFF650000001400070043006800650063006B0031003000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000</w:data>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if supportFields]><span style='mso-bookmark:
Check10'></span><span style='mso-element:field-end'></span><![endif]-->National Book Award Winner from before
1980</div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 168.45pt;" valign="top" width="225">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 64.25pt;" valign="top" width="86">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 107.65pt;" valign="top" width="144">
<div class="MsoNormal">
20</div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 138.45pt;" valign="top" width="185">
<div class="MsoNormal">
3 books related to science</div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 168.45pt;" valign="top" width="225">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 64.25pt;" valign="top" width="86">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 107.65pt;" valign="top" width="144">
<div class="MsoNormal">
35 </div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 138.45pt;" valign="top" width="185">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<!--[if supportFields]><span style='mso-element:field-begin'></span><span
style='mso-bookmark:Check12'><span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>FORMCHECKBOX <span style='mso-element:field-separator'></span></span><![endif]--><!--[if !supportNestedAnchors]--><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="Check12"></a><!--[endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:data>FFFFFFFF650000001400070043006800650063006B0031003200000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000</w:data>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if supportFields]><span style='mso-bookmark:
Check12'></span><span style='mso-element:field-end'></span><![endif]--> Science fiction book</div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 168.45pt;" valign="top" width="225">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 64.25pt;" valign="top" width="86">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 107.65pt;" valign="top" width="144">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 45.4pt; mso-yfti-irow: 14;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; height: 45.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 138.45pt;" valign="top" width="185">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<!--[if supportFields]><span style='mso-element:field-begin'></span><span
style='mso-bookmark:Check13'><span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>FORMCHECKBOX <span style='mso-element:field-separator'></span></span><![endif]--><!--[if !supportNestedAnchors]--><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="Check13"></a><!--[endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:data>FFFFFFFF650000001400070043006800650063006B0031003300000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000</w:data>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if supportFields]><span style='mso-bookmark:
Check13'></span><span style='mso-element:field-end'></span><![endif]--> Non-fiction book about science written for
general readers </div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 45.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 168.45pt;" valign="top" width="225">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 45.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 64.25pt;" valign="top" width="86">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 45.4pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 107.65pt;" valign="top" width="144">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 138.45pt;" valign="top" width="185">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<!--[if supportFields]><span style='mso-element:field-begin'></span><span
style='mso-bookmark:Check14'><span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>FORMCHECKBOX <span style='mso-element:field-separator'></span></span><![endif]--><!--[if !supportNestedAnchors]--><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="Check14"></a><!--[endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:data>FFFFFFFF650000001400070043006800650063006B0031003400000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000</w:data>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if supportFields]><span style='mso-bookmark:
Check14'></span><span style='mso-element:field-end'></span><![endif]-->Academic book about science or science
fiction. (history or philosophy of science, lit crit of science
fiction/utopia, cultural studies of science, or actual science for audience
of scientists)</div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 168.45pt;" valign="top" width="225">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 64.25pt;" valign="top" width="86">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 107.65pt;" valign="top" width="144">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 138.45pt;" valign="top" width="185">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<!--[if supportFields]><span style='mso-element:field-begin'></span><span
style='mso-bookmark:Check15'><span
style='mso-spacerun:yes'> </span>FORMCHECKBOX <span style='mso-element:field-separator'></span></span><![endif]--><!--[if !supportNestedAnchors]--><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="Check15"></a><!--[endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:data>FFFFFFFF650000001400070043006800650063006B0031003500000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000</w:data>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if supportFields]><span style='mso-bookmark:
Check15'></span><span style='mso-element:field-end'></span><![endif]-->EXTRA CREDIT – Book in a genre you hate
/or Double up in any category except the first “free” one.</div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 168.45pt;" valign="top" width="225">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 64.25pt;" valign="top" width="86">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 107.65pt;" valign="top" width="144">
<div class="MsoNormal">
10</div>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-line-height-alt: 13.85pt;">
<b><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Rules: <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-line-height-alt: 13.85pt;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The academic books
must be at least 175 pages long<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-line-height-alt: 13.85pt;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Novels must be at
least 200 pages long<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-line-height-alt: 13.85pt;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Books of poetry or
special issues of journals must be at least 100 pp. long<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-line-height-alt: 13.85pt;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Any book on the
list, except where specified by category, can be a novel<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-line-height-alt: 13.85pt;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Books can only count
for one category, but you can switch them from one category to the other before
you’re done if you like. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-line-height-alt: 13.85pt;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Only one book can be
a re-read<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-line-height-alt: 13.85pt;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Audiobooks are fine
as long as they are unabridged and the print edition at least 200 pages long.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; mso-line-height-alt: 13.85pt;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Books must be
started no earlier than midnight Jan 1and finished no later than May 31,
midnight.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>rebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03384242746548343890noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8077580.post-25707247695277236352014-09-03T12:52:00.000-04:002014-09-03T12:52:27.819-04:00Reading Challenge Update<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
So, my first ever reading challenge for academics has now begun. Post below to share with the group...what book are you starting with? I believe I'll be starting with the June 2014 issue of <i>American Quarterly</i>....<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>rebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03384242746548343890noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8077580.post-16858927727155573052014-08-17T13:47:00.000-04:002014-08-17T14:32:09.752-04:00Reading Challenge for Academics<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 13.85pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 13.85pt;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 13.85pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so with a doff of the professor's tam and my apologies to Megan C. Troup, I am stealing her reading challenge idea to start one of my own. </span></span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 13.85pt;">Troup runs
book challenges over at her blog <a href="http://megancstroup.blogspot.com/">Semi-Charmed Kind of Life</a>. I like the way she does her
challenges because they're not just a number, but not so prescriptive as to require everyone to read and discuss the same book. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 13.85pt;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 13.85pt;">Instead, she creates a set of categories designed to get readers to try new things. </span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 13.85pt;"> </span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 13.85pt;">I
did her summer reading challenge this year, and I may also try her winter
challenge. However, since we academics read for a living, I thought we could
use our own challenge that included space for more specialized literature, flexed our reading muscles with some interdisciplinary categories, and allowed some breaks for
serious but “fun” reads.....all the while, structuring in a bit of promotional support
for our friends and colleagues.This one goes for the length of the fall semester and winter break and includes 14 books total.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 13.85pt;"> </span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 13.85pt;">Extra instructions for people who like to
read academic books, but aren’t professors appear in italics</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 13.85pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 13.85pt;">
<b><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Rules: <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 13.85pt;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The academic books must
be at least 175 pages long<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 13.85pt;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Novels must be at
least 200 pages long<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 13.85pt;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Any book on the
list, except where specified by category, can be a novel<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 13.85pt;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Books can only count
for one category, but you can switch them from one category to the other before
you’re done if you like. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 13.85pt;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Only one<b> </b>book can be
a re-read<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 13.85pt;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Audiobooks are fine
as long as they are unabridged and the print editions are at least 200 pages long. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 13.85pt;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">To fit the framework of the challenge, books must be
started no earlier than midnight on Tuesday 9/2 and finished no later than Dec. 31 midnight. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Note
for non-professional academics: In any place where it says “academic book” look
for any book published by a scholar with a university press. Look for the publisher info and the “scholarly
apparatus”: footnotes /or endnotes, appendices, acknowledgments mentioning
colleagues, graduate students, dissertation committees, etc.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 13.85pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 13.85pt;">
<b><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">5 points:</span></b><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> Read any book related to your research or teaching (at
least 200 pages long) (<i>Non-professors,
read any academic book</i>)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 13.85pt;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br />
<b>10 points:</b> Read a book written by a friend, acquaintance or
colleague <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">10 points:</span></b><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> Read a book by a former student or former teacher <br />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br />
<!--[endif]--><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 13.85pt;">
<b><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">10 points:</span></b><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> Read an entire academic journal issue including book
reviews<i> <o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 13.85pt;">
<b><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">15 points:</span></b><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> Read a book reviewed in the journal issue above<b><br />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 13.85pt;">
<b><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">15 points:</span></b><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> Read an academic book about a country or region that isn’t
part of your research or your current teaching. <i>(Non-academics,
read an academic book about a country or region that you don’t usually read
about)</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 13.85pt;">
<b><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">15 points:</span></b><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> Read a book that you always meant to read but never got
to or never finished (<i>Non-professors, read a book assigned for a
course that you never read or never finished when you were a student)</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 13.85pt;">
<b><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">20 points:</span></b><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> Read a novel that was nominated for the <a href="http://www.nationalbook.org/nba2014.html">National Book Award</a> in 2014. The long list will be published in September and the finalists will be announced Oct. 15th.<br />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br />
<!--[endif]--><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 13.85pt;">
<b><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">20 points:</span></b><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> Read a book about current events written by a journalist<i><br />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br />
<!--[endif]--></i><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<b style="line-height: 13.85pt;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">25 points:</span></b><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 13.85pt;"> Read a Pulitzer Prize winning book from before 1970 (any
category).</span></span><i style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 13.85pt;"> </i><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 13.85pt;">Find a list here: </span></span><span style="line-height: 18.46666717529297px;">http://www.pulitzer.org/bycat</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><br />
<!--[endif]--><b style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 13.85pt;"><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 13.85pt;">
<b><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">20 points:</span></b><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> Read a book with “house”, “apartment” or “room” in the
title. <br />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br />
<!--[endif]--><b><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 13.85pt;">
<b><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">35 points:</span></b><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> Read three academic books on the same general subject, one
from each category: history, literary criticism, ethnography. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
*** As you make your preliminary lists, post them in the comments on this post. I'll do check-ins periodically.<br />
<br />
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<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>rebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03384242746548343890noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8077580.post-82172590375219837312014-06-27T09:00:00.000-04:002014-06-28T14:30:46.751-04:00Scholarly Panic: Thoughts about Teaching and the notion of "Originality"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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One of the hardest things that scholarly writers face is the
pressure to be original. For graduate students,
who may be making their first attempts at original work, this demand for
original ideas, interpretations or discoveries can be especially anxiety
producing. I’ve heard stories of
graduate students hiding certain library books in the fear that others will
stumble upon the same ideas. I’ve speculated about and heard others speculate
about plagiarism when publications come out that seem to replicate conclusions
and sources that were in unpublished manuscripts that had been sent out for
review. Even for more seasoned scholars, the fear is there that we don’t know
what we’re doing and that our work will be replicating
something else. Given the amount of
scholarly production, it seems almost impossible to imagine that we can do original
work unless it’s on a subject that’s so obscure no one else knows (or cares) about
it. </div>
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I’m writing this little reflective story as a way to think
about how to teach students what we mean by originality and how to reduce the
anxiety associated with a seemingly impossible goal.</div>
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This morning I was reading news on Facebook and followed a
link to this article by <a href="http://s-usih.org/2014/06/guest-post-kristoffer-smemo-on-black-flag-and-the-political-economy-of-hardcore.html">Kristoffer Smemo</a>, a graduate student at UC Santa Barbara who’s
writing his dissertation on liberal Republicans: </div>
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I was thrilled by his analysis of the band Black Flag’s
conservative ideology, because he had so clearly articulated and formulated
thoughts about the U.S. hardcore punk scene, about which I had been reading as part
of my research for a chapter of my book on anti-fascism. After my initial thrilled and
excited reaction to reading this sharp analysis, I had the panicked reaction of
“oh no, he figured it out first! And now…
all my work on this subject up to now is just superfluous. ” </div>
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My “oh no!” reaction while
understandable given the competitive aspects of academic culture is also kind of ridiculous for a number of reasons.</div>
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The reason for this reaction is based in an understanding of
scholarship as a competitive endeavor in which only one person can be “the
smartest” or “the first” to the finish line. Given the fact that it’s <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/11/01/specials/bloom-influence.html">hard to be original</a> perceiving scholarship this way can make the experience of research anxiety producing, miserable
and alienating. If we instead think of
scholarship as a collaborative human enterprise in which people working in the
same area can be helpfully viewed as friends or comrades, what originality
means, and how we get there becomes much less lonely and other people’s work
becomes less threatening. </div>
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Here is a set of things I might say to students in order to reduce the anxiety about what it means to be original and to take some of the competitive energy out of the research and writing process.<br />
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1) Someone else will <a href="http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/05/10/mark-twain-helen-keller-plagiarism-originality/">almost always have already had</a> the same idea as
you, or an even better one that you haven’t thought of yet, but that when you
read it, will cause you to think: “yes, that’s
exactly right.” And, then perhaps, “Damn it, why didn’t’ I think of that?” </div>
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It’s almost
impossible to have an idea that no one else has. We’re all living in the same
historical moment, and many of us are trying to figure out answers to the same
problems, reading many of the same books, and swimming in the same cultural
soup. So, of course we’re going to think similar things. It would be more shocking if no one had the same
idea you did than if they didn’t. It’s often the case that someone else has
come to a particular question before you did. To look at this from another
perspective, isn’t it nice to know that there is someone else who has thought this
thing or thought it better than you? Isn’t it in fact nice that someone is
interested in the same subject as you? You
are not alone and you are not crazy. In fact, it means you are addressing a subject
that matters to other people. Now, you can see evidence in the fact of this
other person’s work that your work is <i>relevant.</i></div>
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2) Even if this other
person has thought the same thing, or figured out this problem in a
better way than you, and has even been working on this problem or question a
lot longer than you have, it’s unlikely that he or she is working on all of the exact
same questions that you are and about the exact same texts, historical period,
or topics. You can carry on with your
work. If it is the case that this person’s research
has done exactly what you were planning to do and essentially “got there before
you” <i>that is why we do literature reviews
</i>when we embark on new scholarly projects<i>.
</i>Aren’t you glad you found this book/article/dissertation now instead of a year from now?</div>
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3) You have a new
comrade and helper. Discovering that someone else has already answered the
question you started your project with does not mean abandoning your research
on a particular subject or casting that person’s work as an enemy that has to
be defeated in order to prove your own originality or superiority, or hoping
that no one will notice and failing to cite a highly relevant work. The fact that this other person had already started this work before,
and has thought about it so intelligently means that their work is going to be
tremendously helpful and will save you from
having to do the work that they have already done. </div>
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4) Now that this intellectual comrade has answered the question you started with, you can learn from his or her work,
acknowledge this other scholar's significant contribution, and think about moving to a question that the
work raises but does not answer. There will pretty much always be at least one.
No work on a subject can say everything about it, and any really good piece of
work will be applicable in other ways. There are all kinds of ways to take
inspiration from another work on your subject: whether that means looking at how an idea or
fact can be seen in a different context, applying an idea to a new subject, going
broader and making comparisons, going into more depth about a single detail,
getting into some unexplored, but possibly related area that the other author wasn’t interested in, and in fact, continuing to treat that person as a
scholarly “friend” – someone who shares your passion and engagement, and with
whom you are working to build new knowledge in related areas. It makes scholarship
much less lonely. This is quite different from thinking about the goal of
scholarship as being to come up with an original finding in which you are
pitted competitively with everyone else who is working on the same subject.</div>
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5) This is different from being so indebted to someone else’s
work that you are unable to think of different questions from the ones that they have already
answered and just want to repeat their insights and preach about them to others, or even that you
cannot be critical of works that they have done. The only reason to write
anything is because you still think something is missing from what's out there.
Benjamin puts it this way, <span style="background: white; color: #181818; font-size: 10.5pt;">Writers are really
people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are
dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like.”<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></span> </div>
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Maybe another day I'll write about the value of enemies or adversaries - they have a role too. As Orwell's famous <a href="http://www.resort.com/~prime8/Orwell/whywrite.html">essay</a> on writing describes it, writing is an ordeal. Why bother if you are already satisfied with what had already been written? So, while the quest
for originality can be anxiety producing when the purpose of your research is all about proving that you’re
smarter than other people, that
pressure comes off if you remain driven by your passion for the subject and experience some kind of fellowship with others who share that passion and are writing and thinking in the same area, while recognizing that each of us has limited capacities. No one work will say all that is there is to be said, and part of being “original” is actually about engaging productively with other scholars’
work, even when the initial experience of reading it can induce a momentary
panic.</div>
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<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>rebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03384242746548343890noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8077580.post-88500235788534181452014-06-22T12:27:00.001-04:002014-06-22T12:27:23.087-04:00Usable Pasts and Historians' Fights<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I just finished reading the edited collection, <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/9781573925617">Forever in the Shadow of Hitler: Original Documents of the <i>Historikerstreit</i></a> and, with some <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historikerstreit">irony</a>, my friend J and I spent part of the morning commute comparing the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/21/world/hitler-apologist-wins-german-honor-and-a-storm-breaks-out.html">conservative German historians</a>' similarity to other conservative nationalists seeking to retain national pride in the face of horrific national histories in <a href="http://asianhistory.about.com/od/japan/f/Yasukuni-Shrine-Japan.htm">Japan</a> and the <a href="http://digital.lib.lehigh.edu/trial/enola/">United States</a>.<br />
If you're not familiar with the <i>Historikerstreit</i>, it erupted over two significant events in the mid-1980s: one the visit of Ronald Reagan to the <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/1985-04-19/news/mn-14900_1_concentration-camp">Bitburg</a> cemetery and two, the publication of an article by Ernst <a href="http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2000/08/nolt-a17.html">Nolte</a> which said, among other things, that Chaim Weitzman's declaration in 1939 that the Jews of Palestine would fight on the side of England in a war against Hitler meant that Hitler was rational in targeting Jews as political enemies and putting them in camps. Jurgen Habermas made the bold move of connecting the Nolte article to several other recent publications by conservative Germans and all of these to the rightward shift in German politics, known as the <i>Wende</i>, and the indignant responses came next. Richard J. Evans, (who was more <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/05/13/reviews/010513.13wheatct.html">recently</a> an expert witness against David Irving at his libel trial), wrote an excellent <a href="http://books.google.com/books/about/In_Hitler_s_Shadow.html?id=UZgiAQAAIAAJ">brief summary</a> of the arguments that places them in the context of German post-war politics and the historiography of fascism. Particularly in reading Evans' summary of the work of Andreas Hillgruber on the German army on the Eastern front, my mind again ran to comparison.<br />
Evans points out the problems with Hillgruber's representation of the German army on the Eastern front, drawing on the work of <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/30692.Omer_Bartov">Omer Bartov</a> on the German invasion of Russia, which indicates that rather than behaving as simple patriots defending their country from fearsome Russian hordes, or acting with "realistic moral responsibility"(with greater realism than the members of the military who attempted to assassinate Hitler in the <a href="http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/july_bomb_plot.htm">July Plot</a> of 1944) as Hillgruber argued, that the German army in the East behaved "with extreme brutality and barbarism to the Red Army...also laid waste whole areas of territory...and massacred or otherwise caused the deaths of millions of civilians as a matter of policy." (Evans, 60) <br />
It was hard to read the conservative historians dubbing Hitler's aggressive war as a "preemptive attack" on Russia, without thinking of the rationalizations presented for the U.S.'s 2003 invasion of Iraq, in the name of <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/headlines02/1211-02.htm">preemption</a>, complete with its own <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/10/silent-military-coup-took-over-washington">fascist</a> terminology of "shock and awe." Reading about Germany's efforts to come to terms with its past, I began to wonder how history a hundred years from now will judge America and how my generation will fair, as we forwarded emails and updated our statuses on Facebook, but easily returned the focus to our personal lives or careers while our country went on committing <a href="http://www.democracynow.org/2005/11/17/pentagon_reverses_position_and_admits_u">horrors</a> in <a href="http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/issues/security-and-human-rights/drones">in our name</a><u>s</u>. Will the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan become, like the war in Vietnam, remembered as strategic blunders with American victims, rather than as shocking, horrific examples of military <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-23427726">aggression</a> and war <a href="http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Kissinger/CaseAgainst1_Hitchens.html">crimes</a>? Will any criticism of the war be diverted by a <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/508513.The_Spitting_Image">mythology</a> of the anti-war movement's betrayal of the troops? Today, our a<a href="http://kasamaproject.org/culture/1569-1review-the-hurt-locker">ward-winning</a> films concentrate on the experiences of American troops, and try to show <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/feb/07/disturbing-misleading-zero-dark-thirty/">gritty</a> realism, but often wind up justifying aggression and even war crimes, and fail, as <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/nick-turse/what-sebastian-junger-and_b_644867.html">Nick Turse</a> points out, to show the other side of the U.S. war machine - the point of view of people whose countries are under attack. He writes,<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, Century, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 14px; padding: 0px;">
Few Americans born after the Civil War know much about war. Real war. War that seeks you out. War that arrives on your doorstep -- not once in a blue moon, but once a month or a week or a day. The ever-present fear that just when you’re at the furthest point in your fields, just when you’re most exposed, most alone, most vulnerable, it will come roaring into your world.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, Century, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 14px; padding: 0px;">
Those Americans who have gone to war since the 1870s -- soldiers or civilians -- have been mostly combat tourists, even those who spent many tours under arms or with pen (or computer) in hand reporting from war zones. The troops among them, even the draftees or not-so-volunteers of past wars, always had a choice -- be it fleeing the country or going to prison. They never had to contemplate living out a significant part of their life in a basement bomb shelter or worry about scrambling out of it before a foreign soldier tossed in a grenade. They never had to go through the daily dance with doom, the sense of fear and powerlessness that comes when foreign troops and foreign technology hold the power of life and death over your village, your home, each and every day.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, Century, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 14px; padding: 0px;">
The ordinary people whom U.S. troops have exposed to decades of war and occupation, death and destruction, uncertainty, fear, and suffering -- in places like Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Iraq, and Afghanistan -- have had no such choice. They had no place else to go and no way to get there, unless as exiles and refugees in their own land or neighboring ones. They have instead been forced to live with the ever-present uncertainty that comes from having culturally strange, oddly attired, heavily armed American teenagers roaming their country, killing their countrymen, invading their homes, arresting their sons, and shouting incomprehensible commands laced with the word “fuck” or derivations thereof.</div>
</blockquote>
<br />
So perhaps U.S. patriots are not so far from Hillgruber in insisting on national identification with the average soldiers at the front regardless of their actions. I do not write this to say that the U.S. troops behaved like the German forces on the Eastern Front; of course there are significant differences. My point has to do with the nationalist impulse that insists on justifying or rationalizing the history of war in the name of preserving pride in one's national identity. As those on the left in the<i> Historikerstreit </i>argued, the very fact of resistance even within the military itself indicates that there was more than one "German" point of view. Similarly in the U.S., soldiers and veterans <a href="http://www.couragetoresist.org/">continue</a> to <a href="http://www.chelseamanning.org/">resist</a> despite the cost to themselves. Rather than following the post-war Germans'call to rehabilitate the military's reputation and expunge national shame, it is long past time that we heed another German, Erich Fromm, who repudiated imperialist nationalism as an affliction crippling human consciousness:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The average man today obtains his sense of identity from his belonging to a nation rather than his being a 'son of man'. His objectivity, his reason is warped by this fixation. He judges a stranger with different crieteria than the members of his own clan....Nationalism...is our idolatry, is our insanity. Patriotism is its cult....that attitude which puts the own nation above humanity....Only when man succeeds in developing his reason and love further than he has done so far, only when he can build a world based on human solidarity and justice, only when he can feel rooted in the experience of universal brotherliness, will he have found a new, human form of rootedness, will he have transformed his world into a truly human home (from <i>The Sane Society</i>, 59-60)</blockquote>
</div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>rebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03384242746548343890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8077580.post-81346455067396885072014-06-08T11:33:00.003-04:002014-06-08T11:40:15.014-04:00Our Times and Contemporary Literature<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Being an academic has made me less inclined to read serious literary fiction. After hours of poring through microfilm reels in search of the occasional relevant fact, stumbling through a work of difficult theory with pen in hand, or doing a mandatory 6 hour stint in a library with two recent books in my field fact-checking over and over again, it's hard to want to come home, as I tried to do my first year in graduate school to Fielding's <i>Tom Jones. </i>In the age of VHS, I followed the advice of one dear friend and finished off each day of prelim-exam reading by watching a movie and drinking a glass of wine.<i> </i> I did something similar when revising my book on a tight deadline one summer, knocking off at the end of the day with DVDs of <i>Homicide</i>. <br />
Before that, I was what was recently called a <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/monkeysee/2014/06/05/319064976/the-muscle-flexing-mind-blowing-book-girls-will-inherit-the-earth">book girl</a><i>. </i>I always read promiscuously: conspicuously carrying Kafka's essays with me to punk rock shows at fifteen but delighting equally in Agatha Christie mysteries read one after another during winter and summer vacations. I also recall the greatly satisfying experiences of reading what I knew was serious literature: <i>Pride and Prejudice</i> and <i>Catcher in the Rye</i> both read during the summer in Texas; one summer in college, working in a university library and dragging home piles of things from the PQ section...Latin American and French literature in translation by the backpack load. One year in college, when the wealthier students took off from the private New England school I went to for their expensive spring-break holidays, I decided to stay on campus reading novels (<i>A Hundred Years of Solitude</i> at the time) rather than going home or to New York to visit family. "Novels?" an ex-boyfriend said, "YOU read novels?" Not a pleasure-reader, he thought I meant Jackie Collins, which is what his mother and her friends read. (No, I have never enjoyed that particular swath of bad books)<br />
Now, I feel very nostalgic about my pre-professional days, in high school, before graduate school, and some points in my adjunct days of riding trains between Brighton Beach and NYU, before I was working on a book and could read without being strategic about the use of my time. I often think back fondly to that 6 month period when I worked in the Hamptons, made regular trips to <a href="http://canios.wordpress.com/">Canio's bookstore</a> and read Toni Morrison, Phillip Roth, Herman Melville, and Umberto Eco either before or after going off to work in a restaurant, and those months after finishing my dissertation involving weeks spent with Heinrich Boll, Katherine Anne Porter, Robert Graves, and William Faulkner. If I were to read this way today, however, I would need an excuse of "reading it for my book" or I would always feel like I should be using that valuable time to read some half-baked Deluezian meditation or a highly specialized book about this topic of mine. My anxiety mounts with each inch added to the "to-read" pile. By contrast, there is always time to read a detective novel, especially if it's an audiobook that can be listened to on an elliptical trainer, while driving, or doing chores around the house. These novels are absorbing and can be settled into, some deliberately cozy, but all like a familiar favorite meal, and they are not without insight into human character or social problems, and are not always so inattentive to language as you might expect.<br />
I'm thinking about this now having just finished reading Donna Tartt's <i>The Goldfinch </i>and then reading<i> </i>some of the <a href="http://www.tinhouse.com/blog/33541/donna-tartt-and-the-macguffin.html">good</a> and <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/jan/09/after-great-expectations/">bad</a> <a href="http://www.publicbooks.org/fiction/at-the-wall">reviews</a>. I could not deny that I liked it. I read it quickly and enjoyed it, but it didn't seem to me as weighty or deeply insightful or as linguistically delightful as what I think of when I say something is "great literature." But what is that quality? Is it just about the use of language? That's what Francine Prose's negative review suggests. She attacks the prose at the sentence level and faults the sentimental ending, generalizes it to the larger problem, "Doesn't anyone care how something is written anymore?" Similarly, Jonah Seigel wonders, if the cliche-ridden but gripping <i>Goldfinch</i> is a literary novel, then what makes any novel literary? Has this category become just another genre, he wonders - "quality fiction?" I agree that there is a problem for serious literature. I know this from friends who are writers - it's difficult to sell difficult books and find readers unless you are a star. <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/02/will-self-novel-dead-literary-fiction">Will Self</a> 's recent essay bemoaning the hostility to difficult novels and complacent philistinism traces the problem to the distracted minds called away from reading by the internet. But before highspeed internet, changes in publishing and <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/525917.Bookstore">bookselling</a>, as well as the middle-brow reviewing industries (Oprah, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/108668.The_Middle_Mind">NPR</a>) were problems as well. Too many of the criticisms of this middlebrow reading, which often come from rightly frustrated writers, attack the good-book-starved readers who have eschewed difficult literature for the ease and entertainment of the high-middle brow or the unapologetically "low" zones of commercial fiction.<br />
Judging from my own limited experience - of mostly American academics, who read difficult and serious work constantly, but unless they are literature professors, rarely read serious fiction - the problem is that the members of the social class for whom such difficult novels are generally written no longer feel that they have the <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/178930.The_Overworked_American">time</a> to invest in reading them. <br />
</div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>rebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03384242746548343890noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8077580.post-30316065812340957242014-06-03T12:00:00.001-04:002014-06-03T12:03:11.785-04:00Heroes of Psychoanalysis <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
While reading Daniel Pick's <a href="http://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-pursuit-of-the-nazi-mind-9780199541683?cc=us&lang=en&">The Pursuit of the Nazi Mind</a> I was amazed to read about the experience of psychoanalyst, Walter Langer, who was a patient of Anna Freud in Vienna in 1938 and <a href="http://www.researchgate.net/publication/229472293_An_American_analyst_in_Vienna_during_the_Anschluss_19361938">helped</a> the Freud family escape the city following Hitler's annexation of Austria.<br />
"On one occasion," Pick writes, "the Freud family's maid Paula, told him that his analyst had been taken by the Gestapo for questioning, but the analysis resumed the next day, 'as if nothing had happened.' " (Gifford interview with Langer, cited in Pick,<i> Pursuit</i>, p. 40). You can read the relevant section of Peter Gay's Freud biography describing how she managed to get released and the impact of this event on her father <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=lVdU8yNRLN8C&pg=PA625&dq=peter+gay+anna+freud+gestapo&hl=en&sa=X&ei=PeyNU4C9HezksAT_kILwDA&ved=0CCUQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=peter%20gay%20anna%20freud%20gestapo&f=false">here</a><br />
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To me, it's a heroic example of dedication to one's work and a testament to the significance of strong relationships between analysts and patients. One could certainly understand if Dr. Freud had decided to cancel or perhaps reschedule, after departing from town. I wonder what the impact was on Langer that he had this sense of priority in his analyst's life. Or perhaps I am being overly dramatic, ahistorically imagining a consciousness of Nazi brutality in 1938 Vienna, reflected by present-day knowledge of the Holocaust. After all, her father, Sigmund Freud did not want to leave his home at all - until this incident finally convinced him that it was time to go. Gay's bio does say that Anna Freud suspected that she might be "casually deported or shot" simply if she was waiting in the hallway at the end of the day instead of being interrogated.<br />
<br />
This story, showing the seriousness with which good therapists take their work and how committed someone can be to a patient, is a good corrective to <a href="http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/design-your-path/201208/10-stereotypes-mental-health-professionals">stereotypes</a> of therapists we often see in popular culture. </div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>rebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03384242746548343890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8077580.post-32597313606413378542014-05-25T12:08:00.001-04:002014-05-25T12:17:49.474-04:00Anxiety Index: New Edition<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Thanks to a colleague at the City University Of New York for letting me know about the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2014/may/24/fire-engulfs-chemical-factory-atlanta-video">chemical plant fire in Marietta</a> which she read about yesterday in <i>The Guardian.</i><br />
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Yesterday's <i>Atlanta Journal Constitution</i> notes that this was <a href="http://www.ajc.com/news/news/major-warehouse-burning-in-marietta/nf6gH/?icmp=ajc_internallink_textlink_homepage">not the first fire in this particular warehouse</a><br />
<i>A</i>ccording to the local police an EPA investigation found that the smoke from the fire was not toxic.<i>....</i>but there may be some concern about run-off from the water hosed all over the place while it burned for ten hours, as reported by <a href="http://www.wsbtv.com/news/news/local/fire-crews-battle-large-warehouse-fire-marietta/nf6gM/">WS</a>B:<br />
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Water was pumped on the building for 18 hours, which could have environmental implications. Because of that, the EPA arrived on scene Saturday to investigate.<br />“There's been a substantial amount of runoff. All the chemicals have run off into sewer rivers and lakes monitoring that as we speak," Ingram said.</blockquote>
</blockquote>
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On that note, here's a link to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPrAuF2f_oI&feature=kp">Tom Lehrer </a>singing for the anxiety index way back in the day.</div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>rebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03384242746548343890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8077580.post-59400950632041494162014-05-25T08:18:00.002-04:002014-05-25T09:00:07.372-04:00Reading Challenged<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
It's summer, so why not start blogging again? Like most other academics, I've made a somewhat ambitious summer <a href="http://chronicle.com/article/Planning-a-Productive-Summer/137575/">plan</a>. I'm reading for my book-in-progress the cultural history of anti-fascism (on left and right). I'm also updating the syllabus for my fall class on American Studies theory which I'll be co-teaching with a newly minted English PhD, who's awesome and much hipper to current theory than I am. I'm doing an 8 minute talk on representations of prison in pop-culture, which will involve a lot of TV watching with a note-pad. For fun, I've decided to participate in this <a href="http://megancstroup.blogspot.com/2014/04/semi-charmed-summer-2014-book-challenge.html">book challenge</a> set up by blogger, Megan Troup.<br />
So here's the start of my summer reading list for research, teaching and play.<br />
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Book project related : <br />
Ian Kershaw, Hitler: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Hitler-1889-1936-Hubris-Ian-Kershaw/dp/0393320359">Hubris</a> & <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/64719.Hitler_Vol_2">Nemesis</a>; Bob Altemeyer, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1962634.Enemies_of_Freedom">Enemies of Freedom</a>, Eric Fromm,<a href="http://books.google.com/books/about/Escape_from_Freedom.html?id=d2g8L1sLykwC">Escape from Freedom</a><u>; </u>Daniel Pick,<i> <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=tJkjWQINrOgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=pursuit+of+the+nazi+mindd&hl=en&sa=X&ei=k9eBU8iLKJHisASR5oGADQ&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=pursuit%20of%20the%20nazi%20mindd&f=false">Pursuit of the Nazi Mind</a>, </i><i> </i>Ron Hansen, <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=lGLQrSEdKyYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=hitler%27s+niece&hl=en&sa=X&ei=wteBU_rZE-vMsQTR8YLABQ&ved=0CEIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=hitler's%20niece&f=false">Hitler's Niece</a>, and other stuff too, including whatever's related to my drafted chapter on the New Left and 1970s-1990s anti-fascism, which brings us to things like Mark Rudd, <a href="http://www.markrudd.com/?/underground-my-life-in-sds.html">Underground</a>, stuff about Wilhelm Reich, and even punk rock; as well as some pieces about right-wing anti-fascism including perhaps by and about the dreaded Ayn Rand whose Social Darwinism, romantic ideology, and love for monumental architecture leads to some interesting <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/garbage-and-gravitas">parallels</a> with you-know-who. But there's only so much one can read in one three month period.<br />
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Teaching related: Brian Massumi, <a href="http://books.google.com/books/about/Parables_for_the_Virtual.html?id=yXUPCX5axbcC"><i>Parables for the Virtual</i></a>; Anne Cvetkovich,<i> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/An-Archive-Feelings-Sexuality-Cultures/dp/0822330881">An Archive of Feelings</a></i>; Sharon Holland, <a href="http://diversity.berkeley.edu/panel-discussion-erotic-life-racism"><i>The Erotic Life of Racism</i></a>, Kelly Oliver,<i> <a href="http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-14726-2/animal-lessons">Animal Lessons: How They Teach Us to Be Human</a>; </i>Jodi Byrd, <i><a href="http://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/the-transit-of-empire">The Transit of Empire</a>; </i>Sarah Ahmed<i>, <a href="http://www.dukeupress.edu/The-Promise-of-Happiness/">The Promise of Happiness</a>; </i>Michael Warner<i>, <a href="http://www.zonebooks.org/titles/WARN_PUB.html">Publics and Counterpublics</a>; </i>Sender,<i> <a href="http://nyupress.org/books/book-details.aspx?bookId=2424#.U4HVyfldUUo">The Makeover</a>, </i>HoSang et al<i>, <a href="http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520273443">Racial Formation in the 21st Century</a></i><br />
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and then there's list for the Semi-Charmed Kind of Life Summer Book Challenge (which is at least backdated to May 1, so I can count stuff I already read). I am drawing from my existing work-related lists as much as possible while trying to include some fun reading in there.<br />
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<b style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;">5 points:</b><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;">Freebie! Read any book that is at least 200 pages long.</span><br />
Louise Penny, <i>A Fatal Grace</i> (Armand Gamache #2) (just finished)<br />
<b style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;">10 points:</b><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;">Read a book that was written before you were born.</span><br />
Fromm, <i>Escape from Freedom </i><br />
<b style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;">10 points:</b><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;">Finish reading a book you couldn't finish the first time around. (You must have at least 150 pages left in the book to use it for this category.)</span><br />
Blush, <i>American Hardcore </i>(just finished)<br />
<b style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;">10 points:</b><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;">Read a book from the children’s section of the library or bookstore.</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, Palatino Linotype, Palatino, serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;">Fitzhugh, <i>Harriet the Spy</i></span></span><br />
<b style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;">15 points:</b><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;">Read a book that is on</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;"> </span><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/best-sellers-books/overview.html" style="color: #009966; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><i>The New York Times</i>' Best Sellers List</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;">when you begin reading it.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;">Donna Tartt, <i>The Goldfinch</i></span><br />
<b style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;">15 points:</b><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;">Read a historical fiction book that does not take place in Europe.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;">Susan Choi, <i>American Woman</i></span><br />
<b style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;">15 points:</b><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;">Read a book another blogger has already read for the challenge. (Yes, you will have to wait until the first check-in to choose this book! So no one will be able to finish this challenge in only one month; sorry!)</span><br />
<b style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;">20 points:</b><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;">Read a book with “son(s),” “daughter(s)” or “child(ren)” in the title. No other words will count—including kids, offspring, etc.—so please don’t ask. :)</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;"> I could read Becker's <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/951129.Hitler_s_Children">Hitler's Children</a> </i>which I will need to read eventually, but I don't know if this summer is the time for it.</span><br />
<b style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;">20 points:</b><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;">Read a book that was/will be adapted to film in 2014. (</span><a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/ariellecalderon/books-to-read-before-they-hit-theaters-this-year" style="color: #009966; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px; text-decoration: none;">Here are 16 ideas</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;">to get you started, but I know there are plenty more options.) </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;">Ron Rash, <i>Serena </i>(for fun) or in keeping with last chapter of the book, Veronica Roth, <i>Divergent</i></span><br />
<b style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;">25 points:</b><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;">Read a book written by a blogger. (Submitted by Jessica of</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;"> </span><a href="http://www.jessicabucher.com/" style="color: #009966; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><i>The Tangerine</i></a><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;">.)</span><br />
<b style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;"> ????? </b><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;">(I"ve already read Corey Robin's excellent <i><a href="http://coreyrobin.com/new-book/">The Reactionary Mind</a>) </i>perhaps Jeff Sharlet<i>, The Family </i>or Glenn Greenwald<i>, No Place to Hide</i></span><br />
<b style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;">25 points:</b><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;">Read a biography, autobiography or memoir.</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;">Kershaw, <i>Hitler: Hubris</i></span><br />
<b style="color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;">30 points:</b><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-family: Georgia, Utopia, 'Palatino Linotype', Palatino, serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18.479999542236328px;">Read a pair of books with antonyms in the titles.</span><br />
Goodlad et al, <i>Mad Men, Mad World </i>(finished<i>) </i> paired with Erich Fromm, <i>The Sane Society</i> OR Dean Spade, <i>Normal Life</i><br />
<br />
<br />
My question to you, random people on the internet, is - do you know of a blogger who writes about fascism, animal studies or affect theory so I can double-dip? Like dude, when is <a href="http://criticalanimal.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-cult-of-heidegger-doomsday-fascism.html">this guy's</a> book coming out?</div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>rebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03384242746548343890noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8077580.post-61050027776204035652012-10-20T10:39:00.001-04:002012-10-20T17:21:37.629-04:00Live, Park, Drive - Or Why ATL Redevelopment Plans Still Don't Work Recently, various sections of Atlanta have been threatened with massive <a href="http://www.walmartmovie.com/help.php">Walmarts.</a>. Buckhead just fought off a <a href="http://clatl.com/freshloaf/archives/2012/10/02/atlanta-city-council-rejects-proposed-walmart-development">proposed store</a> at Lindbergh/Piedmont. Decatur is still in a <a href="http://goodgrowthdekalb.org/">fight</a> with developers over a proposed super-store, and now <a href="http://glenwoodpark.com/">Glenwood Park</a>, a very expensive new-urbanist planned community is <a href="http://eastatlanta.patch.com/articles/npu-w-opposes-glenwood-place-development">threatened</a> with a Walmart based <a href="http://clatl.com/freshloaf/archives/2012/09/24/site-plans-for-fuquas-proposed-retail-complex-along-beltline-now-available-for-your-viewing-pleasure">shopping center</a> at its backdoor.<br />
Good news: the same developer was <a href="http://stopwalmartcolorado.com/">recently defeated</a> in Denver.
Since I live in Reynoldstown now and was thinking about moving to the area near Glenwood Park, the possibility of that Walmart has become a burning issue to me. Currently, Glenwood Avenue, where the Walmart proposed, is a two-lane road with ample sidewalks and bike paths in both directions. It connects the funky East Atlanta Village to Grant Park, so it's a useful pedestrian or bike pathway. The major shopping center being proposed there would likely turn it into a choked and noisy thoroughfare.
While I would oppose Walmart in any situation because of its labor policies, I also am opposed to the overall plan of development for this neighborhood - no matter what thing they put in that space. I'm not alone. When one commenter on <i>Creative Loafing's</i> recent discussion of the plan suggested a Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, Publix, or a movie theater instead of Walmart, I initially thought "yes, a grocery store! Perfect."<br />
Then, another person pointed out that anything on that scale would bring more traffic to the neighborhood. One of the major features of the proposed development is 75,000 square feet of surface parking. The plan could be tweaked by creating a storied parking garage instead, but still....there would have to be more cars coming into the neighborhood to make that work - and where would they come in and go out?
The <a href="http://beltline.org/">Beltline</a> is supposed to come into the neighborhood via an expanded Bill Kennedy Way and extended Chester Ave, but even if the Beltline proposal were to happen and some kind of bike lane appeared, without public transit, the whole thing is still a bust.<br />
Look at Glenwood Park. it's a beautiful area with great housing and retail, including some less expensive rental housing. But - it looks a bit like ghost town. I read somewhere on the web people comparing it to a movie set - right, because the streets are empty.
In the meantime, some <a href="http://eastatlanta.patch.com/articles/residents-file-lawsuit-to-block-280-elizabeth-st-project">neighbors</a> in Inman Park are exorcised about a development plan for Elizabeth Street near N. Highland that would add rental housing & retail space to the already bustling and walkable three-block area. That particular region of in-town Atlanta is one that I like, because it is walkable. Still, you have to drive to get there, and park when you do. This is what the neighbors don't like; urban density in this area has increased the traffic.<br />
All this hubbub points to the major problem that is holding Atlanta back.
Despite the claims to the contrary as far as I can tell Atlanta's new urbanists, including the Beltline Inc and its supporters are focused on two things - bike trails/green spaces and retail/ upscale housing development. The Glenwood Park area, Inman Park and Atlantic Station to a lesser extent, all suffer from the same problem. All these places are islands that people have to drive to. For people living in these areas, new urbanism = more traffic, not less.
<br />
When Jane Jacobs was writing about the West Village, she wasn't just advocating bike paths and parks; she was fighting <a href="http://www.humantransit.org/2012/04/jane-jacobs-on-transportation-my-take.html">freeways</a> and living in a city that had a long history of major mass transit.
While it's a lovely idea that people will bike to work, it's extremely unlikely that they will bike to a grocery store. I did that in Minneapolis, but I was shopping mostly for one person. In ATL, it's still unlikely that people would even bike to and from the movie theater. Why? There aren't enough places in Atlanta where people are on the streets to make the streets feel safe at night. And the reason for this is the absence of adequate mass transit. Mass transit and pedestrian culture go together just like cars and parking lots. <br />
This city's transit hubs are not well connected enough, and often are not themselves pedestrian friendly. A <a href="http://www.cbsatlanta.com/story/19867429/coming-into-office-new-marta-ceo-faces-huge-financial-shortfall">new MARTA CEO </a> has just arrived in town, and, like a principal in a troubled public school, he'll be saddled with the responsibility for structural problems beyond the scope of the institution he manages. For those who don't know, MARTA is the only major public transit agency for a metropolitan area of this size that <a href="http://www.atlantamagazine.com/features/story.aspx?ID=1742459">doesn't receive state funding</a>. As the article linked above indicates, it - and our city's growth have been hobbled by racist suburban politics.
The other big problem with MARTA is that it still is not designed for pedestrian safety or convenience. The most striking example of the problem is the tragic case of <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/life/walking/2012/04/walking_in_america_how_we_can_become_pedestrians_once_more_.html">Raquel Nelson</a>.<br />
I've experienced less dramatic consequences from the unwalkable distances between transit hubs. Recently, I had a coupon for a discount hair salon near Buckhead; I was told by the salon staff that I could get there by walking from the Lindbergh Center MARTA station along Piedmont. It was an uneasy and hot trek along a heavily trafficked street, but I didn't turn around and give up (and took a cab that cost $10) until I hit the unprotected freeway entrance and saw the long walk under the dark underpass immediately after it.Sorry, but if you have to run across the freeway entrance, that's <a href="http://livablebuckhead.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/3-Existing-Conditions.pdf">not walkable</a>.<br />
Other MARTA stations are similarly positioned. Another problem is that the stations are massive and rarely staffed, making them dangerous at night. (I recognize that this is not MARTA's fault, given budget & financing problems) . I look at the size of the MLK center station and imagine walking through it alone at night and think "forget it." All you need is one small corner not visible from the street and you're in the proverbial dark alley. The same is true for the station that serves my current neighborhood. The station includes a huge bridge to the neighborhood from which there is no exit if someone is following you. It abuts a dead end street with boarded up houses on one side and a residential neighborhood with little foot traffic on the other. It's a considerable walk to the retail district that most people would take it to get to. The MLK MARTA station is only accessible for pedestrians coming from one side of the area via another dark underpass. <br />
MARTA doesn't have enough regular passengers to guarantee a crowd for safety in numbers at various times of day. For that reason, I decided that taking the bus downtown would make more sense than the train, even though it would take longer.
I agree with the Metro-Atlantan Transportation Equity Group (MATEC) that wants the new MARTA CEO to meet regularly with MARTA riders. The biggest obstacle to using MARTA, and then producing the critical mass of pedestrians needed for a feeling of <a href="http://t4america.org/resources/dangerousbydesign2011/">safety</a> is making the areas around the stations and bus-stops safer, more accessible, and more logically positioned relative to housing and other destinations.
Until then, the dream of new urbanists will fail and fail again. If you build it, they will come...by car.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>rebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03384242746548343890noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8077580.post-87878029381775931362012-10-17T18:11:00.000-04:002012-10-17T18:13:30.106-04:00Would You Buy a Used Essay From?....
Every time I promise to start writing regularly again, I always fail. So this time, I'm not starting with a promise.
Here, though, is something amusing. Today I got this spam comment on an old blog entry:
<blockquote>At 5:01 PM, XXXX said...
In inflict to support you with the highest stage of delivery in essay activity, ProfEssays.com employs only skilful pedantic writers to business on your distribution.
narrative essay writing help</blockquote>
Inflict is right! Are these pendantic writers skillful parodists seeking to capture lazy students in the act? essay-writing bots? Please inflict your comments now.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>rebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03384242746548343890noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8077580.post-53924790333520018282012-04-05T16:16:00.003-04:002012-04-05T16:21:05.526-04:00Fact of the Day, File Under Punk RockersA 1991 study by Christine Hansen and Ranald Hansen found that "fans of punk rock ...were more likely to reject authority than were those of heavy metal."<br /><br />cited in Lauraine LeBlanc's <span style="font-style:italic;">Pretty in Punk: Girls' Gender Resistance in a Boys' Subculture</span> (Rutgers University Press, 2005)<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>rebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03384242746548343890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8077580.post-4868414037300345702012-04-04T07:36:00.011-04:002012-04-04T14:46:41.745-04:00Politics and Friendship and Using the TelephoneI haven't thought about blogging in years but the other day, for reasons I'll explain in a minute, I was re-reading old emails from an old friend and he mentioned reading my blog (and even <a href="http://redredbecca.blogspot.com/2005/02/computer-dating.html">commented</a> on it once in a very funny way). <br /> I have been thinking a lot about politics lately, and about this particular friend.<br /> Since I moved to ATL I've had a hard time getting reconnected to politics, despite a few lame attempts. I'd say the main obstacles have been 1) my failure to learn to drive in city lacking not only adequate public transportation, but sidewalks, 2) being exhausted by work 3) not knowing people in the ATL political scene and 4) wanting to enjoy lazy weekends at home with my husband, who works out of town during the week. Just a couple of weeks ago, I finally got past the second hurdle. I finished some writing projects and the pressure in the administrative side of my new job has gone down as I've learned how to do it better. That's given me a sense of freedom about trying again to get re-involved in political activism. It also gave me the head space to start reconnecting with my old friend, who had asked me to read a draft of some of his new <a href="http://anarchiststudies.org/node/314">manuscript</a> about 8 months ago when I was still overwhelmed and freaked out by work, and who I'd communicated with in February about something I was writing that involved a political theorist I thought he might know something about. This friend was someone who I'd just missed seeing because of both of our busy schedules and complicated lives several times since 2008 when I last saw him at an American Studies conference. Now, unfortunately, and for reasons that make no sense, it's <a href="http://azdailysun.com/news/local/nau-prof-joel-olson-dies-suddenly/article_11a1ed78-9a98-57c8-8c02-e5017e08b7dd.html">just too late</a> and there is no "later" when we'll catch up.<br /> He's someone who I knew through politics when I "used to be an anarchist" (that's the expression he teased me about above). He stayed true to that tradition, and was active in <a href="http://www.bringtheruckus.org/?q=about">anarchist politics</a> and political <a href="http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/jo52/">theory</a>. Of the people in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_and_Rage">Love & Rage</a>, he was the person with whom I most often agreed politically; actually, in an email exchange we talked about having put edits in that afore-linked L&R Wikipedia page. In the 1990s, we talked and talked about debates that were going on in the organization, both on the phone and in person. I feel like we wrote things together, at least when we were on the coordinating committee of LnR together in MPLS. Years later, he wrote the most hilarious comments in the organization's Discussion Bulletin when he edited it in Phoenix. I hope someone has collected those. It included our intense position papers and proposals about our org's relation to the "race traitor" strategy, how to organize locals, cadre etc., interspersed with Joel's top ten lists of heavy metal songs for the Revolution, and how to keep cool in the Arizona heat. I learned so much from him, and he always talked to me as if he really appreciated my ideas. He also was a true friend; I used to go the movies with him and his wife, and they always supported me as I dealt with the fallout of a number of terrible decisions in my efforts at romantic relationships. He once took me out for a pitcher of malt liquor in our neighborhood bar and offered his shoulder to cry on after I was rejected by one of his own best friends. The malt liquor turned out to be a bad idea, but the shoulder to cry on was kind and the support was always there. When I told him I was getting married he said in an email, "That is wonderful! Do I know the lucky guy?" And I heard from another friend that he and his wife had toasted my happiness along with some other folks from L&R when he was visiting NYC after I had moved to Georgia. <br /> In that later that's now not coming, we had a lot of promised conversations that would have been really great. <br /> During the last ten years, he'd become really, creatively active in immigrant rights, from a revolutionary and <a href="http://www.repealcoalition.org/blog/2010/9/11/miracles-democracy-and-fight-against-sb-1070">radically democratic</a> position. I am full of admiration for the work he did in Arizona. He's also written some of the best most critical <a href="http://www.anarchiststudies.org/node/313">writing on anarchism</a> from within the anarchist tradition that I know. <br /> Losing him is just terrible. I can't separate the Joel as a "human" from Joel as a political activist. He loved life and pursued his political vision with both passion and compassion. He was generous to friends, and as so many of my friends have commented in our conversations over the last few days, he was one person who could get along with people on all sides of big arguments in various groups, never making the political disagreements into personal grudge-matches. As a friend, he could accept people's limitations and appreciate what was best about them. If you read the linked <a href="http://www.newclearvision.com/2012/03/30/joel-olson-1967-2012/">obituary</a> statements you'll see that was a very devoted husband and father, and if you feel so moved, please make a contribution to his wife and three children.<br /> * * * <br /> This experience brings me to two points beyond the fact that Joel Olson was a extraordinary person whose loss is inexplicable, shocking and heart-breaking to the people who were so lucky to know him. These two things are <span style="font-weight:bold;">ONE</span> - that friendships connected to doing serious political work are very special, and that it says something about what that political work does that is different from the routines that usually alienating capitalist daily-life puts us in - that's the concept of political miracles that my friend referred to in his piece on the Arizona Repeal Coalition's weekly meetings<br /> <span style="font-weight:bold;">TWO:</span> If you can't afford time/money to travel to see them, call your damn friends on the phone! (and to those of you who I've been planning to call, expect a call from me for real this time.)<br /> Facebook and email give us this illusion of being connected and of the connection always ready to be revived when we get around to it. Maybe that illusion's not true for everyone; maybe that says something more about me. There are emails of his that I enjoyed getting just because they were from him, but I often put off reading his longer pieces unless he had specifically asked me for feedback on them. Some of his mass emailed political articles were still "unread" when I saw them in my mail folder yesterday. <br /> It's hard to live as if every day might be your last, or your friend's and I think that focusing on what I didn't do to see or talk to Joel in the last two years is, as one friend told me the other day, just a means of trying to take control of an out-of-control reality. And with that, I just miss my friend, and even miss the notion that one of these days, really soon, we're going to get in touch and really talk about all these things we've mentioned talking about later in real depth. The last email he sent me was one such promise - "I'd love to read it" he said about the thing I was writing that I'd asked his advice on. Even though I had a draft done a few weeks ago, I didn't send it to him, thinking he was busy with his own stuff and that I could send it to him when it came out this summer, but that I needed to remind him to send me that ms he was working on. Ah well.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>rebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03384242746548343890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8077580.post-53486330140887442502010-05-03T07:21:00.004-04:002010-05-03T08:18:39.394-04:00Tribeca Film Festival - Moloch TropicalSo, I didn't really redeem myself as a blogger with this year's festival by keeping a daily blog of what I saw. It all started - or didn't start - because I was undecided about what to say with the very first movie on my list, Raoul Peck's film <a href="http://www.tribecafilm.com/filmguide/moloch_tropical-film30911.html">Moloch Tropical.</a> I went to see it because I liked Peck's films <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0246765/">Lumumba</a></span> and <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0400063/">Sometimes in April</a></span>. He has also made the documentary, <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://icarusfilms.com/new2001/but.html">Profit and Nothing But!</a></span> and is currently making a film titled <span style="font-style:italic;">Karl Marx.</span> In other words, he is a left film-maker and he makes beautiful films.<br /> <span style="font-style:italic;">Moloch Tropical</span> was without a doubt, beautifully made - full of pathos, horror, and even humor. However, it justifies the overthrow of Aristide in 2004, and to use his story to portray the nature of the "universal dictator." At the Q&A, Peck discussed it as not specifically about one person, but about the nature of power and the meaning of democracy. However, this is a cop-out. It is obviously about Aristide - references to him as a former priest loved by the poor are made throughout the film, and the necklacing of a former friend and ally, of which Aristide was accused in 2004, is central to the narrative. What I find particulary problematic in this merging of the "universal" and the historically specific examination of a dictatorship is the portrayal of this Aristide-like dictator as a repulsive sexual predator.<br /> I hadn't realized before I'd seen this, but during the U.S. coup, Peck wrote an anti-Aristide editorial in <a href="http://www.wehaitians.com/haiti%20government%20deserves%20condemnation.html">Newsday</a>, and has been one of the Haitian intellectuals who are most disenchanted with his presidency.<br /> In contrast, the film <a href="http://www.irsp.org/culture-16.htm">Aristide and the Endless Revolution</a> shows multiple views on the 2004 coup, but is sympathetic to Aristide. The left in the U.S. is <a href="http://www.zcommunications.org/reply-to-justin-podur-by-michael-deibert">divided</a> on the issue. <br /> Having received most of my information about the events of 2004 as they were occurring through the coverage of it on the very pro-Aristide <a href="http://www.democracynow.org/2004/3/8/exclusive_br_aristide_speaks_to_democracy">Democracy Now</a>, I was shocked by this film and thought, if this is an accurate representation of Aristide in Haiti, it's devastating. To figure out what the deal is, I now plan to read Alex Dupuy's <a href="http://tinyurl.com/2b72y72"><span style="font-style:italic;">The Prophet and Power</span>.</a><br /> Ultimately, my critique of the film is that in merging "Moloch" story with a perhaps justifiable critique of Aristide, Peck has created an excuse for doing what one blogger describes as turning <a href="http://www.haitianalysis.com/mass-media/how-to-turn-a-priest-into-a-cannibal-u-s-reporting-on-the-coup-in-haiti">priest into a cannibal</a>.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>rebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03384242746548343890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8077580.post-46232980994213816792010-04-23T08:23:00.002-04:002010-04-23T08:30:18.237-04:00Back to the Tribeca Film FestI really started this blog in earnest back in the Spring of 2005 when I first went to the Tribeca Film Fest. Five years later, I've had very little time or energy for such focused procrastination, but perhaps this year I will blog about every movie I see at TFF and thus redeem myself. Today, I'm seeing Raul Peck's new film <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://www.theauteurs.com/films/4230">Moloch Tropical</a></span> and later on, <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117941259.html?categoryid=31&cs=1">My Queen Karo</a></span>.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>rebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03384242746548343890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8077580.post-46423239437317357392009-08-26T10:19:00.006-04:002009-08-26T12:44:28.766-04:00Back-To-School Politics - the Politics of CompositionOne of my friends posted Stanley Fish's NYT article on <a href="http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/24/what-should-colleges-teach/?ref=opinion">college composition courses</a> on facebook today. There are lots of well-informed comments from different perspectives on the NYT page. <br /> Since I taught writing in the kind of composition department that Fish decribes,I feel qualified to school the bemused Professor Fish.<br /> <br /> Part of Fish's assessment of trends in the teaching of college composition courses fits my experience. I taught college-level composition for six years - first as a graduate student at the University of Minnesota and then during my first two years working as an adjunct at CUNY, where I also read and evaluated ACT exams. I share some of Fish's frustration with college comp classes; I often felt I was doing something more "old-fashioned" than what others did because I did teach grammar and sentence structure, and because I insisted that the course material could not consist of watching movies, but had to engage the written word. I was, as Fish is, appalled to find that some of my colleagues did not give their student any reading assignments at all.<br /> The reason that people did this wasn't really political; it was a strategy for dealing with the existing skills of the students they met in their classrooms. The majority of people teaching college writing courses today are graduate students who do not want to alienate their students, and want them to enjoy their classes. Confronting students with difficult reading assignments and practice with grammar is not an obvious route to teacher-popularity.<br /> <br /> Some of these courses my colleagues taught involved lots of direct instruction in writing; one model course that was very popular with teachers involved students critiquing each others' writing as a group while the instructor marked up essays on an overhead projector. Those teachers couldn't be faulted for not teaching writing; there was no content in those courses at all. However, I never used this approach because I thought that exposing students to really good writing was key to improving students' work. If the students aren't that familiar with written language, they aren't equipped to teach each other how to write. Their criticisms of their peers might not be anymore valid than their criticism of Joan Didion; (my advanced journalism major students claimed that her book <a href="http://jonsealy.blogspot.com/2009/05/joan-didion-miami.html">Miami</a> was full of "run-on sentences" because she wrote in <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=DMDjrDjBYZgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=joan+didion#v=onepage&q=&f=false">long</a> -grammatically correct- sentences. <br /><br /> In his article, Fish blames bad composition teaching for the tragically bad writing of American university students. However, the real problem is that as television has replaced print as the medium of news and entertainment, the majority of our students are not literate in "print culture." It is more common now to encounter college students who simply do not read - not newspapers, not magazines, not books. Those who do read don't often read models of what college classes ask them to produce. At the beginning of the semester in my history class, I ask students what the most difficult book they read recently was. Almost all of them listed works of Shakespeare which they had read (and had not understood) in their English classes, and a few named Harry Potter books. Very few of them read anything for pleasure - unless they were reading internet news or sports articles. <br /> <br /> The problem that writing instructors face is not the result of bad schooling. If people do not read, they will not be good writers. If they are not familiar with written language, which is not like spoken language, they will not be able to produce elegant prose. <br /><br /> Why don't people try to familiarize their students with this more difficult writing that would be a model of what they want their students to achieve? Is it because of a multi-cultural agenda? no. <br /> One group that seriously objects to teaching essay-writing by assigning essays to read are the English literature faculty who want to teach their students the great works of literature. They are on the canonical mission for which Fish criticizes ACTA. Those lit people are holding back the teaching of writing just as much as those who teach the smarmier versions of comp-rhet. <br /> They're not teaching writing either; they're teaching the appreciation of literature - and the students be damned who don't appreciate it. In order to engage students at all, many of these literature teachers ask their students to respond with an experience they once had which was similar to something in the book that they just read - but teaching students how to write autobiographical narratives does not help them write better essays in their college courses - although it may help them "relate" to literature.<br /><br /> One of the comments on Fish's article comes from a student who just couldn't relate; he's not interested in literature, but who says he would learn to write better if he could write about something that interested him: <br /><br /><blockquote>I have always found it difficult to write about writing or literature, but easy to write about things that exit in the physical universe.<br />So it appears to me that rhetoric and grammar should be taught incidentally as students consider other things. After all, people who are actually interested in grammar are destined to become English professors.<br />Or to put it another way, I always want to learn to write better, but please spare me from writing about, or even thinking about Moby Dick.</blockquote><br /><br />That's an example of a larger general truth; I recall reading about a shocking study that revealed that students' writing improved when they wrote about subjects that were interesting to them. Maybe it's tragic that everyone isn't interested in <span style="font-style:italic;">Moby Dick</span>, but being so shouldn't be a pre-requisite for learning how to write a decent college paper. <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=ypuQi5fLlrcC&dq=%22structure+of+argument%22&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=uFuVSonvNKaUtgfek81T&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4">Comp/rhet</a> scholars who do the "writing across the curriculum" and writing-intensive courses that ACTA finds disdainful agree. They say the goal should be to teach students how to write argumentative essays that will help them in college courses in many disciplines, and to assign readings that help them learn about argument.<br /> <br /> Following this notion, I assigned reading to students in composition classes that were models of what I wanted them to write. I did not assign <span style="font-style:italic;">Moby Dick</span> because I wasn't teaching them to write literature. I assigned essays - on the topics that Fish thinks are standing in for what should be the real content of the course.<br /> One semester, I used sports writing as a focus to try to engage students' interest. Another semester, I had students do research on ongoing debates about their own university, reading the school newspaper and documents in the university archives. I taught "composition with a cultural diversity" focus that got students to write about racism, class, gender, and media bias - all using great essays - James Baldwin, Cherrie Moraga, Noam Chomsky. I taught them about the value of evidence and logical fallacies by assigning <a href="http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1080&context=historyfacpub">Pierre Vidal-Naquet's</a> work on Holocaust Denial for a couple of semesters. I used some excellent composition anthologies and some <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Worth-Reading-Critical-Process/dp/0312061013">newer</a>grammar books.<br /> My favorite grammar book of all time was Scott Rice's <a href="http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?isbn=0534160387">Right Words, Right Places</a>R, which used sentences from canonical works of literature to teach sentence structure and style.<br /> That book, now out of print, brings me to the last point: <span style="font-weight:bold;">Grammar.</span><br /> Everyone talks about how bad it is, and yet no one really wants to teach it. Grading students' papers one grammatical-error at a time is not teaching, it is editing. I met countless students whose main lesson from high school had been that they "couldn't write" and "didn't know grammar". They were actually traumatized by people's attempts to teach them grammar; they avoided writing at all costs, finding classes with no papers required. They didn't think of grammar as something creative or interesting, but only as a something that they would "mess up" without knowing it. They learned that they were "bad writers" and they believed that "good writers" were superior people who were born, not made.<br /> Meeting those students is what causes writing teachers to avoid doing much about grammar; they don't want to compound the problem. If they can just get the students to engage a little with writing in a positive way, they hope, grammar correction can come later. This doesn't work either. <br /> But how do you teach grammar - at a college level? If I stand up and give a lecture about parallelism, it is unlikely to result in improvement in students' writing. The best method is all the "active-learning" and "critical thinking" stuff that the ACTA people Fish cites would probably hate, especially in college. My approach to teaching grammar was to stress to students that written grammar was a set of rules that they weren't comfortable with, that "good writing" wasn't a natural talent, and that they would not improve without practice, much as if they were learning to play tennis, or the guitar. I used grammar books that had creative exercises or got my students into games involving sentence structure so that instead of focusing on error, students could engage with grammar as a tool that they could use to express themselves more clearly. These grammar lessons were quite lively - but they took a lot of their methodology from creative writing courses that I had taken in the past. The comp/rhet people probably thought that was old-fashioned of me; and the ACTA people probably thought that if the students still needed that work in college, they just shouldn't be there in the first place. After all, the thing that Fish really doesn't mention is that the teaching of these important skills is done by graduate students and now adjuncts, because the "real professors" think that teaching grammar is beneath them, along with the students who don't know it.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>rebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03384242746548343890noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8077580.post-10906356253382318922009-08-17T11:22:00.004-04:002009-08-17T13:27:47.877-04:00What to Do, What to DO?A number of third-party enthusiasts are gleefully pointing out all the ways that Obama has failed to live up to people's expectations of him. For an example, note the comments after Dave Lindorff's recent <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/08/10-4">piece</a> exhorting people on the left to get active for Single-Payer at the Town Halls. I don't think that this "I told you so" glee directed at Obama voters is any better than the "I told you so" finger-shaking I got from Dems following the election of George Bush in 2000 (I had voted for Nader.) The answer is still to put pressure on whoever is in power through <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/08/04-0">grass-roots action for single payer</a> all the while knowing that in the end, we will probably not get it.<br /> <br /> I agree with Lindorff in general about the need for the left to out-organize the right at the health-care reform town-halls. In fact,I have read that single-payer advocates have been visible at every town-hall meeting so far, but the media is rarely reporting the story (note the previous blog entry). However I'm a bit puzzled by his recent comment on <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff08112009.html">counterpunch</a> that "obstruction" is the only viable option at the town-hall meetings. He goes on to say, <br /><blockquote>Instead of opposing the right-wing hecklers at these events, progressives should be making common cause with them. Instead of calling them fascists, we should be working to turn them, by showing them that the enemy is not the left; it is the corporations that own both Democrats and Republicans alike.<br />The only proper approach to the wretched health care legislation currently working its way through Congress at this point is to kill it and start over. At these "town meeting" staged events, Obama and the Democrats need to hear, in no uncertain terms, that we don't want no stinkin' ObamaCare. We want Medicare for all.</blockquote><br /><br /> Given that one of the biggest fears of this group is that "Obamacare" is actually a "Trojan Horse" for single-payer (which is how Dems have tried to sell the plan to the left) this strategy seems unrealistic to me. Just as the media won't report the single-payer advocates already questioning the corporate Dem plan, the wisdom on the street (and on the Hill) if Obama's plan is defeated (or further watered down) is that America is not ready for a public-option, let alone single-payer. <br /><br /> My sense, based on what I've <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/katharine-zaleski/inside-the-mob-outside-th_b_260465.html">seen and read</a> about right-wing protesters (beyond the <a href="http://counterpunch.org/cockburn08142009.html">anti-choicers</a> and other religious fear mongerers) <br /> is that<br />- They don't want <a href="http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/aug/10/dont-insure-illegal-workers-our-backs/">"illegal aliens"</a> to be insured and they believe that these illegal aliens will be covered by <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/uc/20090722/cm_uc_crmmax/op_1910716">"Obamacare"</a>.<br /><br />-They fear that if medicare is extended "for all" that it will go <a href="http://www.abqjournal.com/opinion/guest_columns/202218503516opinionguestcolumns07-20-09.htm">bankrupt</a> or the U.S. as a whole will go bankrupt - and their coverage will be reduced - this is why seniors are prominent protesters at the Town Halls. This is not then, an irrational "keep your government hands off my medicare," it is a rational (but misinformed) argument: "I can't afford to share my medicare" (probably with them illegal aliens). Glenn Beck has recently been stoking these fears by suggesting that the health care plan, added to the bank bailout will send the US into an inflationary spin that will lead the government to the solutions offered by Nazi Germany, including euthanasia. One of pieces of meat he tossed out to the far-right base was the notion that the Federal Reserve will just "print money" in order to pay for the health care plan.<br /> and that brings me to the third group:<br /><br />- They are tea-partying libertarians who think that EVERYTHING is done better in the private sector (note: <a href="http://www.ronpaul.com/2009-08-03/obamacare-could-bankrupt-america/">Ron Paul</a>) and want to eliminate public schools, etc. The powers behind this movement are neo-cons, but the frothing at the mouth base are angry white men who think that the government is helping less deserving others instead of them.<br /> If you want to understand these white anti-government types read Leonard Zeskind's book about them, or follow his articles on the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leonard-zeskind/rereading-the-tea-leaves_b_219658.html">tea-party</a> movement. Don't believe me? - note the guy in confederate t-shirt pictured <a href="http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6288293">here</a>, holding the sign reading "Abolish Federal Government."<br /><br />It's hard to imagine how single-payer advocates are going to make common cause with this crowd.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>rebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03384242746548343890noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8077580.post-59614390854635897342009-08-07T09:54:00.004-04:002009-08-07T23:16:01.358-04:00Town Halls - Angry Mobs? Astro-Turfers? and What About Single-Payer?If you look at most media coverage of this month's health-reform town hall meetings you would think that crowds are divided between people who support Obama's plan and the conservative opposition. This presentation, which Democrats also <a href="http://pol.moveon.org/sharkweek/">encourage</a>, lends credibility to the notion that Obama is proposing the only universal-health coverage plan on the table. What that doesn't tell you, is that the most organized presence at the Town-Hall meeting are real <a href="http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/08/a_word_on_demonstrators.html">grass-roots</a> <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sarah-van-gelder/single-payer-health-care_b_203779.html">single-payer</a> <a href="http://labornotes.org/node/2368">advocates</a>, who don't support Obama's plan <a href="http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/obama-health-care-plan-really-better-nothing">because it subsidizes private insurance companies.</a> <br /> Now that Pelosi has finally agreed to actually let the <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2009/08/05-8">house</a> debate and vote on single-payer plan, it seems even more reasonable that the discussion of Single-Payer at Town Hall meetings should be <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106969104">heard</a>, or at least reported.<br /> Despite the tea-partyish, anti-tax radicals' complaints, it does seem that people other than vetted plants are able to speak at these events (unlike the Bush meetings where people were kept out/expelled for wearing t-shirts or having a <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A10969-2005Mar29.html">bumper-sticker</a> on their car) but it's a shame that a bunch of wing-nuts are dominating the media coverage.<br /><br /> The Republicans and Democrats are both confusing the issue. On the hand, Republicans are arguing that the Obama health plan is a "trojan horse" for single-payer, which, according to most opinion polls, is actually what <a href="http://www.wpasinglepayer.org/PollResults.html">most people</a> want. On the other hand, Democrats argue that single-payer is politically impossible because of American public opinion, while simultaneously arguing that the "angry mobs" currently disrupting health-care town-halls are a bunch of corporate interests in disguise. The sad fact is that the health-care corporations are likely to win either way. IF ONLY "Obamacare" were the Trojan Horse that the Republicans fear.<br />Once again, Democrats are in a bind because their corporate ties leave them incapable of defending themselves against right-wing "populists" or supporting the truly populist movement for meaningful U.S. health care reform. <br /><br />***<br /> For those who are uninformed, "single payer" means replacing private insurance companies with national insurance that would cover everyone. It is not the same thing as "socialized medicine" because doctors and hospitals are still private businesses, not publicly owned in this model. It is what they have in <a href="http://www.denverpost.com/recommended/ci_12523427">Canada</a> and <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Story?id=4647483&page=1">France</a>. "Socialized medicine," where doctors are paid by the state is what they sort of have in <a href="http://www.nhscampaign.org/news/74/125/NHS-Unlimited.html">England.</a> (privatization has been slowly destroying the NHS)<br /><br />** Just added: Paul Krugman's column has a good analysis of both the mobs and the anti-mob commentary <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/07/opinion/07krugman.html?_r=1">here.</a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>rebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03384242746548343890noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8077580.post-45919539297280280422009-07-13T12:50:00.001-04:002009-07-13T12:52:23.770-04:00Hollyhocks - Planted Two Years Ago and Worth the Wait<div style='text-align:center;margin:0px auto 10px;'><a href='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOB1iCoiZqWsmykmzvUko-FbrCw7sE0NleoYzR_-REoK38YetTPtaPKKf8jzh7th-dAERDdxUNzJu1u_dolFAPHteuSf3tRliXD0r9mTFabRoSntYBr7-a86lbxx-HymJVetUI/s1600-h/P6300013.JPG'><img src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOB1iCoiZqWsmykmzvUko-FbrCw7sE0NleoYzR_-REoK38YetTPtaPKKf8jzh7th-dAERDdxUNzJu1u_dolFAPHteuSf3tRliXD0r9mTFabRoSntYBr7-a86lbxx-HymJVetUI/s320/P6300013.JPG' border='0' alt='' /></a> </div><div style='clear:both; text-align:CENTER'><a href='http://picasa.google.com/blogger/' target='ext'><img src='http://photos1.blogger.com/pbp.gif' alt='Posted by Picasa' style='border: 0px none ; padding: 0px; background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: initial; -moz-background-origin: initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: initial;' align='middle' border='0' /></a></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>rebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03384242746548343890noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8077580.post-33720764332534246682009-05-28T17:53:00.000-04:002009-05-28T17:53:36.426-04:00best street art project this year!<div style='text-align:center;margin:0px auto 10px;'><a href='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNDqy0SoRuMs7oHA9vA1TLP4NK6HlAklhQP0opfqpJCHqJuZmceZap0elzJBylouZAbWmKkSk9cv5dIb5iSZGmgFB5i5x_rTXxpjJ2gCLAvWpkdY0LLctQLbChpANJHeNKI43g/s1600-h/P5010070.JPG'><img src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNDqy0SoRuMs7oHA9vA1TLP4NK6HlAklhQP0opfqpJCHqJuZmceZap0elzJBylouZAbWmKkSk9cv5dIb5iSZGmgFB5i5x_rTXxpjJ2gCLAvWpkdY0LLctQLbChpANJHeNKI43g/s320/P5010070.JPG' border='0' alt='' /></a> </div><div style='clear:both; text-align:CENTER'><a href='http://picasa.google.com/blogger/' target='ext'><img src='http://photos1.blogger.com/pbp.gif' alt='Posted by Picasa' style='border: 0px none ; padding: 0px; background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: initial; -moz-background-origin: initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: initial;' align='middle' border='0' /></a></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>rebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03384242746548343890noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8077580.post-68180644971239346412009-05-15T10:05:00.000-04:002009-05-15T10:06:01.262-04:00If only you could smell it<div style='text-align:center;margin:0px auto 10px;'><a href='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSabGGGGyVN5GtI5zolw3zS4PmM-0yA9nuFGicN2G8yoKh6r8GiHrPI7lqBADSstSGrDUbnUgPN8owPphRdRFtW_bVHVWZ9en1Tu4gKgphOKB8-qmk9PPOGAGTLAYCWQKagMRb/s1600-h/P5150027.JPG'><img src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSabGGGGyVN5GtI5zolw3zS4PmM-0yA9nuFGicN2G8yoKh6r8GiHrPI7lqBADSstSGrDUbnUgPN8owPphRdRFtW_bVHVWZ9en1Tu4gKgphOKB8-qmk9PPOGAGTLAYCWQKagMRb/s320/P5150027.JPG' border='0' alt='' /></a> </div><br /> The gardenia has burst into bloom this week.<div style='clear:both; text-align:CENTER'><a href='http://picasa.google.com/blogger/' target='ext'><img src='http://photos1.blogger.com/pbp.gif' alt='Posted by Picasa' style='border: 0px none ; padding: 0px; background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 50%; -moz-background-clip: initial; -moz-background-origin: initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: initial;' align='middle' border='0' /></a></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"><p id="blogfeeds"><$BlogFeedsVertical$></p></div>rebhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03384242746548343890noreply@blogger.com1