Looking back, we will never forget this day (May 3). Here we are, still in the time after the inauguration and before the wall, as Trump’s relentless abuses continue with the recent signing of the new transgender military ban. As you know, we have been meeting downtown every Monday evening. We sometimes tell you about […]
From January 2017 (“From this day forward, it’s only going to be America first, America first.”) to January 2018 (“America first, doesn’t mean America alone”), we have been suffering Trump’s monotonous solution meant to pivot from what he dubbed ‘this American carnage’ (aka anything prior to Trumptime). The doomsday phrase ‘American carnage’ sent journalists scurrying […]
Birds flying high you know how I feel – Nina Simone “Feeling Good” Why you wanna fly Blackbird You ain’t ever gonna fly Why you wanna fly Blackbird You ain’t ever gonna fly – Nina Simone, “Blackbird” The tension between the bird’s desire to fly and the failure of its flight in Nina Simone’s ‘Feeling […]
The ancient Greek reader didn’t own his own voice; the act of audible reading dispossessed him of it. “If he lends his voice to these mute signs, the text appropriates it: his voice becomes the voice of the written text,” Svenbro stresses. “He has lent his voice, relinquished it.” Is there a debt to repay […]
You are teaching an upper-level ancient Greek class on Homer’s Odyssey and you reach the ninth book of the poem and Odysseus’ re-telling of his wanderings to at the court of the Phaeacians. You start the class by telling the small group of students that even though this part of the poem is devoted to […]
You are team-teaching a class with an artist, in which both you and your fellow teacher received full credit, called Free Us from the Western Canon and you are currently working on a project in which the students recreate Plato’s Symposium along the model of MoMA’s first “Supposium”, held in March 2014 under the title Beyond Default […]
Over the past few days, several things have occurred that have set me to worrying (somewhat more than usual) about the future of the university. I am not only thinking about some immediate and disturbing developments at my own specific institution (Ohio State University), but also about the very survival of the university as an […]
If you’re interested in Plato, you’re reading the wrong book. If you’re interested in difficult childhoods, sexual misadventures, aesthetics, cultural history, and the reasons that a club sandwich and other meals—including breakfast—have remained in the memory of the present writer, keep reading. —from Yvonne Rainer Feelings Are Facts: a life, 2013. 496 pp. | 7 […]
I just returned from a quick visit north to Cleveland where I visited two brilliant exhibitions: Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks at the Cleveland Museum of Art and Adam Pendleton: Becoming Imperceptible at MOCA. Jean-Michel Basquiat’s recourse to the ancient cultures of Greece and Rome is well-known and documented and it was exciting to explore up close […]
