Nova PhDs

Classes started today here at Loyola. While it might seem odd to be terribly excited about the end of summer break, the start of the fall semester is pretty big here--since we haven't had a fall semester since 2004! Katrina hit on what was supposed to be the first day of classes (tomorrow, as I am sure tv has let you all know, is the anniversary) last fall. Given the circumstances, it is pretty great to be here reading syllabi to a room full of students. And with Ernesto seemingly coming nowhere near here, we should be sitting pretty (for now...).

This afternoon Joshua Ramey sucessfully defended his dissertation titled "Gilles Deleuze and the Powers of Art." Classes start up again next week, but there were still over 30+ people in attendance. I know very little about Deleuze's work so I cannot comment about the content of his project, but I can attest that Josh made an interesting presentation of his work and that the question and answer session was lively. An aspect of his original project, taken up only in the conclusion of his diss, concerned the concept of magic in the thought of particular Renaissance thinkers = a question from Julie Klein lead Josh to claim that he would have written a "magical dissertation" if he thought he could have had it approved . . . Walter Brogan then added that he, Josh, made a wise decision is taking his diss in another direction . . .

There is a party tonight at Josh and Emmanuel's place, and I expect there to be plenty of magical dancing and general merry-making.

for those of you who haven't yet seen this, check out this link and click on his lebanon evacuation story on the upper right side of the page. it's long, but pretty powerful.

I wanted to pass along the sad news that Iris Marion Young died yesterday, July 31. See here for more information. Prof. Young is something of a hero of mine for the way she combined interest in Merleau-Ponty (see "Throwing Like a Girl") with work on (particularly Habermasian) critical theory (see especially Justice and the Politics of Difference).

The University of Chicago's obituary for Prof. Young can be found here.