Running Across America
It’s Not All About the Running Wake up, measure body weight, pack gear, run marathon, measure body weight, set up camp, go to sleep. Wake up, collect urine…
Tag: America
Style, bad prose, and Corey Robin’s theory of public intellectuals
Ten years ago, before I started doing research in France, I wrote my MA thesis about the politics of “bad writing” in the American humanities. Empirically, my major…
Working-class in academe
When the Minnesota Review changed editors a few years ago, the old back issues disappeared from their website. Fortunately, one of my favorite essays, Diane Kendig‘s “Now I Work In…
Affiliation is power (without irony)
As many of my readers probably know, the big controversy in my field this year (in American cultural anthropology) has been about a proposed boycott of Israeli academic institutions, essentially…
Academic hands
Jeffrey Williams wrote in his excellent essay Smart that academics’ hands are remarkable for their contrast with working-class hands: My father has a disconcerting habit, especially for people…
Affiliation in an age of precarity
If you submit an article to a journal, they always ask you to list your “affiliation.” Typically this means name, academic department, name of college/university, email and mailing…
Racism in ‘Exodus’ Casting
The new Ridley Scott movie, Exodus, is attracting criticism because of the racial background of its stars. Christian Bale and Sigourney Weaver are white people playing ancient Egyptians…
A ‘White’ Anthropologist’s Manifesto, and a Call for Discussion
I am an English PhD researcher based in Paris, doing fieldwork in the US and Brazil. My research looks closely at current perceptions of identity, paradigms of human…
International traces of France in the American South
I’ve been reading up a bit on the international circulation in ideas of the university. It’s not hard to find documentation of how France has for a long…
On Korean American students in Illinois
Continuing with my sequence of book reviews, I recently sent LATISS a review of Nancy Abelmann‘s fascinating 2009 book The Intimate University. It should be coming out in…
Guns, America and Anthropology
America has a problem with guns. This is certainly not news, but at the moment it is once again newsworthy. I have mentioned my position on guns here…