January 7, 2012, 07:49 PM ET

Pannapacker at MLA: The Come-to-DH Moment

By William Pannapacker

SEATTLE

Followers of this topic will recall Stanley Fish’s recent piece in The New York Times in which he describes the Digital Humanities as the “new dispensation.”

As I read it, Stanley Fish wants the Digital Humanities to get off his lawn. But the concerns that made the MLA so (in)famous in the 80s and 90s—race, gender, empire, sexuality, class—have not been displaced by DH. As Fish observes, those concerns have been “absorbed into the mainstream” of the profession. They are the water in which we swim. The “rough beast” of Digital Humanities is the offspring of that generation: It moves forward with their concerns through collaboration and the application of new tools—enabling new questions, of course—but also responding, as they must, to the perennial questions of the humanities. I suspect for most academics, the “come to DH... Read More

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January 6, 2012, 05:16 PM ET

Monday's Poem: 'Ephemeris,' by Claudia Emerson

The household sells in a morning, but when they cannot let the house itself go for the near-nothing it brings at auction, the children, all beyond their middle years, carry her back to it, the mortgage now a dead pledge of patience. Almost emptied, there is little evidence that she ever lived in it: a rented hospital bed in the kitchen where the breakfast table stood, a borrowed coffee pot, chair, a cot for the daughter she knows, and then does not. But the world seems almost right, the near- familiar curtainless windows, the room neat, shadow-severed, her body’s thinness, like her gown’s, a comfort now. Perhaps she thinks it death and the place a lesser heaven, the hereafter a bed, the night to herself, rain percussive in the gutters— enough. But like hers, the light sleep of spring has worsened—forsythia blooming in what should be deep winter outside the... Read More

January 6, 2012, 02:55 PM ET

Pannapacker at the MLA: An Emerging Consensus in the Humanities

By William Pannapacker

SEATTLE

As you know from yesterday’s Chronicle coverage, the theme of this year’s MLA convention is “Language, Literature, and Learning,” following last year’s theme, “The Academy in Hard Times.” The job seekers are still desperate. Slightly more positions were advertised this year than last year, but this year’s hiring season can’t be described as a “recovery.” At least we are no longer in free fall. It’s a small comfort. Meanwhile, the percentage of tenure-stream faculty is still going down. Faculty governance is being eroded. Humanists are portrayed as sherry-swilling radicals in taxpayer-supported sinecures (even though most of us are adjuncts and grad students). Language programs, in particular, are on the chopping block for lack of students. Year after year, we’re on the receiving end of a stern lesson like the one... Read More

January 5, 2012, 10:19 PM ET

Of the Iowa Caucus and Vomiting

Courtesy of Mrs. Berlinerblau, I was afflicted on Tuesday night--the night of the GOP Iowa Caucus--by the most debilitating, vomit-positive, 36-hour stomach virus known to medical science. The illness rendered me not merely nauseous, but delusional. One of my delusions was of a boxer speedbag-punching my stomach as his trainer (named "Mack" in my reverie) exhorted him with the words: "F&^& him up, Jake. F%^% him up good." Assaulted as such, I was not able to post about the spectacular goings-on in Iowa. I console myself with the hope that my hyper-contagious virus has made its way to the Hawkeye state by now (and, in defiance of basic principles of immunology, right back to Mrs. Berlinerblau as well). The niceness of Iowans notwithstanding, I am quite frankly tired of hearing about them: their county fairs, their beef jerky prowess, their godforsaken food-on-a-stick culinary hoe downs.... Read More

January 5, 2012, 09:16 PM ET

The End of War?

In a fortuitous coincidence, I read advance proofs of John Horgan’s book, The End of War—published this month by McSweeney’s—on the same day that President Obama announced that all U.S. troops will be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of this year. (The end of a war?) Horgan is a science journalist who teaches at Stevens Institute of Technology, writes regularly for The Chronicle Review, and has given us some notable musings: The End of Science, Rational Mysticism, and The Undiscovered Mind. It turns out that he’s also long had a consuming interest in war—more precisely, a healthy hatred of it—and in The End of War he shares this and, more importantly, makes a strong case … not so much that war will end shortly, but that it might, or rather, that at least it could, if people take his argument seriously. I do. And I hope others do, too. Horgan is mostly concerned about ... Read More

January 5, 2012, 11:46 AM ET

Michael Warner's Queer Essay

Here at The Chronicle, Michael Warner published an essay on queer theory that is causing quite a stir. The essay, "Queer and Then," begins with the end of Duke University's famed Series Q, an ending that signals for Warner an "occasion for taking stock." Which is exactly what Warner does. He discusses the beginnings of queer theory, its current permutations, and its continuing potential. Indeed, Warner is quite clear that he is not declaring an end to queer theory. He tells us that it is still necessary, that we are hardly postqueer, and that even in the writings of those who wish to distance themselves from queer theory, such as Jasbir Puar's Terrorist Assemblages, there is a queer theoretical perspective. So why, then, is this particular essay being read as a sign that queer theory is dead and done? In my world, this is the conversation that is going on on email lists, Facebook pages,... Read More

January 5, 2012, 10:34 AM ET

Taking Down the Christmas Tree

It is that time of year. Cold and gray in the parts of the world I inhabit. Time to dismantle the Chrisnukkah decorations, the menorah and the hot pink artificial tree, the lights, the pretty, glittery balls full of possibility and take stock of another year gone by and another year begun. I will admit to hating the holidays, particularly the Shopocalypse in which people pepper spray one another to get more cheap stuff and shoppers die during stampedes at large box stores. But this year the holidays seemed to so effectively take the Christ out of Christmas (and the sun out of Solstice and the miracle out of Hanukkah and so on), that it left me even more Grinch-y than usual. And then, a woman around the corner from my apartment in Brooklyn was set ablaze, apparently because she owed someone a couple of thousand dollars, and in that horrendous act I found something I didn't expect: my... Read More

January 4, 2012, 04:22 PM ET

Can a Woman Become President of the United States?

Well sure, many would say. After all, in this election cycle and the last, a viable woman candidate emerged—one a Democrat and the other a Republican-to run for the presidency. But, it’s worth thinking about the question beyond whether a woman can raise money to campaign for the presidency of the United States or whether she can win a primary. Can she become a major party’s nominee? Unlike peer Western countries, like the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Israel (despite its location, Israel is counted as a Western economy), and Germany, or developing economies, such Brazil, Argentina, and India, we have no past and no foreseeable future with a woman as president or prime leader. To be clear, there are at least 20 women currently serving as the prime leader of countries around the world—Switzerland, Germany, Finland, Argentina, Australia, Thailand, Liberia, Kosovo, and Brazil... Read More

January 3, 2012, 03:00 PM ET

Brainstorm's Top 10 Posts of 2011

The Chronicle is proud to have among its current Brainstorm roster and illustrious alumni a pioneering group of nimble-minded and sometimes necessarily thick-skinned bloggers. On many readers' first day back after winter break, we wanted to offer a quick nostalgic glance at 2011's 10 most-read Brainstorm posts. (Or at least most-clicked. One can only speculate whether David Barash's first post on the mysteries of the female human nonlactating breast benefited—in garnering roughly several times the average daily readership of all dozen-plus bloggers combined—from its title and phrases such as "buttocks substitutes.") Along with the day-to-day tribulations of academic life (see Numbers 3 and 10, for instance), a rule of thumb for Brainstormers, it seems, might be the opposite of the old chestnut about discussing sex, politics, and religion. The editors thank Brainstorm's readers and... Read More

January 3, 2012, 11:52 AM ET

California's Higher-Education Disaster

There's no doubt that the ongoing crisis of governance in California and resulting disinvestment in the University of California system is deplorable. But this recent Washington Post dispatch from UC-Berkeley doesn't exactly paint a picture of a campus in deep crisis:

Star faculty take mandatory furloughs. Classes grow perceptibly larger each year. Roofs leak; e-mail crashes. One employee mows the entire campus. Wastebaskets are emptied once a week. Some professors lack telephones. ... The state share of Berkeley’s operating budget has slipped since 1991 from 47 percent to 11 percent. Tuition has doubled in six years, and the university is admitting more students from out of state willing to pay a premium for a Berkeley degree ... the number of students for every faculty member has risen from 15 to 17 in five years. Many classes are oversubscribed, leaving students to scramble for...