Category Archives: Without Ritual, Autonomous Negotiations

While eating my supper of crackers, deli turkey, and strawberries, I had a question: What is the relationship between Disney’s children’s movies (and alphabetic fairy tales) and the current–baffling–acceptance of authoritarianism in the United States? Why are people–who proclaim to love the United States, their country, and their freedom–still supporting the Republican party at all?! ThinkContinue reading “Walt Disney and the Acceptance of Authoritarianism”

Conversations with fellow professors often turn to the topic of office hours and their frustrated comments about how students never utilize this time. In contrast to some my colleagues, my office hours are always wonderfully busy with students. Frequently, I even have a line of students waiting to visit with me! Sometimes there are soContinue reading “Students, Professors, and the Joys of Office Hours”

At some institutions of higher education, faculty who are not perfectly able-bodied are effectively barred from even stepping on campus. Such practices—on top of the already-difficult job market and added to the ubiquity of microaggressions directed toward us crip people—automatically move some of society’s most educated people into the stack of unconditionally rejected applicants.        Continue reading “Being Disabled And Unconditionally Rejected in Higher Education”

Everything has been so busy, I almost forgot to share the poems my students in Introduction to Queer Studies wrote this semester–they gave me permission to share them! (Spring 2017 poems are here.) These are the poems they write as an entire class. My contribution is the opening line, “Growing up it was always expected…”Continue reading “More Queer Studies Class Poems”

Teaching First Year Writing this semester continues to be an exciting, interesting journey. A few nights ago, I was trying to decide how I wanted to address a lesson introducing the broad topic of facts, opinions, arguments, and related topics. My approach always involves both discussion and the philosophy. The lesson ended up being transformative for the students, according toContinue reading “Facts Exist on a Spectrum – Adventures Teaching Writing”

This serves as a kind of followup to this post where I described an experiment I did with a group of students. I recently did a similar version of this experiment but with some modifications based on suggestions I received here! The results are most interesting and for sure show aspects of our hidden sexismContinue reading “More Gender and Race Perception Experiments”

Two thoughts have been stirring around my brain lately, and they require a bit of creative thinking, potentially: 1) Actors and actresses are, effectively, in on-going polyamorous relationships, 2) performers embody the rejection of (dangerous) ideologies of essentialism.  Polyamory and Queer Hollywood  The philosophy of polyamory says that it’s possible, even natural, for a person toContinue reading “Polyamory, Constructionism, and the Queerness of Hollywood”

I am frequently brought to feelings of frustration and sadness when people believe, do, or say things that are everyday and simply not true. In this article, I address seven of these.  1. Recycling clothing, paper, plastic, and so on is good for the environment and something we must all help with.  In reality, like much,Continue reading “7 Things You Likely Have Wrong That Few Address”