Kristin Scott

I’ve noticed a fairly new trend in mainstream film and television that seems to reflect the younger generation and those within it who believe that sexual identity is more fluid than categorical. Or perhaps these shows reflect a growing acceptance of various sexual identities, but also a struggle with the various ‘cultures’ that often accompany [...]

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Ok — I’ve spent a little over one year now in Second Life, and I’m not terribly convinced of its educational potential for college students in the humanities. Yes, I’ve been to a variety of educational events, have seen some pretty interesting simulated literary/historical environments, have even brought my own students into this virtual environment [...]

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Kudos to Art Conrad of Bremerton, WA for stirring some much needed controversy. Conrad apparently nailed a large Santa Claus to a cross in his front yard in protest of the commercialism of Christmas. Conrad is quoted by the Associated Press as saying that “Santa has been perverted from who he started out to be [...]

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I came across (albeit 12 years after the fact) a fascinating concept: That there is “no regulon in the semiosphere” . . .
I’m currently reading Paris to the Moon, an excellent novel by Adam Gopnik, an American who moves to Paris with his wife and son in 1995 and chronicles some of his five-year reflections [...]

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Well, it’s apropos that my cultural studies class is ending this evening, two weeks from Christmas, and that I started out the course discussing the Santa Pug as a cultural artifact. I’ve been getting more discontent with holidays, but most particularly Christmas. While the actual holiday itself began as a way of celebrating the birth [...]

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I’ve been very interested lately in what seems to be a fairly recent proliferation of cyborg advertising for things that have nothing to do with the internet, cyberspace, and/or advanced technology.
I ran across two such ads within a few blocks of the Columbia College Chicago campus recently. One was an ad by Svedka [...]

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The first week of classes went very well. I’ve got a great bunch of students in all three classes. In my Reviewing the Arts class, many students have already posted their responses to a reading by Plato on the class blog (I don’t typically have students posting so early in the week). And many of [...]

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I’m currently reading a book that was recommended by one of my students in the spring called Einstein’s Dreams, by Alan Lightman, physicist, novelist, and adjunct faculty member at MIT’s Program in Writing and Humanistic studies. Though I’m not quite half way through it yet, the novel provides a fictional peek into the dreams of [...]

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I’ve been horribly neglectful of this blog recently, but these last two chapters I’ve been asked to write for this textbook are ridiculously redundant and therefore difficult to make into two supposedly different chapters. In addition, I was recently asked, not by my wonderful editor (she’s been fabulous), but by the client, to use only [...]

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I’m currently reading the novel, The Binding Chair (or A Visit from the Foot Emancipation Society), by Kathryn Harrison. While the book has received a healthy dose of criticism in regards to its fragmented narrative structure, which seems to cause some readers to trip, I personally think it reflects the novel’s content-that of two women [...]

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