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Category Archives: Books
Particularism as a Big Idea
One of the interesting points about Jared Diamond’s books that has come up recently at Savage Minds is that cultural anthropologists don’t write “big books” much any longer, that the disciplinary vision of cultural and social anthropology is now so … Continue reading
On Diamond (Not Again!)
I don’t really mean to get drawn into recurrent arguments about Jared Diamond’s work, because my actual feelings about the actual books are rather mixed and indifferent. Guns, Germs and Steel reads well, it’s a useful teaching book for fueling … Continue reading
Pictures From an Institution 6 (Course Design)
I usually spend time in the last half of the summer, somewhere around the end of July onward, working on the design of upcoming courses. I think I’m probably at one end of a spectrum as far as making more … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Books, Pictures from an Institution, Swarthmore
3 Comments
Seven Days in the World of Books on Fire
I said it on Twitter but I’ll say it here. The relief for a stupid book review in which someone says something that is not only evaluatively stupid but actually empirically wrong is to say so. It’s not a 65,000 … Continue reading
Some Weeds
I got into an unedifying dispute some years ago about the term “Eurocentric”. Some conservative cultural critics seem to think that any mention of the term marks you off as a crazed member of Sendero Luminoso or some such. I … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Generalist's Work
Comments Off on Some Weeds
A Generalist’s Work, Day 4
The concept of fieldwork fascinates me and vexes me all at once. I didn’t really grasp how much fieldwork outside of formal archives is a significant part of the study of modern African history until I was several years into … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Books, Generalist's Work
2 Comments
A Generalist’s Work, Day 1
I’m still feeling rankled by various casual dismissals of generalism and synthesis as a mode of academic and intellectual labor. It’s particularly odd coming from humanists given that the cultural work that many humanists study has frequently been created by … Continue reading
Posted in Academia, Books, Generalist's Work, The Mixed-Up Bookshelves
2 Comments
I Would Have Had My Great Books, Too, If It Weren’t For Those Meddling Hippies
Mark Edmundson complains, again, that the dirty hippies screwed up the world and killed literature in the process. Rather than a dreary point-by-point response to everything objectionable in the essay, I want to focus on one issue in it that … Continue reading
Geeking Out About Dragons and Alt-History
I’ve talked about Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series before, which is an alternate history focused on the premise that many of the major governments of the world between 1600-1800 have had access to intelligent dragons as military, economic and cultural resources. … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Popular Culture, Sheer Raw Geekery
3 Comments
Fantasy Bests
It’s a New Year, so I’m going to get back in gear on this blog, which I’ve had to leave a bit moribund for a while as I concentrated on some other things and did some travelling. Many entries to … Continue reading
Posted in Books, The Mixed-Up Bookshelves
13 Comments