I am writing this after 8 hours of standing up and doing nothing, followed by 45 minutes of thrashing around on the squash court, getting humiliated by a curly Italian 3 years younger than me. So my nerves and reflexes are understandably shaken. What I need now is a beer and a book, and tonight [...]
Tagged Binge Drinking, Culture, Literature, Movies, Philosophy“In the immemorial style of young men under pressure, they decided to lie down for a while and waste time.”
Michael Chabon
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
Pardon the absence, but Portugal and Italy and I apparently did not equal any kind of efficiency. Back to the real world and hopefully an interesting season ahead of [...]
At LA Weekly there is a Q & A with the literary critic James Wood, who is under fire at the moment and has been for some time now. I am not completely up-to-date on the polemics surrounding Wood but the interview/Q & A is interesting as an entry point into the debacle. Wood, in [...]
Tagged Belletristic, Criticism, Culture, Literature, Ménage a troisSummer is upon us, though the weather may not always be clear about this. There is nothing like being caught unawares in freezing rain wearing nothing but a tank top, shorts and worn flip-flops. This is what summer in Denmark is, and we like it. Summer also means beach reading, and sometimes train and plane [...]
Tagged Column, Culture, Libary, Literature, Readings, Recommendations, SummerAfter a well executed but hectic NAAS conference, I am left in the midst of term paper frenzy here at the English Dept. Library at the University of Copenhagen. Though the 4th floor vista calms the nerves there is no denying that the students, me included, are on the edge. Still, I have promises to [...]
Tagged Arthur Miller, Creative Writing, Literature, PublishingThere is a brief meditation on the “inherent superiority” of the printed word versus the so-called ‘online drivel’ that is the blogosphere over at the Edge of the American West. Scott Kaufman highlights a current issue of a historical journal, which is riddled with flaws that may or may not reduce the credibility of the [...]
Tagged Criticism, Literature, Media, Religion, Reviews
“CARPE DIEM IN BLACK AND WHITE: Jim Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers” (by Camelia Elias)
One of the perennial discussions of the concept of the fragment and fragmentary forms revolves around the status of the fragment and the fragmentary in relation to a presupposed whole. Is the fragment a remnant of something broken? Something that has been detached [...]
Recently we at The Atlantic Community have been honored by a bit of attention from the excellent photo journalism and public culture blog No Caption Needed. NCN is run by Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites who authored one of the only sustained books charting the emergent field of cultural iconology, No Caption Needed: Iconic [...]
This photo (h/t The Bag) immediately struck me as it provides a very interesting visual narrative to an analysis I recently wrote on some contemporary political appropriations of Abraham Lincoln. I plan to discuss this image in more detail, along with my article which will be available after the weekend.
In the meantime, go check out [...]
Iconotopoi/Bildkulturen (Cultures of the Image)
Current Academic Practices in the Study of Images
Joint Eikones-McGill Graduate Conference
Department of Art History and Communication Studies
McGill University, Montreal
December 3 to 5, 2008
The joint McGill-Eikones Graduate Conference Iconotopoi/Bildkulturen (Cultures of the Image) aims to identify and challenge cultural and linguistic barriers within the academy, so that the study of images may [...]