I am often dismayed by the news about the news these days. If you care about newspapers and what they do–and you should–it’s terrible to watch as reporters and editors get laid off and coverage of such frivolities as foreign affairs and culture shrinks. Every morning, when I open the front door to collect the… Continue reading »
Blog
Safety in Numbers?
Humanists rejoice! The prototype of the Humanities Indicators has been unveiled. What are the Indicators? Lots and lots of data about the humanities in American life, inside academe and out. Why should you care? I explain here (subscription, sorry): When it comes to hard data about what they do, policy makers and educators in the… Continue reading »
Come Back From San Francisco (MLA 2008)
I couldn’t get that Magnetic Fields song out of my head for about a week (thanks, Mark). Turns out that San Francisco can be all that pretty, no matter what Stephin Merritt says. That may explain why I enjoyed the 2008 Modern Language Association conference, held in SF Dec. 27-30, more than the 2007 gathering… Continue reading »
MLA-Bound
Beginning tomorrow, 10,000 literature scholars, more or less, descend on San Francisco for three days to hash out the latest (?) in lit-crit and the dismal job market. I get to cover it for the Chronicle. Wish me luck. If you happen to be there, drop me a note (jhowarddc AT gmail DOT com or… Continue reading »
The Writers’ Friend
I got to spend some time recently at Georgetown University’s Office of Scholarly and Literary Publications. Informally known as Booklab, it’s a “literary boutique” run by Carole Fungaroli Sargent, who combines a deep knowledge of publishing with an intuitive-and-informed sense of how writers work and what they need. An author herself, Carole also has a… Continue reading »
