Over the past week, I’ve been working on a piece on Chaucer’s “The Former Age” (Middle English; translation), primitivism, and pigs. I need 5000 words…
“So encompassing an animate presence has air that we find ourselves never alone, even though no one else is around. In a world where we…
Two discoveries today. This excellent review in The Nation of two books by Joanna Ruocco, Man’s Companions and The Mothering Coven, the latter of which…
Tonight, my grad class did 1/2 of Mandeville and 1/2 of Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter. Mandeville–drawing on John of Planto Carpini and Simon of Saint…
[youtube=http://youtu.be/EENw_ptgGcg?t=3m49s] Today’s undergrad Middle English Lit class covered Sir Orfeo lines 1-330 (until Orfeo rediscovers Heurodis). A student had proposed that Heurodis (Eurydice to you)…
One of my favorite students (and not only for the gifts!) today gave me an enormous Purim box (honey, cookies, booze, tea, kazoo, the whole…
Essential text for animals studies book, recommended with reservations. Newmyer’s anthology argues for the rights and inclusiveness model of thinking animals critically and ethically. Kinship…
The story goes like this: Anno Domini MCCCIIII. Quidam puer in partibus Hassie est deprehensus. Hic, sicut postea cognitum est, et sicut ipse retulit, cum…
Take 10 minutes and listen to Barbara Smuts talk about becoming a shy baboon. She becomes baboon by sitting like one (see picture above); she…
we may do well to question whether there is anything more marvelous or more valuable in the state of being we distinguish as ‘life’ than…
