Comments for ... and everyday life

Comment on My Obsession With American Cinema of the 1970s by Peter Annabel

Peter Annabel — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 18:15:10 +0000

Very nice read. Makes me miss your class. Every article you write adds a new book that I have to add to my library.

Comment on My Obsession With American Cinema of the 1970s by kateblanchardisaheretic

kateblanchardisaheretic — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 15:40:00 +0000

movies ARE a great escape, but it’s good you can also engage in some meta-cognition about why. (as for movies about the 70s, i think this is why i liked the first half of Argo – i remembered all the american anti-ayatollah propaganda, but wasn’t really understanding why.) keep up the self-awareness!

Comment on Not Again by A Friendly Firearm Debate – Part 1 – Violence | RubySlippers

A Friendly Firearm Debate – Part 1 – Violence | RubySlippers — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 21:26:41 +0000

[...] violence is far, far more prevalent in the U.S. than in any other industrialized nation. As another friend put it, the Japanese, Swedes, and Indians share our human condition, but they do not share our [...]

Comment on Not Again by Alice Shukalo

Alice Shukalo — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 20:47:37 +0000

A beautiful, insightful commentary about the consequences of some of our values and where we place our priorities. I was especially struck by the phrase, “perverse doctrines of honor and distorted notions of manhood,” as I believe that those cultural prescriptions about how to behave and how to be, if one is a man, have presented themselves as two of the most pernicious traditions and belief systems we continue to carry, and will no doubt carry in to the future. Many of those who come out against the control and regulation of who can sell, buy, and own guns seem to see such regulation as a personal affront to manhood, or personhood, rather than as a social policy that could not fail to reduce the irresponsible use of guns as well as the use of guns by the mentally ill. It should be clear from the deaths in Newtown, and the deaths of the firefighters a few days later, that the problem is too many guns, and too permissible an attitude toward their possession, rather than too few guns. Sadly, the subject has already all but dropped from sight in mainstream media. We can only hope that the tempering of outrage and pain over those deaths does not mean that energy and effort put forth toward policy changes with respect to guns will not also dissipate and disappear from our sense of what is important to address in the coming months.

Comment on Is Neuroscience the New Humantities? by Joel Dinerstein

Joel Dinerstein — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 15:40:38 +0000

Excellent post, Ari, and I’ve been thinking this for awhile. I agree with the first comment (Matthew Royal) that they have evidence and double-blind studies and Americans think humanists are just giving their opinions. I agree with Mac that humanists have lost something and I wonder if they (we) often come across as academic and elitist rather than populist and engaged. (Historians are an exception.) No doubt Fox News (and etc.) has had an effect with representing all humanists as a Leftist cultural elite but that only continues the critique of the university from the ’80s, which has had a devastating effect…and no effective counterattack has ever been mounted.

Comment on Literature and the Culture of Viral Panic by Amy

Amy — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 00:43:33 +0000

Reading this, I’m struck by several thoughts:

(1) I want to read those books (Roth, Cronin)–stat!

(2) How might knowledge of the scientific properties of viruses have influenced the (long) history of “viral panic” in literature, film, etc.? For instance, perhaps owing to the global presence of HIV, it’s broadly understood that viruses transform at the cellular level. How does this knowledge inform viral metaphors in contemporary texts, especially those that deal with the infiltration and transformation of cultural/social institutions. (Sontag’s _AIDS and Its Metaphors_ is still quite relevant!) And what of viral metaphors during the early twentieth century–when medical science did not yet recognize viruses in the ways that we do now? We know of influenza as a virus, but the 1918 pandemic didn’t acquire this label until many years later. Written just as the disease was identified as a virus, William Maxwell’s _They Came Like Swallows_ and Katherine Anne Porter’s “Pale Horse, Pale Rider” curiously represent pandemic influenza as having virus-like properties: all consuming; working according to a complex, indecipherable code; incurable but perhaps treatable.

(3) In the present context, when does “viral” inhabit a positive association? Here, I’m thinking of web videos that “go viral” and propel virtual unknowns into the spotlight (and money/endorsement opportunities ensue).

Comment on A Few Reasons not to Listen to 1001 Albums by Supeta

Supeta — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 01:49:40 +0000

So… the main problem then is the title of the book.

Comment on Is Neuroscience the New Humantities? by Ari Y Kelman

Ari Y Kelman — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 16:34:32 +0000

I agree, and thanks for the comment. I’m less worried about getting on those shows, and more concerned that the conversation about culture keeps on being continually misconstrued as one about neuroscience, as if that’s the only field (or one of a few fields) with the potential for rendering accurate accounts of complicated human life.

Comment on Is Neuroscience the New Humantities? by Mac

Mac — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 20:34:35 +0000

I think most social scientists and humanities scholars are just plain-old bad at expressing themselves to general audiences. As a former journalist and current anthropologist, I often think about my style and my audience when writing or speaking. So much of academic writing is overly obscure and poorly written. I’ve overheard academics who are clunky writers railing at those who publish cross-over books as if “popular” somehow meant “less-than rigorous” scholarship. Ugh. The truth is, the folks at NPR need someone who can deliver good sound bites as much as they need someone who knows his subject well. Until we learn to do that well, we’re not going to get on those shows.

Comment on Is Neuroscience the New Humantities? by Max Zakharzhevskiy

Max Zakharzhevskiy — Mon, 27 Jun 2011 19:21:52 +0000

“Questions like the how restaurants work, whether or not race matters, why certain songs get stuck in our heads”
just how much of the average student’s tuition goes to researching this?
In response to your question about hard science, I feel that the public definitely sees social sciences and humanities as less important. Granted they are better for proving correlation, and without that, there would be nothing for hard science to go off of. The real issue is that not being able to prove causality is starting to catch up with humanities and social sciences.