Author Archives: jbj

Today’s Ms. Mentor column offers a juicy pop-culture tidbit: Certainly there is a public image of fashion for academics. . . . For women it is the frumpy Marian the Librarian look — thoroughly unlike Julia Roberts’s professorial character in … Continue reading →

Back when I was in the Psychoanalytic Studies Program, it would have amused me to no end to be characterized as a Freudian: (We’ve become strangely Freudian over at Bookslut, what with Jason B. Jones’s new column and my reading … Continue reading →

When I started using online tools in my classes, it wasn’t to keep track of students: I wanted to help them engage with the material.  I will say, however, that a significant advantage of moving assignments and readings online–especially an … Continue reading →

Today, while running a last-second back-to-school errand, I saw this sign emphasizing the life of the mind: Stay classy, Chili’s! Tomorrow’s theoretically the start of classes, though in the great division of labor A teaches TR and I teach MWF, … Continue reading →

Via the Kenyon Review blog, here’s a post at the Oxford UP blog about prepositions, which defends the honor of these little words and points to a new website, The Preposition Project, “a monumental undertaking that systematically describes 673 distinct … Continue reading →

It’s a long story, but I have an office off by myself, away from the rest of the department.  The chair of the closest department is a friendly person, and we regularly joke about the relative importance of our departments, … Continue reading →

Academia To pimp the fine young cadence of the dying gasp’s demented urge to sentence and to dumb back the ecstasies that press up from, well, NOTHING– this is our tiny calling, our bungled ancientness. –Joe Wenderoth, No Real Light … Continue reading →

Second-guessing ESPN columnists is more Erik’s thing, but I couldn’t resist this.  In his NFC preview, Gregg “Tuesday Morning Quarterback” Easterbrook blasts John Fox for blaspheming: “We’re owed a little bit of luck by the football gods, if there is … Continue reading →

At the end of last semester, I was elected chair of a particular committee.  (I had been vice-chair.)  The committee has a two-year term, so I was also up for election to the committee.  Because this put the committee in … Continue reading →