Literature in motion at the Women’s March on Washington, the day after the inauguration: “But protests run on words as well as actions. ‘Your silence will not protect you’: Audre Lorde said it forty years ago, in a talk given at the Modern Language Association’s annual conference and later published as the essay ‘The Transformation… Continue reading »
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Spirits of the Season
…The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever. Whether these creatures faded into mist, or mist enshrouded them, he could not tell. But they, and their spirit-voices faded together; and the night became as it had been when he… Continue reading »
Data Love and Internet Hell
I have the lead essay (“Internet of Stings”) in the Dec. 2nd Times Literary Supplement, writing about four books that lay out the risks (and a few of the rewards) of the way we live online: “In this post-factual, truth-averse era, many of the destinations that draw us online have become unsafe spaces, hostile and treacherous,… Continue reading »
Six Degrees of Voltaire
American culture loves results and products–“deliverables,” to borrow current managerial parlance. (“Deliverables” is the latest entry in my ever-expanding dictionary of the buzzwords that have taken over our working lives.) When time and money are on the line, the final question tends to be “What do you have to show for that?” That attitude puts humanities research… Continue reading »
Rag and Bone Shops
Victorianists! I need your help. I’m on the hunt for information about how people in the Victorian era thought about, managed, catalogued, and got rid of their stuff. And by stuff I mean household possessions: clothes, books, cookware, toys, papers and whatnot–the bric-a-brac and etceteras of daily life. I’m looking for accounts of the trade in… Continue reading »
