The Mumpsimus

Dr. Parenti: We get the grant, we study the problem, we propose solutions. If they listen, they listen. If they don't, it still makes for great research. What we publish on this is gonna get a lot of attention. Colvin: From who? Dr. Parenti: From other researchers, academics. Colvin: Academics?! What, they gonna study your study? [chuckles and shakes head] When do this shit change? — The Wire, Season 4, Episode 13, "Final Grades" It is only within the last few years that I have reluctantly accepted that I deserve that noxious and disreputable label: an academic . Truly, I am doomed. But then, I've yet to meet an academic who isn't keenly aware of the doom. My sentences keep going off in various directions toward what I'm sure would be an incoherent 10,000-word rant about my love/hate relationship with academia. I delete those sentences because I'm not here to rant about academia, but rather to praise a book that serves as both ...

This is the second in a series of posts leading up to this blog's tenth anniversary on August 18. In each post, I look back on one year, sometimes specifically and sometimes generally. All the posts can be found here . Looking back through the posts for 2011 , I felt great fondness for the year, if not for my blogging (I think overall it was one of the weaker years for The Mumpsimus. That tends to happen when life itself is busy and fulfilling, so I'm not complaining!) It was a year when I taught two of my favorite classes, Gender & Science Fiction and Global Literature ; when we started blogging the Caine Prize ; when Eric Schaller and I launched The Revelator , our very occasional online magazine; when I wrote, directed, and co-edited a short film without knowing much of anything about what I was doing; when I started making video essays ; when I got to see one of my favorite Fassbinder movies, World on a Wire ; and when I had a whole class pose for a picture whil...