On her book “I Love Learning; I Hate School”: An Anthropology of College
Cover Interview of September 04, 2017
A close-up
I have to confess that I like this book. I poured my heart
and soul into each page. I lived with the ideas and the sentences and the
chunks for years. But some of my children are more beloved than others. (And
yes, like all writers, I’ve learned to “kill my darlings.” There
is a lot that has been excised.) But if you want to poke around, here are a few
places to amble:
The Introduction, especially pages 1-6, 15-16.
The strangeness of higher education, pages 86-88 and 113.
Chapter 5 on grades, which is something I’ve become entirely
obsessed about.
Pages 181-189 on the nature of the human animal.
About riding a bicycle, pages 209-210, because I remember
writing this passage in one burst.
Chapter 9 on motivation, especially Table 9.1 on page 222.
The Conclusion, especially pages 270-274.
I tried to tell the story of my journey: I had been one kind
of person and teacher, had a crisis of understanding, did research, changed my
mind, and became a different kind of person and teacher. If you flip through
those pages, you’ll get the gist of the story.
[M]odern art still commonly refers to a rather narrow range of meaning and scope. It basically focuses on developments in Paris (Impressionism etc.) in the nineteenth century, and to selected Euro-American movements in the twentieth century (Cubism, Abstract Expressionism etc). But if we understand modernity as a socially transformative condition that was in force across much of the world from the nineteenth century on, how are we to understand artistic practices that were associated with these momentous changes?Iftikhar Dadi, Interview of March 26, 2012
The two world wars of the twentieth century were a product of the dislocations brought about of modernization in an environment where great power competition and the drive for hegemony were conducted primarily by violent means. Now that this era has passed in Europe and is receding in much of the Pacific rim, and hegemony achieved by force is no longer considered a legitimate ambition, the security requirements and fears of great powers should decline.Richard Ned Lebow, Interview of October 4, 2010
A close-up
I have to confess that I like this book. I poured my heart and soul into each page. I lived with the ideas and the sentences and the chunks for years. But some of my children are more beloved than others. (And yes, like all writers, I’ve learned to “kill my darlings.” There is a lot that has been excised.) But if you want to poke around, here are a few places to amble:
The Introduction, especially pages 1-6, 15-16.
The strangeness of higher education, pages 86-88 and 113.
Chapter 5 on grades, which is something I’ve become entirely obsessed about.
Pages 181-189 on the nature of the human animal.
About riding a bicycle, pages 209-210, because I remember writing this passage in one burst.
Chapter 9 on motivation, especially Table 9.1 on page 222.
The Conclusion, especially pages 270-274.
I tried to tell the story of my journey: I had been one kind of person and teacher, had a crisis of understanding, did research, changed my mind, and became a different kind of person and teacher. If you flip through those pages, you’ll get the gist of the story.