Author: Rufus F.

Here’s something different- one of my paintings. It’s the second painting I’ve ever done, so be kind; it was inspired by a dream I had about floating stone heads.

After the jump, a somewhat disturbing pencil and white gouache drawing by Hans Bellmer, which appeared recently at the Thomas Dane gallery in London as a part of their “Contingency” show:

(Update: One line changed to directly quote Megan McArdle instead of inaccurately summarizing her position.) I think we’ve nearly sucked all the marrow from the bone of ‘liberal academia’ (in pts. 1, 2, 3). Discussing...

Author, poet, farmer, activist Wendell Berry was recently honored at the White House for his contributions to the humanities. If you’d like to celebrate, here’s a good place to start.

The other night, some history grad students were at a local bar socializing and sharing our gripes and joys, when we got into a discussion of which academic projects we’ve heard of that seemed...

I’ve always had a bit of a Napoleonic streak, and so, in spite of my first post in this series being a bit unsuccessful at illuminating the political leanings of the academy, I am...

This is the third version of the story of the gruesome murder of Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus by her own children, Orestes and Electra, in vengeance for her own bloody murder of Agamemnon,...

“An interminable making of interpretations is the duty of the teacher; in this duty of mindfulness, never fully to be discharged, he is freer than most citizens. That unique condition can only exist if...

My sister, who lives in Rabat, Morocco, has been told to stay home today and later in the week, because “there are planned protests”. Does this mean Morocco will be the next Egypt? She...

After the jump a bronze scupture by Franz Xaver Messerschmidt from his series of 64 Canonical Grimaces of the face, done in the late 1700s and now on view at the Louvre, after a...

At this year’s Society for French Historical Studies (SFHS) conference in Charleston, South Carolina, there was a roundtable discussion entitled, “A Call to Action: The Present and Future of French History and the Humanities”,...

Over at Bust Magazine’s blog, I paid tribute to the voluptuous Tura Satana (recently departed) star of the cult classic Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (Hey, I can’t write about dead Greeks all the time!)

In a previous discussion, I used the awkward term “inner states” to describe the religious experience, attempting to distinguish internal from external events, such as “miracles”. Basically, I was trying to say that the...

After the jump, a watercolor painting of a lion-tailed macaque by an unnamed Chinese artist (circa late 1820s) from the John Reeves Collection, featured in a current exhibition at the London Natural History Museum.

After the jump, the sculpture ‘oversikt’ by the artist Jone Kvie from the “launch” series at the Kunstnerforbundet Gallery in Norway (try saying that three times fast!):

Over at Inside Higher Ed, Stephen Brockmann apologizes for the culture war having politicized the humanities in the 80s: “What on earth were we thinking? Exactly why was it considered progressive in the 1980s to get...

After the jump, an oil painting by Toronto artist Ryan Dineen, from a series opening today at the Show and Tell Gallery in Toronto.

I was struck by this line in E.D.’s fine recent post on centralization: I think there is profound tragedy in the loss of tradition, of folkways and local practices. I suppose I do too. However,...

Anecdotal evidence about academia’s race to the bottom: a local university emailed our graduate department- they’re offering to pay adjuncts $1,850/ course to teach their history offerings. Some math: a full time teaching load is...