Here Come the Leaping Lesbians

For each academic year since I’ve become a professor, the end of classes has been punctuated by a rock show. I have fond memories of sitting on the Carnegie-Mellon lawn in Pittsburgh, lazily watching a lukewarm set by Superchunk. Another year we drove to Cleveland to watch Shiner (one of my favorite bands at the …

The point being made. . .

I just finished reading a comprehensive exam answer in which the student refers to Lewis Mumford’s notion of “biotechnics,” which he elaborates at the end of The Myth of the Machine. For Mumford, biotechnics is an attempt to subordinate technological development to the rules of life instead of the rules of math, an attempt as …

New Rules: TV Edition (Spoilers)

1. (24) If you have a TV series where a character plays the president, you cannot have two different vice presidents conduct 25th amendment proceedings to usurp two different presidents in two different seasons. 2. (Ugly Betty) If you have a gay character in a TV series who is coming out to his mother, does …

The Week of “I Can’t Believe I Get to Work Here”

That was the week inbetween my trip to Chicago and my trip to New York. John Durham Peters was in residence was in residence here and I had much fun with him. Georgina Born came and gave a talk on a Thursday afternoon. I had a great time with my grad students. My undergrad class …