A Peer Reviewed Blog
A recurring assertion of the contributors to this blog, as evidenced in the quote on the banner from Jean-Francois Bayart, is that identity is not something inherent or static. Identity is constructed, malleable, temporal. The implications of this assertion are many, and the reality of violence, both recent and past, makes those implications even more significant. Continue reading “The Violence of Constructed Identities”
National Public Radio — yes, I’ve been listening to it while driving to work in the morning and yes, I do contribute — has started a year long series on what they’re simply calling sacred music — listen to the first installment here. It’s on an actor in Hollywood — Ben Youcef (pictured in the middle, above) — originally from Algeria, who is also a muezzin (one who calls other Muslims to prayer). Continue reading “We Can’t All Be Exceptional”
This month marks the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. Gettysburg is remembered as one of the most pivotal moments in the United States’ Civil War, in part for the way that momentum shifted towards the Union forces, but also because the largest number of lives were lost there than in any other battle in the conflict. Continue reading “Gettysburg, Or How (And What) We Remember”
‘NOW, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else.’
These opening lines of Charles Dickens’ novel Hard Times came to mind recently when I read an opinion piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education written by Peter Wood, the President of the National Association of Scholars. The piece related to the recent news that, when he was governor of Indiana, Mitch Daniels (now president of Purdue University) had an email exchange questioning the use of Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States in Indiana schools, which Daniels reportedly described as “anti-factual” and a fraud, in his less colorful moments. In his commentary, Woods argued that Daniels was correct in questioning the worth of Zinn’s tome, pointing to a range of reviews of the work from historians teaching at prestigious universities that critiqued Zinn’s construction of his narrative. Continue reading “Asking the Wrong Questions”
Code switching is often used to reference the actions (usually linguistic variations) of a particular person/group that is assumed to break from their own “natural” practices to perform codes “not their own” for the purposes of fitting in, acquiring capital, and accessing spaces thought to perceive the “native” practices of the switcher as illegitimate or illegible. This switching, or shifting as some call it, is often painted with a stroke of fluidity and described to take know-how, precision, performance and rehearsal. While the durability or recapitulations of code switching may come to be seen as natural over time, where it’s no longer recognized or described as a switch, it’s often thought to be something that is and can be [consciously] turned off and on like a light switch by the social actor. Continue reading “Whose Switch is a Switch?”
A radio report today was on the Human Microbiome Project, which (according to its own website), “is one of several international efforts designed to take advantage of metagenomic analysis to study human health.” What caught my ear in particular was when Lita Proctor, the director for the project, said: Continue reading “Microbes and I”
A little while back, Russell McCutcheon prompted Monica Miller and me to think about the notion of code switching. People use the phrase to refer to everyday modes of discourse that come to be seen or understood as exceptional—specifically the phenomenon of talking or acting in particular ways depending on the group or context that surrounds someone. He gave us a clip from My Fair Lady as an example. The story is all about Eliza Doolittle’s (successful, by the accounts of those around her) attempt to become a “lady” rather than—to quote Prof. Higgins’s early assessment—someone “so deliciously low.” In order to trade her harsh cockney accent for that of a person in high British society, she goes through endless lessons attempting to change her speech, manner of dress, and behavior. For example, who can forget the famous “rain in Spain” breakthrough? It’s practically on par cinematically with Patty Duke’s spelling out w-a-t-e-r into miracle worker Anne Bancroft’s hand: Continue reading “In Other Words…”
This morning on the radio I heard a story, rebroadcast from September 2012, on the recent film “Kumare,” described on its website as “a feature documentary film about the time filmmaker Vikram Gandhi impersonated a fake guru and built a following of real people.” The interviewer on the radio program — Maureen Fiedler, host of “Interfaith Voices,” a program predictably about inter-religious dialogue and mutual understanding — asked the director/star a final question: Continue reading “Isn’t it Ironic, Don’t You Think?”
I find myself back in Greece to do research and so, a few days ago, I had the chance to visit a museum in Athens. What struck me as interesting—apart from the narratives that surround all such museum exhibits, that place them in a certain time and frame them in a way that justifies a nation’s origins—was that some artifacts were marked with numbers that corresponded to explanations beside their display case that made no sense. For example, I could see a horse but the explanation talked about a vase that also had the same display number. It took me a while to realize that in the various display cases some of the artifacts were placed in orange frames. Once I realized this I immediately searched for an explanation at the information desk. The lady enthusiastically informed me that these were objects from the gift store of the museum that, celebrating thirty years of its opening, were now included in the displays. Continue reading “Frames of Identity”
Queen Elizabeth II in white Go-go boots?
That’s got to count as culture on the edge, no?
Source: Retronaut.