Four Talks in Three Days: North Carolina, New Hampshire

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This was a busy week for me, as I did four talks in three days, over the course of visits to two different campuses, Catawba College and St....

The Namesake

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When you have a five-month old at home, you watch most of your films on DVD. This weekend, though, we were able to arrange in-family babysit...

"The Cow" -- a Sufi Joke

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I came across the following in Idries Shah’s Wisdom of the Idiots (Octagon Press, 1970). Idries Shah is an Afghan writer who emigrated to E...

Two Passages Briefly Compared: "Ulysses" and "To the Lighthouse"

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This spring I'm teaching a course on Modernism, and I have many things I've been hoping to post about. One topic we discussed might ...

What did Guru Nanak look like? Textbooks in California

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In California, the Times reports that the School Board unanimously voted last week to alter a seventh grade textbook image relating to Gur...

Magic Realism on TV: "Heroes" vs. "Midnight's Children"

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Am I the first person to think of shows like Lost and Heroes as the television equivalent of "magic realism" in the novel? Thes...

Problems with Google Docs

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You may be wondering where I've been. I've been working on some essays, most recently on E.M. Forster. That's about done, but no...

I'll take the bronze

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Congratulations to Falstaff on winning "Best Humanities Blog" at the IndiBloggies, with 141 votes. Falstaff actually lives in the...

"Samjhauta" Thwarted: Another Senseless, Horrible Bombing

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It's difficult to know what to say sometimes after terrorist attacks like the recent bombing of the Samjhauta Express . 68 innocent peop...

Vote For Me, If You LIke: IndiBloggies

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I've been nominated for "Best Humanities Blog," in the 2006 IndiBloggies. You can vote for me here [UPDATE: Voting has now c...

MTV Desi, RIP

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Back in 2005, I mentioned , with some excitement, the advent of MTV Desi, a channel geared to NRIs and Second Generation South Asian America...

Peter Nicholson on Auden, and against the "Poetic"

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The Auden centenary is coming up , and Peter Nicholson has posted his poem, "Asking Auden," from 1984 at 3 Quarks Daily (seems we...

Alternadad, Parenting in Literary History

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I don't have that much in common with Neal Pollack, except maybe a certain attitude, but I still read about his book Alternadad with gr...

Begum Nawazish Ali Running For Parliament in Pakistan

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So, there was a big article in the New York Times recently (thanks, TechnophobicGeek) about how Indian TV is supposedly entering this golde...

Payless Shoes, Lipton Tea.... and the British Empire

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A connection made through the magic of semiotics. The following is from an interview in n+1 Magazine: A.S. Hamrah [ASH] : But you can...