Things which now get buzzed as “AI” (“artificial intelligence”) — large language models, statistical prediction software, image generators, etc. — have infiltrated and infested various industries, tools, and discourses with remarkable speed and gobsmacking hype. AI (I’m not going to keep up the scare quotes, but hope you know that, […]
Since the title of my recent book is The Last Vanishing Man (and the title story includes historically-accurate descriptions of stage illusions), it shouldn’t be a surprise that I love everything having to do with magic — the lore, the history, the illusions, the beliefs in some sort of “real” […]
Today, I gathered with friends, colleagues, acquaintances, former students, former teachers, and former staff members at the New Hampton School, the high school I graduated from in 1994 and then returned to for my first job after college, a job I planned to stay at for a year or two […]
In The New Yorker, there is a long and depressing article titled “The End of the English Major” by Nathan Heller, an article that explores the fast decline in enrollment in English majors and classes at schools throughout the United States. It’s well researched, and doesn’t entirely fall into the […]
The ChatGPT handwringing of late has bothered me, not least because it is cloaked in a kind of shock, like the domain of higher education has suddenly been sullied by this profane technology. But babes, it was always already here. —Brenna Clarke Gray I tried to ask ChatGPT to write […]
“We’re in a bad time for everybody. There are very few models as to our way to be drawn upon in any community. There certainly are no states that one could look to and say, ‘A revolution has occurred here; they’re acting better toward people.’ And the religious are going […]
1. Take a moment, settle yourself, and note your immediate emotional response to these words: kindnessjoycontemplationgenerositylovepeace Now think about them in the context of your work. Would your work be better if there were more of these things? Do you feel that they are relevant to what you do every […]
He is the corporate Silence: dread him not! No power hath he of evil in himself… —Edgar Allan Poe Reading Sean Michael Morris’s blog post titled “On Silence: Humanising Digital Pedagogy”, I am struck by the anecdote he begins with, about returning to the dating scene for the first time […]
Hope Long ago, when the Earth was young, I enrolled in a poetry workshop led by Liz Ahl, and one of the assignments was to write a “how-to poem” — that is, a poem instructing readers on how to do something. I wrote a poem called “How to Have Qualms”, […]
Matt Brim’s Poor Queer Studies is the most exciting book about academia that I have read since Cathy Davidson’s The New Education, and for me personally it is even more exciting than Davidson’s wonderful volume because Poor Queer Studies is about the world I have spent much of my life […]
The coronavirus pandemic has revealed many fissures and failures in U.S. society, some of which have long been obvious, but were more easily ignored in better times. For instance, the pandemic has revealed just how much the U.S. power structure stands opposed to the concept of the public good. There […]
Buildings and bridgesare made to bend in the windto withstand the worldthat’s what it takes.All that steel and stoneis no match for the air, my friendwhat doesn’t bend breakswhat doesn’t bend breaks… —Ani Di Franco How Does Rigor Mean? Among educators, the word rigor often has a talismanic power. That […]
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