Notes about researching and teaching philosophy…
Lowry's Repetition
“Lowry’s status as a ‘local’ painter is not usually staked on this kind of topographical exactitude, however, and if he came to be thought of in Manchester as a pre-eminently local artist, a painter of Manchester for Manchester, this was on the basis of his vast output of imaginary landscapes. Those made in the late 1920s through to the war years, in particular, are made from a few repeated motifs, different each time they appear but similar enough to persuade us that we have seen them before, that they are known to us, part of the familiar furniture of his city... The repetitiveness in these pictures has been seen as evidence of Lowry’s limitations; the narrowness of his interests and imagination, what he himself described as his ‘obsession’ with the industrial landscape of Pendlebury. For Wagner, however, repetitiveness was vital to Lowry’s project as a local painter. Sooner or later these repetitions would come to seem merely repetitive, ‘run of the mill’ as she puts it, and something else would have to be tried; but until that time ‘they were a way of matching his pictures’ rhythm to the life of the street. Repetition … offered a means to expand the components of a single city street – chimneys and smokestacks, doors and windows, stairways and fences, men and women – into a world that seems cohesive, complete.’”
John Barrell, "At tate Britain: L.S. Lowry," London Review of Books - http://bit.ly/1e12xOu
Tracking the YouVersion
“As YouVersion became increasingly popular, other publishers also came to view the app as a positive force — less a threat than a marketing opportunity. Although there are no ads on the app and no plans to create any, Mr. Gruenewald said, YouVersion collects vast amounts of data on Bible readership patterns. That trove of data provides valuable information about the habits and preferences of Christians that YouVersion selectively shares with its traditional publishing partners, such as which verses are the most popular within their own translations.”
"App Puts the Bible in 100 Million Palms" - http://nyti.ms/19nbZy5
Frankfurt School at War
“War makes for strange bedfellows. Among the oddest pairings that World War II produced was the bringing together of William ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan, head of the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) — a precursor to the CIA — and a group of German Jewish Marxists he hired to help the United States understand the Nazis... Despite the vast political and cultural gap separating Donovan from Neumann and his team, the spymaster trusted the radicals with the vital security task of providing advice about the Nazis. In the words of John Herz, another young refugee assigned to Neumann’s office (and later a major figure in postwar international relations theory), ‘It was as though the left-Hegelian World Spirit had briefly descended on the Central European Department of the OSS.’”
William Scheuermann "The Frankfurt School at War," Foreign Affairs - http://fam.ag/13HqNiI
Faith and Works at Apple
“The world-religion of the educated and prosperous in the twenty-first century is Apple, with its Vatican in Cupertino and its cathedrals in the light-filled Apple Stores that draw pilgrims gripping iPhones and iPads like rosaries. Apple’s flock is secured against heresy by censors who rule the online App Store; only applications with Apple’s imprimatur are allowed on an iPhone. Programmers risk excommunication—with all their works condemned to being listed in an Index of Prohibited Software—if they violate canon law by bypassing Apple’s banking system or ignoring its infallible doctrine. Rebellious heretics can ‘jailbreak’ an iPhone and induce it to accept software anathematized by Apple, but a heretic’s phone is refused communion when presented for repair at the Apple Store.”
Edward Mendelson, "Faith and Works at Apple," NY Review Blog - http://bit.ly/18pqI8E
On A Secular Age
“I’m vastly oversimplifying a rich, complex book, but what I most appreciate is his vision of a ‘secular’ future that is both open and also contains at least pockets of spiritual rigor, and that is propelled by religious motivation, a strong and enduring piece of our nature.”
David Brooks, "The Secular Society" - http://nyti.ms/1awm75i
Milton Draws a Crowd
“Take Berkeley’s English department, hardly a bastion of intellectual conservatism. Our bedrock classes for the major are the three surveys that take students from Beowulf to Milton, the Puritans to the Victorians, the moderns to the present. Our most popular electives are courses like ‘The Bible as Literature,’ ‘Contemporary Literature’ and ‘The American Novel.’ ‘Milton’ manages to draw a crowd.”
"The Humanities in Crisis? Not at Most Schools"- http://nyti.ms/1bcP3kj
On Revising
“‘Much as I loathe the typewriter,’ W.H. Auden wrote, ‘I must admit that it is a help in self-criticism. Typescript is so impersonal and hideous to look at that, if I type out a poem, I immediately see defects which I missed when I looked through it in manuscript.’”
Craig Fehrman, "Revising Your Writing Again? Blame the Modernists" - http://b.globe.com/14I3NTd
Artisanal Education
“If it is indeed time to ‘get big or get out’ — or, better put, “get online or get an identity”—then I’m for the artisanal, the local, the educational equivalent of farmer’s markets. The irony is that while most professors embrace the ideal embodied in farmer’s markets, they have supported the evisceration of local institutional educational identity. It’s time to insist not only on locally grown food, but on local knowledge. I’d rather make and share my own beer than encourage my students to guzzle Budweiser.”
Patrick J Deneen "We're All to Blame for MOOCs," The Chronicle - http://bit.ly/12tceG3
