@tokyo_0 The single most important thing to understand about terrorism is that the goal is to create an alibi for genocidal violence. If a government acts with the force and direction of the emotions of the people following the attack, the terrorists got exactly what they wanted. It couldn't be more effective if they sent a wishlist. Racist dehumanization? Mission creep? Civilian deaths? Check check check, just as planned.
It's super annoying that "the terrorists have already won" became a cliché by October of 2001 because actually, they have, and apparently in the 21st century, they always do. It would be really neat and cool to see just one government respond to terrorism without creating an emotion-pumping machine of propaganda to justify satisfying every single wish of the terrorists.
Walter Chaw's review of When Evil Lurks makes me want to watch it again, but I don't think it would be any less frightening the second time. I don't generally care about horror movies because I don't often get frightened by them. But When Evil Lurks is so gruelingly, constantly dreadful that I am in awe. (Rugna's earlier Terrified was full of freaky scenes but didn't plunge me into unshakeable nightmares.) https://filmfreakcentral.net/2023/10/when-evil-lurks/
As Chaw suggests, it's a great metaphor for all kinds of global horrors (pandemic, climate change, fascism, genocide), in that each generation tries to pass on warnings about what to do or not to do to stop the spread, but, if the previous attempts were successful at all, the next generation starts to view that received knowledge as outdated folksy superstition that doesn't apply to us, not now. Maybe the threat isn't even real, OK? Or maybe we can just do obvious simple things to stop it?
Both Terrified and When Evil Lurks have an older woman character who shows up with an elaborate pseudoscientific-looking instrument that can be used to contain the spreading evil, but, like, it takes a really long time to set up and actually everyone has to kind of get out of the way while it's being prepared and there's no way to explain why it works to people with no relevant knowledge, and, um, yeah, that's vaccines. That's counterterrorism measures. That's climate science.
When 9/11 happened, I'd just taken several college courses with Bill Clinton's counterterrorism advisor, reading the most current work on effective prevention and responses to political violence, and I was like, "Oh, I know this one! Surely there are experts in the government who will not allow the US to respond on the basis of gut-level emotions or mass panic." Little did I know that the rest of my life would be watching governments respond on the basis of gut-level emotions and mass panic!
I was trying to figure out why the cats, who don't like each other very much and are not due a meal, had convened at my feet while I'm writing in the bedroom, but then I remembered about the 2:30pm sunbeam. #CatsOfMastodon
My advice to scholars is this: When you get a peer review report, translate it into bullet points you can act on, preferably in a hand-written list. Don't replicate the tone of the report, whether critical or complimentary. Don't be snarky or cynical. If the report addresses something you can't change, don't write it down.
It's easy to get overwhelmed with revisions because we're trying to hold too many criticisms in our head at once. Or the way we read it, braced, made it seem worse than it is
If you get a really nasty peer review report, ask a friend to do this for you. (You can do it for them next time.) Ask them to translate the report into actions you can take to resubmit it. You don't need to dwell on the tone of the report, which can be humiliating or even aggrandizing in ways that are not productive. All that matters is the list of steps you're going to take to revise it, either for that journal or another.
Tomorrow, my Victorian lit class is finishing Our Mutual Friend. I'd say 85% are fully finished with it--not bad--and the others are within striking distance. I assigned 200 pages a week, less than I have in the past, but more than my current students are used to reading. (They take religious studies in the morning and academic classes until 8 or 10 at night, so we can't ask for as much homework.) Audiobooks help, as do weekly written check-ins (not quizzes but accountability).
The big help has been Mil Nicholson's reading, freely available on Librivox. As much as my students are loving Dickens, they are absolutely ga-ga for Mil Nicholson's incredible performance of this book. It's a hilarious, breathtakingly pyrotechnic work full of unsettling metonymic accretions and polyvocal choruses--she "do the police in different voices" indeed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dfwpMlZkCU
One of my students is an EMT and is often driving around--listening is easier for him than reading. Others find it's hard to keep all the characters and information in their head without a voice giving rhetorical life and inflection to the prose. Others read while they listen. But mostly, I think it's increasingly difficult for students to get real quiet mental space away from distractions to read. I know it's hard for me. They're excited by it when it's happening but it's hard to schedule time.
Every literature prof I know has had to make cuts over the past 5 years especially. No matter how little reading we assign, students will claim it took them several hours to finish it. That is what happens when you are reading half a page at a time while jumping in and out of context! Real, immersive, deep reading is a hard state to get to, but once they do it, many come to find it is a meditative refuge from attention-plucking distractions. It can be a life-saving skill to have!
It's incredible what a difference a group of students makes. Last fall, I had a composition class in which everything on the syllabus was the worst thing ever--writing 3-4 pages, reading 6-10 pages, doing peer review, discussing, presenting research, attending class.
This spring, I'm teaching exactly the same material and assignments to a class who thinks it's all hilarious and fun and exciting. They get carried away with writing and discussion and peer review. They're excited about learning.
The weirdest part, though, is that the papers I got from the fall term students were pretty great, actually. They wrote papers that were artful, peculiar, expressive, informative, rhetorically sophisticated... They just seemed to hate every minute of it. I had to beg some of them to spend more than 5 minutes on reading each other's work. They made excuses not to be in class all the time. It was pretty grim.
This term, it's the highlight of everyone's day. They show up early and stay late.
The only thing I can put my finger on is that our fall semester composition students are all going through homesickness and culture shock. They don't have friends yet, and college isn't what they imagined in some way. But by the spring, they have or know how to make friends. They're a bit more relaxed about being challenged intellectually, and less anxious about grades. They're more reliant on one another and vulnerable. It makes a huge difference.
Lecturer at Yeshiva College in #18thC & #19thC #Literature. #Bentham & #queer #aesthetics (wrote Uncommon Sense, UVaP 2022), national #debt and #slavery, #Bronx #cats #boardgames #film Chair of Columbia Seminar in 18thC European Culture, Treasurer of the #Johnsonians, #philosophy reviews editor of JECS.#Admin of c18.masto.host, an instance for anyone with an interest or scholarship in any aspect of the global eighteenth century. All disciplines welcome!http://carrieshanafelt.com