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Recent Posts
- Brief Thoughts on Thomas Piketty’s _A Brief History of Equality_ (2022)
- Five Ways Philadelphia can support immigrants seeking asylum
- Wait, “Smart” AI really can’t handle a prompt asking it to “write oppositely”??
- Could these 2 L. Frank Baum stories from 1910 be witty allegories about race, colonialism, and immigration?
- Seems a good time to read some C. P. Cavafy
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- Peter Schmidt on Donald Rumsfeld Tries to Enter Into Heaven
- John Corner on Thoughts on Orsino’s opening speech in Twelfth Night, and on the ending of the play—as occasioned by re-reading the play to attend Pig Iron’s performance in the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, September 2011
- May on What Should I Do With the Dead Turk in the Bedroom? Class, Sex, and Otherness in Downton Abbey
- Elite Edge ME on Word Cloud of Whitman’s “Song of Myself,” section 1
- Dan bloom on On Contradictions in Nathaniel Rich’s “Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change.”
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- Engl 009H “Portraits of the Artist” — an introduction to literary and cultural studies for first-year students.
- English 116 American Literature Honors Seminar, Fall 2014: the Literature of the U.S. South
- English 52A (U.S. Fiction, 1900-1950)
- English 52B, U.S. Fiction 1945 to the Present. Swarthmore College, Fall 2017.
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- On Eros Crossing the Color-Line in William Faulkner and Margaret Mitchell
- On Optimists’ Sons and Daughters: Eudora Welty’s The Optimist’s Daughter and Peter Taylor’s A Summons to Memphis
- Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus
- The “Raftsmen’s Passage,” Huck’s Crisis of Whiteness, and _Huckleberry Finn_ in U.S. Literary History
- Selected Courses
- SPLEEN poetry chapbook: pissed-off poems for a pissant age.
- Very Large Array // a poetry collage project by Peter Schmidt (1990-2000)
- Very Large Array project
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Category Archives: Uncategorized
Brief Thoughts on Thomas Piketty’s _A Brief History of Equality_ (2022)
The economist/social philosopher Thomas Piketty has recently offered an optimistic reading of world history in which, despite setbacks, there is marked progress toward more economic opportunities and greater social equality and legal rights. His progress narrative emphasizes the synergies between economic … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged cultural history, cultural studies, democracy, economics, equality, history, human rights, inequality, philosophy, Piketty, social change, social theory
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Five Ways Philadelphia can support immigrants seeking asylum
Inquirer article today, Aug. 10, 2023. By Veronica Montes, an associate professor of sociology and codirector of Latin American, Iberian, and Latina/o Studies at Bryn Mawr College. The article is a pdf you should be able to read and download … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged immigration, immigration policy, philadelphia, support immigrants
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Wait, “Smart” AI really can’t handle a prompt asking it to “write oppositely”??
Below is an example of one of the suffix commands in a prompt to AI that broke the “guardrails” trying to govern AI. That is, the safeguards so that AI wouldn’t make up stuff or consent to bad things like … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged AI, Artificial Intelligence, ChatGPT, Google, guardrails
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Could these 2 L. Frank Baum stories from 1910 be witty allegories about race, colonialism, and immigration?
These two chapters involving Dorothy and her friends are from Baum’s sequel to The Wizard of Oz (1900), The Emerald City of Oz (1910). Chapter 12, “How They Matched the Fuddles,” and Chapter 17, “How They Came to Bunbury.” Use … Continue reading
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Seems a good time to read some C. P. Cavafy
Candles The days of the future stand in front of us Like a line of candles all alight—Golden and warm and lively little candles. The days that are past are left behind, A mournful row of candles that are out; … Continue reading
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., on the values of literature
Amen, brother! Read this talk of his. I’m also struck by the contrast between this essay in the NYTimes Book Review (Oct. 31) and Marjorie Perloff’s depressing and deluded essay in a recent issues of the LA Review of Books … Continue reading
Donald Rumsfeld Tries to Enter Into Heaven
(as retold later by the Devil) … into the known unknown or maybe it’s an unknown unknown Donald comes to the Gates unrepentant. A large book swings open hard to see the pages but it seems they hold long lists … Continue reading
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download Ecotone and/or Spleen (my 2 new poetry chapbooks)
Ecotone // 14 poems by Peter Schmidt, about wandering through the natural world … A downloadable pdf, from Pixel Press / Swarthmore You may also download SPLEEN (political poems protesting + reimagining the fate of society and nature). =====For either or … Continue reading
On Contradictions in Nathaniel Rich’s “Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change.”
Nathaniel Rich’s issue-long essay in this week’s New York Times Magazine receives a title worthy of a play: “Losing Earth: The decade we almost stopped climate change. A tragedy in two acts.” It’s definitely worth an hour or two of … Continue reading
Garbage In / Garbage Out: Why is Facebook Using Its Powerful Resources To Help Teachers Teach Bad Common Core Standards In AP English Classes?
Facebook on its Summit Learning Resources Site for K-12 English & Language Arts teachers is now promoting ready-made lesson plans for teaching Common Core standards. Sounds good, right? But many of the lesson plans are screwed up because so many … Continue reading
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