Like others involved in the labor of social reproduction, educators are under particular pressure to embody and transmit the values of power—which seeks through their labor to reproduce itself and the circumstances most favorable to it. The degree to which … [Read more...]

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about depictions of U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. I’ve been surfing the Internet, reading blog posts about various forms of military activity. I’ve been reading coverage by print journalists, including Trish Wood’s What Was … [Read more...]

I finished The Iliad. As if it is two books, two tales: the one that is enthralled with Violence Variations, and the other that depicts life, emotion (other than battle-glee), domesticity beleaguered--whether next the "beaked ships" or within the walled … [Read more...]

What an epic of attrition is the Iliad! And what a matchless paeon to war's eroticism--between the way in which the dressing of the hero's beautiful sacrificial body is described, and the way in which the text "loves" that body's destruction, with its butcher's … [Read more...]

The writing program in which I teach has decided to adopt a "foundational" literature curriculum, sort of a Great Books Lite, served up with multicultural condiments--a smattering of Koran, tidbits of Japanese poetry. Most of the stuff is by deceased Caucasian … [Read more...]