Published: May 29th, 2016
Imagine arranging your students in vertical rather than horizontal space. Imagine them traversing the tower stairs in iambic rhythm, working the meter into muscle memory. Imagine composing a carillon piece from sonnet forms,… Read More
Published: May 8th, 2016
I’m back from a mind-expanding conference at McGill University, “Portals, Gates: The Classics in Modernist Translation,” co-organized by Miranda Hickman (English) and Lynn Kozak (History and Classical Studies). The conference… Read More
Published: Apr 6th, 2016
I’m teaching The Bell Jar this week in my “Desperate Domesticity” class on the American 1950s. And what strikes me this time around is English major Esther Greenwood’s adventures in physics and… Read More
Published: Mar 13th, 2016
Now that Downton Abbey has aired its final episode in the U.S., I can finally air a pet theory of mine: Lady Edith was surely inspired by the legendary Dame Edith… Read More
Published: Feb 20th, 2016
In the wake of Mad Men, mid-century American advertising seems to open portals to a domestic past that stands still. Nuclear families gather round Carousel slide projectors that never advance.… Read More
Published: Jan 22nd, 2016
I’m teaching my “Desperate Domesticity” course on the American 1950s, nicknamed “From Cheever to Beaver” by a former student. And I find myself thinking about cookbooks and gender performance as I… Read More
Published: Dec 19th, 2015
If you could make a cocktail from the lyrics to American university Alma Mater songs, you’d shake one part praise hymn with one part lofty love poem–and one part Mother’s Day Card.… Read More
Published: Nov 24th, 2015
PREAMBLE In the past two weeks I’ve team-taught a polymers unit for Materials Science Engineering, and I’ve presented a cultural analysis for the Modernist Studies Association. Does this odd convergence… Read More
Published: Oct 23rd, 2015
The Harn Museum of Art, located here at UF, is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. So I’ve been musing on how the Harn has inspired my recent teaching. Although… Read More
Published: Oct 16th, 2015
Today is Oscar Wilde’s birthday, and my American tribute marks the occasion by revisiting the high style Wilde brought to the frontiers of the television Western and men’s fashion magazines in… Read More