On the Road Again

On the Road Again

Jill and I are looking forward to some overdue travel, starting with the Nowhere Else Festival this Labor Day weekend. Thanks to Karin Bergquist and Linford Detweiler of Over the Rhine—the  husband-and-wife indie-folk duo on whose farm the festival blossoms—the music,...

My Renewed Website

In unveiling my updated website, I can’t help but notice what’s concealed in attempting to reveal. My new headshots, taken last fall by the amazing Michael Wilson (click his name on my links page to see his website), show me cleanshaven with a full head of dark hair....

Against (bad) theory

I don’t like literary theorists that take their thoughts more seriously than the integrity of the work under examination. Making a text dance to whatever tune you impose belongs among the Forbidden Curses. I remember some time ago telling Robert Coles I was...

Place, people, and property

History is a messy business, an exercise in imposing order on contradictory information, a series of provisional efforts to select signal from noise, and is best understood, as Steven Shapin wrote about the sciences, “as if it was produced by people with bodies;...

A Poem by Scott Cairns

A poem for the Feast of the Transfiguration As We See “The transfiguration of our Lord, that is the radiancein which he was bathed at the pinnacle of Mount Tabordid not manifest a change in him, but a changein those who saw him.”-Isaac the Least Suppose the Holy One...