It’s the usual practice for bloggers and independent scholars to pick a favorite topic, whether it’s World War II history or butterflies or anime or prog rock, and circle around it for a lifetime. It’s a time-tested method for gaining expertise, creating blogs, and joining a community. My way is that of Odysseus resisting the …
Tag Archives: online courses
Introduction to the New Testament
I bought my first Christian Bible at a used bookstore. It felt like buying porn. It was difficult to overcome my reluctance to read the New Testament, almost a superstitious avoidance of a bunch of words on the page. I was only willing to confront the text through the prophylactic of an academic experience, done …
Don’t Call Me Woke. I’m Sleepless.
Adapted from 2015 journals “Cast down your bucket where you are.” – Booker T. Washington, 1895. Borrowing a stack of books on African American History. The university librarian at the desk turns deliberately and carefully through all the pages, annotating existing marks. The unspoken message: If you damage these pages, it’s on you. As difficult …
The weed-out course
What’s your story? We drove from Pittsburgh to Mazatlan for Spring Break. Four college sophomores in a Jeepster. 7,800 miles in 10 days. Adventure, danger, romance, comedy, la tequila, las drogas, una pistola. No arrests, no fatalities. You want a story? Oh, we’ve got a story. But not yet. What’s your major? I started Carnegie …
Thoughts on AI Art
Based on “Anonymity of a Murmur” how do you view/what are your thoughts on all the AI art out there? Apostasy X Fnord “Anonymity of a Murmur” was posted on Wednesday, but I’ve already moved on from Foucault and it’s too late to turn back now. But you’re in luck, sister, because we are now …
Anonymity of a Murmur
“I think that, as our society changes, at the very moment when it is in the process of changing, the author-function will disappear, and in such a manner that fiction and its polysemic texts will once again function according to another mode, but still with a system of constraint—one which will no longer be the …
Introduction to Theory of Literature, Part 1
Lecture 2 Foucault, Barthes, and the death of the author. I am a writer (for hire) of commercial texts. An author of discourses subject to ownership. Am I alive? [Two weeks later.] Lecture 3 Complicated stuff, glad to have a guide. Envisioning a multimedia accompaniment to the ideas of hermeneutic circles and other hard-to-grasp philosophical …
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My Yale Years
As a high school senior in 1987, I wanted to go to Yale but didn’t have the grades or perfect SATs or the right extracurricular activities or a good application essay or a chance in hell. What I did have was the belief that I belonged with the elite. My belief wasn’t entirely unjustified, as …