I should probably be evaluating this course on the basis of whether or not I learned anything in it that shifted my views about selfhood. Instead I’m going to evaluate it using the secret, selfish criteria by […]
Berni, I agree that for anyone who’s already read The Shaking Woman, there’s a slightly recycled feeling to some of the neurological references in The Blazing World: Look, there’s Merleau-Ponty again! And Janet! […]
Further support for your “Harriet as Hustvedt’s alter ego” theory is the fact that like Harriet Burden, Hustvedt married someone very visible and successful in her own field of endeavor — Paul Auster, who is […]
I see this week’s articles and lectures as having similarities or connections, at least on an implicit level, to earlier readings in the course. An interesting question to ask in connection with voice-hearing […]
I’ll be writing about an anti-narrative tradition that exists in memoirs by gay men and lesbians, and its possible connection to the historical unavailability of certain literary or cultural narratives (the […]
It’s fitting for us to have read There Was This Goat immediately after Social. If Lieberman’s book is about the neuroscientific foundations of our social selves, then Krog, Mpolweni and Ratele’s book […]
So many of the theories and arguments we’ve read have had implications for drug use (medicinal as well as recreational) and addiction, but since they weren’t the authors’ main focus, those implications have […]
It looks like my topic (practice elevator pitch: “The excluded self and the anti-narrative impulse in the gay memoir”? Needs work) has some overlap with both Berni’s (identification/empathy between the […]
I was struck by Kevin Killian’s speculation, in the preface to Matias Viegener’s book, that there is something in gay men’s lives that “resists taxonomy in some fundamental manner,” which he supported by citing […]
The original description of the first prompt has mysteriously disappeared, but if memory serves, what I’m responding to is option B, which asked us to explain Lieberman via a Gaipa-style cartoon.
The impact of space on self is such an interesting question – there are so many directions in which you could take this. One thing I often wonder is what impact space has on people’s political views. When I’m in […]
Yael, was it the passage about the “Hegelian three-step waltz” that you were looking for? (i.e., the thesis stage when scientists believe a discovery will explain everything, followed by the antithesis stage when, […]
Jen, thanks for this comment and for the link. What Vint Cerf says is such a contrast to the other truism about the Internet we always hear lately – i.e., “Don’t ever send anyone compromising photos of yourself or […]
Julia, I kind of love that you had an equal and opposite reaction to Viegener’s artsiness from the one I did. I do see how that’s possible, and your reaction is making me examine why I felt so strongly that […]
1. True fact: I started writing this post on Friday, before Professor Tougaw sent his email about posting in “25 things” format. I had already thought about posting á la Viegener, but had rejected the idea […]
Wayne Koestenbaum was the keynote speaker for the English Students’ Association conference a week or so ago; I knew him by reputation and thought about going to see him. But it would have required leaving work […]
Reading your choice bits from Casey makes me feel like she may be a writer who excerpts better than she actually reads. Like you, I was struck by individual sentences and observations, and thought there was some […]
Nice application of the Damasio concept of homeostasis to a non-Damasio text! Now if we can just figure out whether Albert’s walking is a function of his core self or a self-obliterating gesture on the part of his […]
1. What characteristics or elements, in your opinion, does a work need to display in order to be categorized as a novel? Does The Man Who Walked Away — a fictionalized characterization of two real-life […]
