Looking at Children in News Photographs
Published: Jun 23rd, 2018
The second time this news photograph appeared on my screen, I began to look at it more closely. You’ve likely seen this handout photo from the U.S. Department of Health… Read More
Blog 
Frosted Commencement Concoction
Published: May 15th, 2018
It’s that graduation saturation time of year again when our students, family members, and friends commence. They launch; they embark; they set forth; they begin anew. Many will receive a commencement greeting… Read More
Casting Hearts: The Yeats Effect
Published: Feb 14th, 2018
If hearts are trump for German minimalist band Trio, hearts were more complicated for Irish poet W. B. Yeats. Dolores O’Riordan captured some of that complexity in her lyrics to… Read More
On Greek Hospitality, Mythic Incarnations & Everyday Life
Published: Dec 24th, 2017
It’s Christmas Eve and I’ve just returned from Greece, where I spoke at the conference Politics of Space and the Humanities in Thessaloniki. It was my first encounter with that… Read More
Sonic Southern Gothic, Ghosts & Graveyards
Published: Oct 31st, 2017
It’s Halloween. FEST 16 just painted my downtown black with underground musicians and punk rock fans. And I’m 200 miles south of Flannery O’Connor’s childhood home. So I’m thinking about… Read More
Clues about Dementia Fiction
Published: Oct 10th, 2017
This week I read a story from a last month’s New Yorker at 30,000 feet – Edwidge Danticat’s remarkable “Sunrise, Sunset.” Shuttling from one airport to another, crossing state lines,… Read More
Playboy and Postwar Masculinities
Published: Sep 28th, 2017
With Hugh Hefner’s passing, the sexual revolutions of the 1950s and 60s are trending again in the news. The fundamental revolution of Playboy wasn’t its nude female models, but its… Read More
The Power Line-Gang
Published: Sep 14th, 2017
I don’t hail from Robert Frost‘s neck of the woods. But here in my North Central Florida woods after Hurricane Irma, I’m thinking about Frost’s poem “The Line-Gang” from his… Read More
Kooped Up with Flannery O’Connor
Published: Aug 3rd, 2017
Flannery O’Connor departed from this earthly life 92 years ago today. I find myself far more interested in her arrivals. FOC is arriving in my inbox an awful lot these… Read More
Kit, Tom and Jerry: The Poet Who Foretold Cartoons
Published: Feb 15th, 2017
For the Mouse is a creature of great personal valour. For this is a true case–Cat takes female mouse, male mouse will not depart, but stands threatening and daring. Plot… Read More