After the widespread and unexpected popularity of the ‘Serial’ podcast, where a team of journalists review an old criminal case and interview the imprisoned suspect and other witnesses, academics are wondering whether they could use…
Perspectives
Leftist Professors Protest Guns in … Texas
In the Lone Star State, where open carry is now legal in public places, the Modern Language Association thought it was timely to protest guns on public college campuses, called “campus carry” by advocates and…
Rape Narrative Over Due Process
The Modern Language Association’s (MLA) new punching bag is due process, as one session in their annual convention demonstrated (The convention was held in Austin, Texas this year.) In the session, entitled, “Narrating College Sexual…
Prostitution’s Victims Ignored by Amnesty International
Occasionally the Modern Language Association (MLA) actually does look at language, and makes a valuable contribution to the sum of human knowledge. At the MLA conference this year, Kate Day, a law professor emeritus at…
Sexual Violence in the Military
In a presentation to a Modern Language Association (MLA) panel on sexual violence, Ariana Vigil, a women’s studies professor at North Carolina-Chapel Hill, linked a military deserter and his perspective on the military to the…
Bootstrapping Broads: Talking Feminism
Harriet Beecher Stowe, European gardens and gender bias were discussed in a recent Modern Language Association (MLA) panel at their annual convention held this year in Austin, Texas. The panel, entitled, “Bootstrapping Broads: On the…
Ecologically Correct: It’s Academic!
It’s interesting that although liberals are the ones who most like to talk about protecting the environment, conservatives are the ones most likely to do yard work. “There is a conflict between the politics of…
Academic Animal Studies/Farm
George Orwell might have been amused. Academia is well on its way to quite literally becoming Animal Farm. Indeed, the very first day of the latest Modern Language Association (MLA) convention featured a panel on…
Rock, Paper, Scissors
It’s interesting that some of the same people who go ballistic at the suggestion that corporations are people are quite willing to ascribe human attributes to inhuman things. “I’m out to prove that rocks are…
Academic Largely Ignores Benefits of Intact Families
That intact families are more economically solvent than fractured ones has long been observed outside of academe. Arguably, as with many other policy questions, on this one as well, academics tend to be the last…