14 September 2020 Dear Everyone: I saw a sweet inchworm yesterday. Is it too predictable or cliched or whatever to make note of how its movements and caution and determination and tiny-ness make it all too appropriate for how we (or at least I) are moving through the semester?  The line of green against the… Read More

8 September 2020 email Dear Everyone:   My message this week opens with many thanks to the coordinators of the various interdisciplinary certificate programs who joined us for last week’s Friday Forum – John Brenkman (Critical Theory), Eric Lott (American Studies), Dána-Ain Davis (Women’s Studies), Zee Dempster (Africana Studies), Steve Kruger (Medieval Studies), Carlos Hernandez… Read More

brava/bravo to all who performed! many thanks to Will Arguelles, Christian Lewis, Olivia Wood, and Rob Yates for organizing, producing, and executing the event!… Read More

(from 26 August 2020 email) Dear Everyone: Welcome to the new year! Though I wish so much summer could extend forever, with equal intensity, I love the start of a semester, when everything is sheer promise and potential and possibility. Even in this year so intensely full of loss of every kind, I’m finding the… Read More

(from 28 July 2020 email) Dear Everyone: I’ll write more about more matters soon, but wanted to let you know more immediately that the GC is officially remote for fall 20.  We’ve been heading in that direction, I know, but the building has made the official call now.   More to follow regarding planning/course design… Read More

(from 29 July 2020 email) Dear Everyone: This is the “more” regarding fall 20 promised in my brief note yesterday. First, three admin items of note, please: 1. Karl Steel has graciously agreed to chair the Curriculum Committee for us for the coming AY.  (I’d previously and mistakenly identified John Brenkman in that capacity; the… Read More

(from 1 July 2020 email) Dear Everyone: Today, I officially start year two of my stint as EO.  In starting the first year, I thought the biggest external thing we’d be dealing with in the program was Middle States…!  I know some measure and mixture of anger, anxiety, and exhaustion are the defining affective orientations… Read More

[texts of email messages from the first weeks of June 2020] Dear Everyone: Thanks to all of you able to join the discussion on Friday afternoon, and to those who provided input through email, and to all of you doing all you can take care of people – through protest, feeding, housing, calling, writing, laundering,… Read More

Dear Everyone: It was wonderful to be with so many of you in last Friday’s end of program meeting and the awards event that followed!  Thanks hugely for creating the time, and also for the creativity and comradery in the festive headwear adorning the latter session!  We missed you, those who were unable to join… Read More

Everyone should celebrate every bit of the work you did and are doing, and I’m delighted by this acknowledgment of the huge range of super interesting research and writing and teaching you’re doing — big hurrah to all! Please see here for a powerpoint version of the prizes, awards, and fellowships announced last week! https://www.dropbox.com/s/0i9naa50dfpky9x/Prizes%2C%20Fellowships%2C%20and%20Awards%202019-20.pptx?dl=0… Read More