While I’m on the subject of books, Jeff from Beautiful Atrocities reminded me in the comments of something that he, Sean Kinsell and I had posted about before — that San Francisco’s City Lights doesn’t sell books by fascists. Hmmmm…….

It’s interesting. I actually *do* women’s/gender history and MANY of the grad students in my program are particularly hostile to pomo and even identity politics (um, count myself in that field). It’s frustrating because I’m writing a master’s thesis on gay and lesbian history and I fear being ostracized – not by my own Big 10 colleagues, but by those in interdisiciplinary studies – because I won’t situate my own work in queer theory. I know the theory. I may use a teeny, tiny bit. But it won’t constitute the bulk of my argument. And apparently that’s bad. Blah. I need another drink.

I know that PC-isms haven’t taken over history departments as quickly as they have English. For that matter, I also have a friend or two who studied sociology who went on to do pretty cool graduate work with no po-mo frills. And hell, I majored in comparative literature, which on the face of it should be the perfect way to get a degree in content-free effusion, but (partially because one of my concentrations was Japanese, and partially because my advisor on the English side was a feminist who believed in old-fashioned rigor) it was nothing like that for me. I think a lot depends on which college’s department you happen to land in, especially at the second or third tier, which is unfortunately where someone who blows off algebra is likely to be an undergrad.

In my (rather conservative) history department some pomo is acceptable, depending on your subfield, but even if that’s the case using more than a tiny bit of jargon to advance an argument just doesn’t fly. This, by the way, is why I moved from an english department to a history department.

And yes, it occurred to me that someone takes care of Cohen in ways that allow him to be as innumerate as he wants to be.

It does bother me that a major American newspaper columnist tells youngsters, any youngster, that they needn’t study math.

I run our household. I look at at a lot of numbers.

If you aren’t taking a salary from a source, you’d best have a good damn confidence in your ability to handle them.

Algebra? It comes in.

Cohen? His wife does his taxes. Or his latest girlfriend. Or boyfriend. Never can tell with these people.