The following paper was presented at the 2023 Popular Culture Association Conference of the South in New Orleans in session F 11.1: Friday, September 29th at 4:00 p.m. in Algiers A. Many thanks to Samuel Lyndon Gladden, University of New Orleans, for his work organizing this panel. By 2015 I’d been living in Ohio forContinue reading ““David Bowie’s Station to Station and ★: The Beginning and End of Bowie’s Reinvention of Music””
Tag Archives: WPLongform
Nicki Minaj and the Poetics of Personal Moisture
Last March I changed the title of my blog to Philosophy of Contemporary Song, partly because I’d just read Dylan’s recent book, and partly because of a conversation with my sixteen year old daughter Grace, who told me she wished people like me would write about songs by artists like Nicki Minaj. She’s not atContinue reading “Nicki Minaj and the Poetics of Personal Moisture”
Writing Instruction and the New Liberal Arts
Lee Trepanier’s “The Compliant College Classroom” and Blake Smith’s “Against the Writing Center” are both recent diatribes against the current state of writing instruction at the college level. They make similar claims from different disciplinary perspectives: Trepanier is Chair and Professor of Political Science at Samford University while Smith is currently serving as a FulbrightContinue reading “Writing Instruction and the New Liberal Arts”
An Allan Responds to the Barbie Movie
I grew up watching Speed Racer, the original anime, on television in the late 1960s. I probably watched it from the time I was four or five until I was eight or ten on a constant stream of reruns. So when the Wachowskis released a live action Speed Racer in 2008, I was gratified. NotContinue reading “An Allan Responds to the Barbie Movie”
On Being Creative
[Reposted from 2017.] Artists and their Art My two points of reference for artists and their creations here will be New York Stories and Bullets Over Broadway, both excellent films that in their own ways comment on the art of filmmaking and creativity. I won’t be discussing it now, but I’d also recommend the film S.O.B. New York Stories isContinue reading “On Being Creative”
The Philosophy of Contemporary Song 