I participated in and documented the rally at Cooper Union tonight in support of the student and faculty sit-in of the president's office (ongoing as I post this). After more than a century of being free of charge, the school now plans to charge tuition. My Storify. Continue reading

My notes for teaching this great poem about the author's conflicting heritages vis-á-vis the struggle for Kenyan independence. I used the poem to kick off my English-composition class this semester at BMCC, which is loosely organized around postcolonialism. Continue reading

So America finally got to see the film that Glenn Greenwald, Jane Mayer, Dianne Feinstein, and other reactionaries don't want anyone to watch: Zero Dark Thirty, which racked up $24 million in its first weekend of national release. Although the relentless criticism of the film's depiction of torture appears to be poisoning its Oscar chances—director Kathryn Bigelow was snubbed for a nod, and last night's Golden Globe for best drama went to the faux-political film Argo—the groupthink clearly hasn't deterred audiences, whom Zero Dark Thirty is for, after all. Indeed, the film grippingly reminds American viewers of what the U.S.... Continue reading

"You can't preserve everything," Florent Morellet, pioneering meat-market restaurateur, said Thursday night at a Historic Districts Council screening of the 2009 documentary about the rise and fall of his eponymous French diner. The stories of Morellet, his restaurant (which closed in '08), and the meat market have been well told over the years, but the Frenchman's rebirth as a quasi-anti-preservationist could be fresh narrative terrain: Now a member of the community board that serves the neighborhood, Soho, in which he lives, Morellet professed to have lost interest in the meatpacking district, having turned his attention instead to high-rises, urban density,... Continue reading

*Or, Why I Like BLDG BLOK Last night I participated in the inaugural public event of BLDG BLOK, a start-up housed at the DUMBO NYU-Poly incubator that's using mapping and other digital tools to rediscover urban history. My task was to respond creatively to a history of Tompkins Square by writer Francis Morrone; I had five minutes, or about 1200 words. Following is what I wrote and read. When I think of Tompkins Square, I think of rats. Two summers ago, the square—or park, or gathering place, or historical site, or whatever you deem the most appropriate description of the... Continue reading

Moving west to east, the second building of the East 10th Street Historic District, number 295 (above), is part of the same set of houses that includes 293 and ends with 299. All built in a Greek Revival/Italianate style, they're attributed to the architect Joseph Trench. As before, this building incorporates Queen-Anne-style alterations, such as the cornice; the main entrance was also moved to the basement. Previously: The East 10th Historic District—Photos Continue reading

The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission voted unanimously this past January to elevate the north side of East 10th Street between Avenues A and B to the status of historic district. The district contains 26 buildings, most of which were built in the 1840s, '50s, and '60s, following the opening of Tompkins Square Park, which the buildings face, in 1834. A few of the buildings went up around the turn of the twentieth century, including the McKim, Mead, & White-designed public library at 331 East 10th. These buildings, though not the library, have been altered greatly since their construction,... Continue reading

You don't have to do this. At your special meeting Monday at 3, you don't have to ratify the corrupt decision by a cabal of three of your members—plus martyred Kiernan and unnamed shadowy advisers—to remove President Sullivan from Mr. Jefferson's great university. Jefferson—we like to talk about him a lot, don't we?—believed in democratic ideals; he founded the University to embody them. He was resolutely and authoritatively against tyranny. But what happened last weekend was tyrannical: a secret conspiracy by an ultra-small but powerful minority to defy the wishes of a very large majority—that is, the UVA community. The... Continue reading

I like a good conspiracy theory as much as anyone, but unfortunately the one about Goldman Sachs's embattled Education Management Corporation and the UVA coup isn't true. According to the theory proposed by my fellow UVA alum Anne-Marie Angelo, President Sullivan was sacked because she declined to go into business with EDMC. As Angelo writes, EDMC wanted to make or made a bid to offer online education through UVA. From this endeavor, EMC [sic] would invest profits back into the University, helping to heal some of the University’s fiscal woes. When Sullivan was reluctant or refused to agree to the... Continue reading

The 1895 Rotunda fire. Image courtesy the University of Virginia Library. "This is the most egregious case I have ever seen of mismanagement by a governing board. It's secretive, it's misguided and based on the public statements, there's no clear rationale.” Hunter Rawlings, president of the Association of American Universities "We encourage all of us, even as we adjust and absorb this change, to focus constructively forward in preparing the institution for its next stage of leadership..." University of Virginia provost John Simon and COO Michael Strine On day five of the UVA debacle, in which the university's renegade board... Continue reading

Among the people living in my building in 1940: stenographers, investigators (one for "N.Y.C. Social"), lawyers, waitresses, a hatmaker and a dressmaker, a hospital dietitian, and a "photographers" salesman. Though they mostly hailed from New York, quite a few were born in Russia, Austria, Poland, Germany, and Denmark, as well as New Jersey and Maine. Just a snapshot of what you can find on the 1940 Census site, which has been bombarded with more than 37 million "hits"—so cute, the Archives!—since nine a.m. Monday. Continue reading

Teaching Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's collection of stories The Thing Around Your Neck in my undergraduate contemporary-lit class at Rutgers and finding myself in want of detailed histories or other nonfiction accounts of modern Nigeria. These can be books, but more immediately I'm looking for articles—academic, journalistic, critical. Any ideas? Post in the comments and I'll add to my embryonic list below. "With Gods on Their Side," a 1995 London Review of Books account of the colonial introduction of Christianity to the continent. Continue reading

Ancient modernity. Continue reading

Started teaching a two-week winter-session course on spy stories at Rutgers today. We meet every weekday through Friday, January 13th, for four and a half hours a day. Course description and syllabus here (second listing). Continue reading

I read at KGB Bar last night. Pretty cool. Continue reading

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Details and registration here. Continue reading

The following is an interview I did with Susan Youssef about her debut feature Habibi, which world-premieres in the Venice Days section of the Venice Film Festival on September 4th. Susan is an old friend, and I serve as the media consultant for the film. This interview will be used in Habibi press materials and can also be read as a PDF at the film's site here. Based on the ancient Arabic romance of Majnun Layla, Habibi tells the story of young Gazan lovers who are prevented from seeing each other by family, social tradition, and politics. The idea came... Continue reading

My parents went on an 11-night eastern Mediterranean cruise earlier this month that sailed from Rome to Istanbul and back again. They sent me postcards from each of the six ports of call. Above is the first, along with its stamp and postmark. Continue reading

1. Glitter satirizes her hyper-femininity, a key cause of her popularity. 2. Glitter has become a decidedly queer object. Deployed by queer activists upon a decidedly anti-queer figure, Bachmann's anti-queer record and discourse are exposed—and visually so, which yields maximum media impact. 3. A glittered Bachmann is a queered Bachmann. Via crafty activist sleight-of-hand, Bachmann becomes the figure of her ire for a moment—nay, permanently, given the visual evidence. 4. The glitter action shows that the Republican 2012 presidential field can't escape their anti-queer records and discourse—indeed, that the electorate will be reminded of their hateful positions and speech. 5.... Continue reading

The Hotcakes's website. Continue reading

While procrastinatingly excavating clutter from around my apartment today, I found Jim Sullivan's classic Boyfriend 101, subtitled A Gay Guy's Guide to Dating, Romance, and Finding True Love. I totally forgot I ever consulted such a thing, although my first thought was that I must have just skimmed it. But, no, I actually annotated the book, up till page 23; after that the marginalia disappears. Here's some of what I marked up when I read the book four or five years ago. These tips may be useful to you singletons out there (a category that no longer, natch, includes me).... Continue reading

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Glenn Ligon’s 1988 work Untitled (I Am a Man), a replica of the sign carried by striking Memphis sanitation workers in 1968, is a prime example of his appropriative strategy. Not an original sign itself, nor an identical reproduction of one, Ligon’s painting is rather an appropriation of the sign, so that the words “I Am a Man” simultaneously exist in three separate but related contexts: the original historical context in which the message emerged, the context in which Ligon rendered that message, and the context in which a viewer apprehends the message. Indeed, Ligon sought to show in Untitled... Continue reading

NYT slide show. Ligon (after a preface) on "Untitled (I Am a Man)," 1988. Continue reading