I’ve been working on a secret project: a new book. From 2018 to 2024, I wrote a blog called Finite Eyes (the title comes from a poem by Emily Dickinson), where I explored ideas about education, teaching, learning, academic publishing, and open access resources. It was closely tied to my work […]
Francesca Wade’s new book, Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife, has been cause for some good writing about Stein recently. I have most appreciated Adam Thirlwell’s LRB essay “Devotion to the Cut” (more about Stein than about Wade’s book) and Ryan Ruby’s Bookforum review “In Search of Lost Stein”. Reading these pieces made me […]
In March 2024, I wrote a post declaring “There Is No Ethical Use of AI”. My point was not that you should not use AI. Personally, I try never to use it, but it’s getting more and more difficult as so many electronic products now don’t give you much option. […]
Little did we know, Kamala Harris’s secret weapon is laughter and joy. When Joe Biden stepped down as the Democratic nominee for President and Harris stepped up, there was, of course, a great sigh of relief from many people — with every public event, Biden had begun to look less […]
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 […]
This morning I was grading work for a 2-credit, half-semester course I teach called Cluster Learning Springboard. While going from one assignment to the next, I suddenly realized I was having an emotion I don’t usually associate with grading: joy. It was legitimately fun to see what the students had […]
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 […]
At this year’s MLA Convention, I am honored to be on a panel devoted to “Woolf’s 21st Century Academia”, a panel sponsored by the International Virginia Woolf Society. My presentation, “Poor Queer Studies for a Society of Outsiders” positions Woolf’s Three Guineas alongside Matt Brim’s Poor Queer Studies. However, once […]
Interdisciplinarity is one of those words, like openness and diversity, that many people in academia like to affirm as a positive value, but when it comes to building the structures and supports necessary for it to be a meaningful practice, things get complicated, challenging, frustrating. The idea of interdisciplinarity is […]
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 […]
1. The toll of the last year on my teaching, work, and life is evident in silence. I last wrote here in November, shortly before my school began an extended winter break. Though I had time to write here, and I had ideas about things to write, it was difficult […]