November 9, 2009

Free Books! — Fall Office Cleanup Contest

CONTEST OVER. CONGRATULATIONS TO THE WINNERS. As you can imagine happens at a book publishing company, we’ve got quite a lot of book lovers working here. And they collect books in their offices — a lot of great books. We’re...

November 6, 2009

Is academic parlance at all capable of saying something meaningful about pain?

We began the week, with a post about Kristiaan Versluys’s interview with American Fiction Notes and now end it with his piece on the Washington Post book blog The Short Stack. Versluys, who is the author of Out of the...

November 5, 2009

Jewish Terrorism in Israel

The recent arrest of Yaakov Teitel for allegedly carrying out a series of domestic acts of terror in Israel is a reminder of the persistent existence of Jewish terrorism. The accusations against Teitel include placing a pipe bomb near Professor...

November 4, 2009

Mark C. Taylor on Field Notes from Elsewhere

In a recent essay on Rorotoko and an interview on Objet Petit A, Mark Taylor explains some of the personal, literary, and philosophical influences that shaped his new work Field Notes from Elsewhere: Reflections on Living and Dying. As Taylor...

November 3, 2009

Has Barack Obama met the hopes of the world?

Over the weekend, the Guardian’s blog Comment is Free asked various experts about Obama’s performance a year after being elected president. Contributors to the forum include Patricia Williams (on race), Robert Barro (on the economy), David Landau (on the Middle...

November 2, 2009

"The great September 11 novel has not been written yet and maybe it never will."

Last week, critic Mark Athitakis’s blog American Fiction Notes featured an interview with Kristiaan Versluys author of Out of the Blue: September 11 and the Novel. In the interview, Versluys discusses some of the writers included in his study, including...

October 30, 2009

Is anger the key? Dr. Henry Kellerman weighs in

In a series of posts for the Psychology Today blog, Dr. Henry Kellerman, author of Dictionary of Psychopathology, argues that while love may the world go ’round, anger is the key. Anger, he suggests results from our efforts manage disappointment...

October 29, 2009

Event: R. Glenn Hubbard and others on development in Africa

Later today, R. Glenn Hubbard and William Duggan, author of The Aid Trap: Hard Truths About Ending Poverty, will be joined with others in a community forum on African aid and development. The event will be on the campus of...

October 29, 2009

Zoographies, Deconstruction, and Vegetarianism

We are following up on yesterday’s post on animal studies with a look at the group blog The Inhumanities, which just completed its discussion of Matthew Calarco’s Zoographies: The Question of the Animal from Heidegger to Derrida. Cary Wolfe, a...

October 28, 2009

Animal Studies round-up

The Chronicle Review recently featured a series of articles exploring the rise of animal studies in the academy. Articles include Creature Consciousness, which explores some of the theoretical and philosophical foundations of animal studies as well as the line that...

October 28, 2009

R. Glenn Hubbard, Jeffrey Sachs, and others on rebuilding war-torn socieites

Last Friday, R. Glenn Hubbard, author of The Aid Trap: Hard Truths About Ending Poverty, participated in a conference on how to rebuild war-torn societies, with specific attention paid to Africa and Afghanistan. Video portions of the conference, including remarks...

October 26, 2009

Archives from the New Yorker Theater

The New Yorker Theater was known not only for the movies it showed but for the people who came to the theater to watch everything from the newest New Wave film to a forgotten Hollywood classic. Patrons to the theater...