Author Archives: Timothy Burke

Bugs and Puppy Faces

Posted on August 14, 2007 by Timothy Burke

We took off for a late summer trip to a New Jersey amusement park today, which was fun. At one point, my daughter wanted to get her face painted. I was kind of struck at the catalogue of choices. They … Continue reading →

Posted in Games and Gaming, Politics, Popular Culture | 24 Comments

Habilus and Erectus

Posted on August 9, 2007 by Timothy Burke

Help me out, evolutionary theorists. I’m a bit puzzled at the conclusion that homo habilus cannot be ancestral to homo erectus because the two species apparently lived alongside each other for 500,000 years or so. Isn’t it possible for one … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia | 13 Comments

Ignatieff

Posted on August 8, 2007 by Timothy Burke

Michael Ignatieff’s piece in the NY Times magazine this weekend made for an interesting read. I really agree with a lot of the points made by Henry at Crooked Timber. It’s an interesting piece in its own right, with some … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Politics | 34 Comments

Learning Peer Review

Posted on August 8, 2007 by Timothy Burke

I’ve been doing a decent amount of peer review work this summer. I was struck at how my own practices had changed over time. First, I’m curious. How many people received some instruction about how to do peer review, any … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia | 15 Comments

Anti-Canute

Posted on August 6, 2007 by Timothy Burke

King Canute took on the waves to demonstrate the limits of his power to his subjects, who asked him to do the impossible. Robert Mugabe is the kind of authoritarian who thinks that the waves ought to obey him, and … Continue reading →

Posted in Africa | 5 Comments

There Must Be a Word

Posted on August 6, 2007 by Timothy Burke

Is there a term for misperceiving a historical relationship between two works, images or tropes so that the earlier of the two is falsely thought to have derived from the later one? I was thinking about this in terms of … Continue reading →

Posted in Popular Culture | 12 Comments

Cooper v. Rowling

Posted on August 6, 2007 by Timothy Burke

One of the reasons I’m keen to promote an “Everything Studies” approach to expressive culture is my dissatisfaction with the way that established models in cultural and media studies often (not invariably) marginalize aesthetic judgements as well as evaluations of … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Popular Culture | 16 Comments

The University President as Leading Intellectual

Posted on August 3, 2007 by Timothy Burke

From time to time we hear of the glories of a past age when university presidents strode like giants across the land, leading our genteel national discourse on the great issues of our day. First, I think there’s plenty of … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia | 2 Comments

Department of Everything Studies (Expressive Culture Division)

Posted on August 2, 2007 by Timothy Burke

I meant to comment earlier in July on this excellent discussion at the Valve on Mark Bauerlein’s suggestions for specific “conservative voices” to be included in courses of literary theory. Pretty much all the criticisms I had planned to make … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Popular Culture | 12 Comments

All That Glitters

Posted on August 1, 2007 by Timothy Burke

I have a question. Why does Ron Paul, or by extension any libertarian who finds his political platform congenial, have such a fixation on the gold standard? This is an arena of political and economic thought that I’ve never really … Continue reading →

Posted in Politics | 15 Comments