I'm a little surprised at what's being said on IA about lecturing and discussion. I'll admit that I didn't like discussion classes while in college because most of the time, the discussions devolved into pandering to the lowest common denominator, and I was left frustrated, spinning my wheels. Anyway...people over at that thread are also talking about how some students perceive discussion days as days on which the instructor wants to slack off and not have to do anything. I admit having had those thoughts too. I'm following the pedagogical tensions here with interest.

UPDATE: The Little Professor has a good response.

Today I found out that on February 6, a friend of mine, known on the Ms. message boards as Olympe, committed suicide. We really only knew each other online, but I did meet her face-to-face once. For nearly two years (that I know of), she had been very, very depressed, so much so that she spoke of living as unbearable. We (the Ms. boards community) knew it was likely that she would take her own life--she talked about the moral and philosophical implications of suicide a lot, especially here (I warn you, this is a very emotionally draining thread). I've been brooding today, just thinking about her, hoping she's not in pain anymore. I don't know what else I can say about it right now.

Edited to add: I can't stop thinking about her, about this. I've had the most morbid, disturbing thoughts, imagining what she did right beforehand. What was her last meal? Did she play music? I keep thinking of the scene in Girl, Interrupted when Daisy has hanged herself; the 45 of Skeeter Davis's "The End of the World" plays over and over, and then Susanna finds her. What other things did Olympe do?

I also feel this urge to knit a shroud for her, which is probably the most morbid thing. She was found on 6 February, so whatever they did with her remains has already been done, so why do I have this foolish need to knit something for her?

Cunt: A Cultural History.

Via Purse Lip Square Jaw.

Heart of Gold


What is Your Heart REALLY Made of?
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Via Today's Modern Mother.

From my inbox--a new journal, Critical Discourse Studies:

Critical Discourse Studies has been established in response to the proliferation of critical discourse studies across the social sciences and humanities. We will consider for publication papers that meet the needs of scholars in diverse disciplines and areas of study which develop critical perspectives on the relationship between discourse and social dynamics. Relevant areas and disciplines include: anthropology, communication, linguistics, sociology, politics, political economy, education, psychology, media studies, geography, urban studies, cultural studies, management studies, literary studies, history, technology studies, legal studies, philosophy, gender studies, migration studies, ethnic studies and others. We also welcome papers which connect critical academic research with practical concerns and agendas, including those of activist and grassroots political movements.

Becky has posted her proposal for her master's thesis on Revolve. I like the way she's using Kenneth Burke's theory here.



A...dare I say?...vapid speech given by Alan Greenspan on intellectual property. Via Sivacracy.



Feministe has a thorough post on rape culture with a lot of links.



Many of our convictions on bioethics are no longer being represented on Bush's bioethics panel. As if we needed another reason to boot him out of office.



Hydrogen peroxide discovered in Mars' atmosphere.

is coming back, according to Yahoo! News. I'd like to see the same happen to Jake 2.0!

One of the problems in conducting qualitative internet research is ethics: Are we studying texts or are we studying people? If it's the latter, how do you do your research in an ethical fashion? The Association of Internet Researchers has a lengthy treatise (beware, this is a big PDF), but I'm liking Arete's idea. She's doing a project on blogs as sites of healing, and as such, she wants to look at blogs whose authors have gone through traumatic personal experiences and blogged about them. She's asking for volunteers to let her use material on their blogs. It's, I think, a feminist way to go about a research design. I might use that later.

A new collection of essays, Reading Sex and the City, has just been published, and you can read an excerpt of one of the chapters by David Greven on representations of men in Sex and the City. It's quite a scathing critique of the show, and it really makes me look at the show differently. This claim is particularly thought-provoking:

The freakshow mentality of Sex and the City ends up being neither a post-feminist nor post-gay interrogation of privileged white male heterosexuality - despite the depiction of members of this group as freaks - but a reification of the very privileged status of the category. It is the women themselves, shakily stuck in their haunted liminal position between representing both "real" women and gay men, who are ultimately revealed as the chief freaks.