Last November, OpenAI, a Bay Area research company specializing in artificial intelligence, introduced the universe to a program called ChatGPT-3. Within five days, one million people had jumped on the program to play around with it. For reference, it took Facebook ten months to reach one million users and Netflix three and a half years. …
Unstringing the Bow
When editors of a book on the history of the Mexican novel asked me to contribute an essay on the longest books written during the 20th century, I accepted. There was no reason not to, and I was the right guy for the job. My work in historical fiction and high modernist fiction in Spanish …
Grasping at Totality and Defying Genre: Toward Spectral Thinking in Humanities Scholarship
There I was, a rhetorician reading poetry. I found this amusing given the disciplinary history of rhetoric and poetry. Aristotle wrote a treatise called The Rhetoric and another called The Poetics because those were separate fields for him. However, the two exist between the same covers on my shelf as The Rhetoric and the Poetics …
On Academic Returns
January has returned, trailing clouds of new year’s resolutions. My return to campus coincides with a return to the MLA Convention for the first time in more than a decade. I know that for many in the college, the yearly MLA gathering signals an important temporal point on the academic calendar while providing valuable professional …
Winter 2023
All Colloquia will take place in 4010 JFSB at 3:00 PM. January 19 Ryan Christensen Loneliness and Love January 26 Laura Catharine Smith Promoting Information Literacy and Critical Thinking in the Modern Humanities Classroom February 9 Kevin Blankinship Brokers of the Trust Economy, or Why and How Professors Should Write for the Popular Press …
Of Christmas, Climate Change, and Communication
My title is not mere alliteration. Christmas, climate change, and communication have more in common than just the letter “c.” What else unites this holiday, hot topic, and humanistic discipline? For starters, climate change referentials are hidden throughout the holiday hymns. We sing “Joy to the world” and “Let earth receive her King!” (#201, emphasis …
On Confidence
Welcome back from Thanksgiving break, and best of luck as you move into the wind-up phase of the semester. I promise to keep this blog entry brief—proceed with confidence. I’ve been musing on confidence and its origins. Etymology provides no sure guide to words’ current meanings, I know, even if words do seem to remember …
Gratitude for Guilt, for Grace
As Thanksgiving celebrations take place this week, my thoughts have repeatedly turned to gratitude—what it is, what it means, and perhaps more importantly, how to express it. The Oxford English Dictionary defines gratitude as “a warm sense of appreciation of kindness received, involving a feeling of goodwill towards the benefactor and a desire to do …
The Art and Science of Philosophy
When I tell people that I am a philosopher, I sometimes see an inchoate question behind their eyes. What is philosophy? Is it the same thing as psychology? Is it old men wearing togas? Where does philosophy fit into the life of the university? The university is filled with those who seek truth. They seek …
Golden Odes and Ruby-Red Letters: Why Classical Arabic Literature Matters Today
In spring 2021, a Saudi man named Sultan Aldeet netted himself one million Emirati dirhams (roughly $273,000 USD) plus a symbolic cloak and ring. His achievement? Winning first place on Prince of Poets, an American Idol-inspired TV contest in the United Arab Emirates between classical Arabic poets.[1] It airs every other year from Abu Dhabi …