Mary Versus the Trumpeting Legions of Apathy

It's funny to me that there are people who hate the genre of the Christmas newsletter. They seem to hate it for two reasons: (a) it's superficial, trying to capture the entire year in MAX, one page, front-and-back, and (b) it's overly optimistic, phrasing even sad events as if they were fantastic ("Frank lost his job this year, which means more time to play with Kitty!"). I think that these are actually interesting genre conventions to work with. Think about it: how often do you write a summary of the entire year in your journal? How often are blogs just grumblefests? I say, bring on the newsletter. So without further ado, and apologies to those of you who will get this twice: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, all! This has been a great year for me, personally, and I hope it's been good to you, too. I'm now in my second year of my PhD program down here in Austin, Texas. I'm getting far more comfortable down here and am getting used to the rhythms of...

During the weeks leading up to the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, there was a lot of discussion about changing social attitudes. A law that had been generous at its time for allowing gay soldiers to serve their country was now oppressive because soldiers weren’t as intolerant as once they were; many soldiers in the same barracks as openly gay men have teachers, aunts, friends who are also gay. The law could progress to match social attitudes. There’s another place where Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is still thriving, though: surrounding religion in public universities. One prominent class-discussion scholar calls the discussion of religion in academia “the last great taboo” and one of my professors described admitting her religious persuasion as “coming out of the closet.” Why are we so anxious about the idea that academics can be religious? There’s a persuasive view in academia, like there once was about gays in the military, that all religious people fit an undesireable ste...