Monthly Archives: April 2012

Formalism and the article

Getting a Ph.D. is pretty hard. You have to amass a lot of information, but beyond that, you have to learn a specific language–not just professional jargon, but the form of academic discourse. That form is usually casually taught, by experience, rather than formally, as a set of precepts. But there is a form, and […]

April 25, 2012 – 4:11 pm | By admin | Posted in History, teaching | Comments (0)

The Humane Sensibility

Years ago, I can’t remember exactly where, I read a Norman Mailer argument that cops feel nervous and anxious even at traffic stops not simply because there’s danger, but because at that moment the cop is confronting his fundamental desire to be the criminal. People who go into police work are people who feel the […]

April 10, 2012 – 12:26 pm | By admin | Posted in History | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (4)

No thing’s any good

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” (Hamlet) “A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one, it comes as sincerely from the author’s soul.” (Aldous Huxley) With those words in mind, consider the music of Shooby Taylor, “the Human Horn” Stout Hearted Men Lift […]

April 3, 2012 – 11:49 am | By admin | Posted in History, Music, teaching | Comments (1)