A Peer Reviewed Blog
I was listening to the radio today — you know, the place where we used to hear what we now call podcasts, as long as they come over our computer’s or smartphone’s speakers…? — and heard an interesting episode of the cooking show The Splendid Table, devoted to Filipino food.
Have you noticed how it seems that almost no one is lamenting all the celebrity deaths in 2017, like they did back in 2016?
In case you forgot, there were plenty of assessments of 2016 as the worst year ever. Continue reading “Worst Year Ever?”
Did you catch the NY Times piece on who owns poutine?
Those who know something about the founding of Canada as a colonial possession, by both France and Britain, might also know something of the long history that has led to some in one of Canada’s provinces, Quebec, having a strong sense of themselves as being so distinct from the rest of the country as to justify their political autonomy (there’s been a few province-wide referendums on whether to separate). Continue reading “Looking for a Thesis Topic?”
This week the members of Culture on the Edge will meet to discuss the first of two books that we’re looking at this semester: Rogers Brubaker‘s recent book, trans.
Just finished my homework for @idendefying, i.e. reading Brubaker’s “Trans: Gender and Race in an Age of Unsettled Identities”. Now to work!
— Chris Cotter (@the_cotter_man) October 13, 2017
We’re using Zoom, for video conferencing, and so you may see a few posts in the future revolving around what we come up with. And if you’ve read it, let us know what you think — Chpt 2, our peer review blog, is always looking for new voices.
The New York Times published an interesting article yesterday — focusing on US factory worker, Shannon Mulcahy, someone who is caught up in the effects of globalization (aka US jobs moving to Mexico).
I’ll leave it to you to read it, but among the many things that caught my eye was that line, quoted above, in my title. Continue reading ““It becomes an identity. A part of you.””
As a quick following-up to this morning’s earlier post on how quickly we tend to conclude, but only in some cases, that certain gunmen in mass shootings are “lone wolves” (whose actions couldn’t be anticipated), it occurred to me that there’s a largely unseen ramification to attributing individual, psychological motives to the actions of white guys as opposed to the ease with which many of us seem to attribute planned, political motives to pretty much everyone else who does something heinous. Continue reading “Taking the Popular Wisdom Seriously is a Little Disturbing, No?”
Yes, that’s the photo of 64 year old Stephen Paddock, the now dead suspect in last night’s mass shooting in Las Vegas.
At present, 50 people are reported killed, at an outdoor concert, with over 100 injured. (Learn more at the New York Times.) Continue reading “How Many Lone Wolves Does it Take to Make a Pack?”
I assume you’ve heard the news of the two major hurricanes (and the damage they caused) that recently came ashore in the US — the first hitting the shores of southern Texas and then the other (this past weekend, just over a week after Texas was hit), going up the full length of Florida.
During the commentaries on these two events — whether by the media, politicians, or people who lived through them — I found it interesting how comparative analysis was deployed to make sense of the events.
Or, better put, to figure out what to do in the face of them. Continue reading “The Utility of the Familiar and the Strange”
So, you heard the news? Culture on the Edge has expanded the core group and gone back to basics; the peer review guest blog (what we call Chapter 2, up on the main menu) is still here and looking for interesting posts, of course, but just as our focus on a common book helped to get this initiative off the ground (as you may recall, it was a book by J-F Bayart) we’ve decided that we’re going to read a couple books each semester, together. Continue reading “”
In the Fall of 1980 I was traveling home by bus from my first year as an undergrad, going for a long weekend visit. I was attending Queen’s University, in Kingston, Ontario, partway between Montreal and Toronto, so I changed buses in Toronto to make it home, not far from Niagara Falls.
It was the first time I’d been in the Toronto bus terminal; built in 1931, it consisted of an interior waiting area, where you bought tickets and coffee from a machine, and, as per the above photo, a large outer area where buses pulled in and people lined up.
It was Thanksgiving and, as I recall, there was a throng of people, jostling either to get into lines or through them to yet other lines of their own, all waiting for their ride on a chilly Fall night. Before going away to university I’d lived in a small town — about 21,000 people back then — so being in the big city, on my own, in a crowded bus terminal late at night, was a new experience for me. Continue reading ““No Thanks; I’m Good.””