Why we should understand, and even encourage,
a certain sort of erotic intensity between
student and professor

By William Deresiewicz 

A professor is walking across campus one afternoon when he spots a student coming the other way. “Excuse me, young man,” the professor says, “am I walking north or south?” “You’re walking north, professor,” the student replies. “In that case,” the professor says, “I must have eaten lunch already.” 

This is not a joke anyone would think to make up these days. The absentminded professor, that kindly old figure, is long gone. A new image has taken his place, one that bespeaks not only our culture’s hostility to the mind, but also its desperate confusion about the nature of love

Look at recent movies about academics, and a remarkably consistent pattern emerges. InThe Squid and the Whale (2005), Jeff Daniels plays an English professor and failed writer who sleeps with his students, neglects his wife, and bullies his children. In One True Thing(1998), William Hurt plays an English professor and failed writer who sleeps with his students, neglects his wife, and bullies his children. In Wonder Boys (2000), Michael Douglas plays an English professor and failed writer who sleeps with his students, has just been left by his third wife, and can’t commit to the child he’s conceived in an adulterous affair with his chancellor. Daniels’s character is vain, selfish, resentful, and immature. Hurt’s is vain, selfish, pompous, and self-pitying. Douglas’s is vain, selfish, resentful, and self-pitying. Hurt’s character drinks. Douglas’s drinks, smokes pot, and takes pills. All three men measure themselves against successful writers (two of them, in Douglas’s case; his own wife, in Daniels’s) whose presence diminishes them further. In We Don’t Live Here Anymore(2004), Mark Ruffalo and Peter Krause divide the central role: both are English professors, and both neglect and cheat on their wives, but Krause plays the arrogant, priapic writer who seduces his students, Ruffalo the passive, self-pitying failure. A Love Song For Bobby Long(2004) divides the stereotype a different way, with John Travolta as the washed-up, alcoholic English professor, Gabriel Macht as the blocked, alcoholic writer. 

Not that these figures always teach English. Kevin Spacey plays a philosophy professor — broken, bitter, dissolute — in The Life of David Gale (2003). Steve Carell plays a self-loathing, suicidal Proust scholar in Little Miss Sunshine (2006). Both characters fall for graduate students, with disastrous results. And while the stereotype has gained a new prominence of late, its roots go back at least a few decades. Many of its elements are in place in Oleanna (1994), in Surviving Desire (1991), and, with John Mahoney’s burnt-out communications professor, in Moonstruck (1987). In fact, all of its elements are in place inTerms of Endearment (1983), where Jeff Daniels took his first turn playing a feckless, philandering English professor. And of course, almost two decades before that, there wasWho’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?  Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a You Tube video regarding Chicago’s March/Protest regarding the Yes Vote on California’s Prop 8.  many cities had marches/protests, and I’m grateful that my city participated in a march/protest.  This is a little move of injustice given the returns of the election.

In a time when marriage is such a hot button issue, Keith Olbermann makes some important distinctions and contributions.  Olbermann provides us all with a critical response regarding how society should be viewing the framework of marriage.  Please give this YouTube video a watch/a listen.

Migration, Christianity and Identity Construction in the 19th and 20th centuries

19-20 November 2009 CALL FOR PAPERS

Recent decades have seen a renewed historiographic interest in migration. In order to give a fuller account of the complexity of this phenomenon, the classical institutional and socio-economic analytic framework is being increasingly broadened through the use of other explicatory variables such as cultural value-patterns, group dynamics, forms of (shared) self-understanding and - more in general - different lifestyles. In this way researchers aim to assess the processes through which migrants have ‘accommodated’ the legacy of their original milieu to the requirements of their new surroundings, and thus have given meaning to their new life-paths.Seen from this perspective, questions pertaining to the interaction between religion and migration become particularly pertinent, especially when the question of identity-construction takes a central place. Religion seems to fulfil an important role in many identification processes by means of which migrants give meaning to their new surroundings - processes in confrontation/synergy with the new milieu in which they are establishing themselves (which resulted often in strong mosaic identities). Given the present common view in which recent migration is often represented as a ‘problem’, it has been all too easy to assume - often with reference to a bygone, largely homogeneous Christian area - that the integration of intra-European migrations (19th century - years 1950) took place largely without problems. Drawing on a context-sensitive analysis, however, historians have now established that these migrants often stubbornly clung to (or were encouraged to cling to) the religious and cultural frames of reference from their country of origin.With the Migration, Christianity and Identity-construction workshop, in the framework of /Culture, Religion, Otherness. Flemish/Belgian migrants in Northern France and Paris (1850-1960)/, a project of the Research Foundation - Flanders, attention will be paid to the many aspects of the interaction between Christianity and migration in Western Europe. Here the focus will be on the old (mainly Christian) intra-European migration flows.

1. Space will be allotted to contributions that offer insight into the role of religion in the identification processes themselves. What did this role mean in concrete terms for the newcomer? And for those who followed? To what extent was religion a concrete help in the construction of a new life in a foreign country? To what extent was religion a source of tension, both within the migrant community and in relation to the /others/? And what was the relation between religious identification and other identifications (nationality, gender, family, neighbourhood, social-economic position…)? What was the role of such identification in the daily network and life of the immigrant?
2. An unmistakable part of the interaction between Christianity and migration is the translocal/transnational religious framework that was set up by the countries of origin for migrants in the various establishment-structures in Western Europe. Different denominations actively worked for a wide range of nationalities. To what extent were these organisations an obstructive or facilitating factor for integration/assimilation? What relation did these initiatives have to the host country and to the country of origin? Were they considered inimical or favourable by migrants, the host population, the different levels of government, the competing or related denominations? What unifying (and protective) strategies did denominations develop in the interest of the immigrants? What were the actual objectives and how did these relate to the actual results? What can we learn from the impact on the second or third generation?
3. The workshop will also offer an opportunity for contributions that focus on the _self-image and the self-understanding of migrants, based on ego-sources (diaries, correspondence, autobiographies, oral history, …).
4. Also welcome are historical contributions that, within the thematic framework, offer approaches for (methodological) renewal and the questioning of concepts.

Read the rest of this entry »

Decision ‘08 is now decided.  Senator Barack H. Obama will now be President Barack H. Obama!  I am witnessing our first black [mixed] president!  While I would be extremely interested in the race and class analysis of this election, I am celebrating that the ultimate color line has not only been crossed but has been transcended in this election!  This decision is major!  Perhaps this is the practical expression of race/class analysis!  If not, it is a start to asking or crafting good questions.

I post this again…in the spirit of liberation and in the spirit of the life affirming YES that Womanist Theologian Emilie Townes has but also in response to the the life affirming YES that our President Elect has: “yes we can!”  It is resounding…