Blog Subscribe to RSS Feed

Five Things about Mina Loy’s “Songs to Joannes”

Five Things about Mina Loy’s “Songs to Joannes”

Published: Feb 6th, 2019

Maker of poems, paintings and assemblages, designer of household objects, Mina Loy is a fitting figure to bring into my seminar Modernist Studies & Pedagogy. Her creations are magnets of modernity.… Read More

Tidying Up with Gertrude Stein

Tidying Up with Gertrude Stein

Published: Jan 22nd, 2019

Tidiness is not a delicacy… Gertrude Stein, Tender Buttons What serendipity teaching Tender Buttons again during a week I’m also watching the Netflix sensation Tidying Up with Marie Kondo. Doyennes… Read More

West or Bust: Culture Clash in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

West or Bust: Culture Clash in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Published: Dec 3rd, 2018

I’m two-thirds through the Coen Brothers’ latest take on the Wild West, their Netflix production The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (see the trailer here.) And thus far, the image that sticks with me… Read More

What If my Students Don’t Like a Text?

What If my Students Don’t Like a Text?

Published: Nov 16th, 2018

As my unit’s Director of Graduate Student Teaching, I write an advice column for my staff. I generate my topics from their questions and my own experience. Here’s this week’s… Read More

ArchiTextures: Stories and Stanzas

ArchiTextures: Stories and Stanzas

Published: Nov 11th, 2018

When a building stands complete and in use, it seems to want to tell you about the adventure of its making. – Louis I. Kahn What manner of building shall… Read More

Frankenstein Mandemonium Quiz

Frankenstein Mandemonium Quiz

Published: Oct 30th, 2018

I vowed to myself that I would read Frankenstein by Halloween this year, the bicentennial of Mary Shelley’s debut novel. (The only Shelley my college professors assigned was Percy Bysshe.) I’m… Read More

Tetrameter Verse Against Pumpkin Spice

Tetrameter Verse Against Pumpkin Spice

Published: Oct 23rd, 2018

It’s that time of year when Pumpkin Spice flavor invades our beverages. What’s a professor of poetry studies to do? Write iambic tetrameter couplets against these intrusions, of course. Enjoy.… Read More

Puck Talk: The +/- Factor

Puck Talk: The +/- Factor

Published: Oct 6th, 2018

It’s opening night for my hockey club, the Tampa Bay Lightning; my preferred sports season has begun. What’s not to love about NHL hockey? It’s fast. It flows. It’s equal parts… Read More

Athena / Mentor

Athena / Mentor

Published: Aug 25th, 2018

Counting back from August to April: I hooded another PhD student, I attended my son’s college Commencement, and I received a Faculty Doctoral Mentoring award. So I’m thinking about mentoring… Read More

How to Talk to Punks at Parties

How to Talk to Punks at Parties

Published: Jul 3rd, 2018

My favorite movie so far this summer? How to Talk to Girls at Parties, released in the U.S. in late May. I teach a “PostPunk Cultures” course on the British… Read More