This is the third installment in my “Big Idea Syllabus” series inspired by Dr. Michael Wesch’s “Big Idea” Syllabus for Anthropology. My “Big Idea” Syllabus for History can be found here, for Writing here. The “Big Idea” Syllabus for Gender… Read More ›
As words, “traditional” and “tradition” conceal far more than they can ever reveal. Their connotations often center around static historical, narrow, privileged worldviews. While an outright ban would probably lack productivity, these words are used in such divergent ways, often… Read More ›
Who has the necessary authority to speak about a given topic or identity? What do we miss when trying to learn about Otherness (see “Can the Subaltern Speak?”)? Given thousands of years of history, history dominated by an elite often consisting… Read More ›
In three previous blogs (here, here, and here), I made statements I can no longer stand by. (I should have made this post a long time ago, but until a conversation in the past few weeks, I had forgotten I… Read More ›
Last night I read Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know About the Emerging Science of Sex Differences published by Penguin Books. The author–Leonard Sax–has a Ph.D. and a M.D., so I expected a monograph of quality. However, I’ve never… Read More ›
Earlier today while reading and reviewing an in-progress chapter for a friend, it occurred to me that we are all vastly guilty of a very specific kind of presentism. We’re so blind to this presentism that it goes almost completely… Read More ›
Crows, scientists say, are as smart as the typical five-to-seven year-old. Any comment about the “intelligence” any kind of “life” has or does not have is immediately problematic–and human-centric. The more we learn about other forms of life, the more… Read More ›
I attended Gladys Polk Elementary in Richwood, Texas, from August 1992 to May 1999. It was a huge part of my early life (and some bad memories, discussed here), and I continue to keep track of what is going on… Read More ›
