• RSA announcements

This just in: information about the upcoming RSA convention (in Minneapolis)--SEPTEMBER 18 IS THE DEADLINE! And if you read this blog and aren't a member of RSA, please consider joining (just click the above link "RSA" and follow the instructions).

Call for Proposals
14th Biennial Conference
May 28-31, 2010
The Minneapolis Marriott City Center
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Conference Theme
RHETORIC: CONCORD AND CONTROVERSY
I have often and seriously debated with myself whether men and communities have received more good or evil from oratory and a consuming devotion to eloquence.

• Jim Aune's blog
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• rhetoric of class
• theorizing

It's not very often that I get jazzed by quantitative work in political science, but here's a remarkable study: Moses Shayo, “A Model of Social Identity with an Application to Political Economy: Nation, Class and Redistribution” (SSRN link here)

• Jim Aune's blog
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• theorizing

I really love British newspapers. I just ran across this blog from the Guardian: Simon Critchley blogging Being and Time, Mary Midgley blogging Leviathan, among others.

• Jim Aune's blog
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• copyright
• idiocy
• madness

J.D. Salinger apparently owns Holden Caulfield. A U.S. federal judge has barred publication and distribution of a recent novel by a Swedish author that tells the story of a 76 year-old Caulfield.

It's bad enough that J.D. Salinger and his team of lawyers can exert complete control over his works until 70 years after he's dead. But regardless of the important strides of the Free Culture movement (free as in free speech...not free beer), things seem to continue down the path of idiocy. Under the "logic" of current copyright law, Wide Sargasso Sea or The Hours might be considered illegal.

• Jim Brown's blog
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• the profession

I had been trying tonight to find out about rumors of a shakeup at the Sage journal Political Theory, and came across this blog In case you're not aware, political theorists (especially those with an historical rather than formal bent) are sort of treated in Political Science like rhetoric people in Communication departments.

• Jim Aune's blog
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• queries

My knowledge of US history is pretty good from 1780-1812, and then again from 1892 to the present, but is really bad in the middle (I'm not sure why, except that for some reason I can't stand reading about the Civil War). Here's my question: was there anyone in the North before the Civil War who basically argued, "Let the bastards secede?" I don't necessarily mean the Copperheads. Murphy? Bueller?

• Jim Aune's blog
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• sex

A 1966 Time magazine article on "The Homosexual in America." This is an interesting read, for a variety of reasons. I hadn't known that Illinois was the first state to legalize homosexual acts between consenting adults. It would interesting to look up the legislative debate on the bill.

• Jim Aune's blog
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• the profession

Michele Lamont (who helped create the field of cultural sociology in the US, and should be better known by people doing rhetoric and cultural studies) is guest-blogging over at Crooked Timber this month. Today she posted a chapter on her relationship with Pierre Bourdieu, forthcoming in a book on his work.

• Jim Aune's blog
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• During
• lecture
• SCT

Some notes on Simon During's talk this past week at Cornell University. Dr. During is professor of literature at Johns Hopkins University.

• Michael McGinnis's blog
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• Gay Rights
• Stonewall

Just as a (slightly late) reminder to Blogora readers, this weekend marks the 40th anniversary of the raid on the Stonewall Inn and the subsequent riots in Greenwich Village. An interesting archive of contemporary reports on Stonewall is available here, from a Columbia exhibit celebrating Stonewall's 25th anniversary.

• Michael McGinnis's blog
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