I think we tend to have a one-sided view of academic blogging. We tend to call it an “outreach” project, envisioning the process as research leading to communication with a broader audience. In many ways, this is great. And as someone who took time in between college and graduate studies, I feel a deep solidarity … More How My Blog Readers Helped Me Write an Article
If you’re new to the blog and wondering who that Br. Monday guy was from last Monday’s post, I thought I would collect all of his adventures again here. 1. Abba a Word The start of the series with a little primer on the origins of the monastic movement and the Sayings of the Desert … More Who’s Br. Monday
We’ve been talking about genre lately, and today we’re going to take a look at how some of Br. Monday’s adventures are a type of genre. Most of them are taken from the Sayings of the Desert Fathers, a collection of wisdom stories from the early monastic movement in 5th century Egypt. In The Dialogical Imagination, Mikhail … More The Metamorphosis of Br. Monday
What is genre? Look around online or walk into a friendly neighborhood bookstore (if you’re lucky enough to have one) and you might come across the somewhat pejorative title of “genre fiction.” We think of “genre” as something lesser than the elevated bookstore section ambiguously labeled “literature” (whatever that means). Being genre-less seems to be … More All Fiction Is Genre Fiction
This post was how we celebrated National Cat Day last year, but looking back, I couldn’t think of a better way. First let’s celebrate with theorists and cats! And second let’s celebrate with these lines from Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock:” The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, The … More Happy National Cat Day!
If we were having coffee, it would be early in the morning so we could enjoy the balcony without any bugs. I might even make sure to pour out any excess water from the bonsai and mutter about mosquitoes and Zika interspersed between apologies for not having a coffee share since December. December! If we … More Weekend Coffee Share: Bakhtin, Bonsai, and Br. Monday
Look. Ginsberg’s wandering “off down empty corridors / in search of a toilet.” His beard, his clothes, his speech are wild. Stand a moment and catch glimpses of his glimpses. But don’t look him in the eye; there’s a mystic fire gleaming there, and if you catch it, you’ll be like him. Hopkins is his … More 5 Poetic, and 1 Novelized, Failures Part 2
