Review of John Cooper's Pursuits of Wisdom in Foucault Studies

My review of John Cooper's Pursuits of Wisdom: Six Ways of Life in Ancient Philosophy from Socrates to Plotinus has now been published by Foucault Studies. You may access a full copy of the review by clicking here. Please feel free to email me comments.

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2019 - 2021 Courses

Tenure, a sabbatical, and -- most important -- the arrival of two new members to my family have pulled me away from regular updates to my site here. I'm now adding course syllabi, so under TEACHING above you can find the following, which I've taught since 2018. Living a Democratic Life (Summer 2020). A special seminar for Outer Coast , a nascent two-year institution of higher education in Sitka, Alaska. Energetic and thrilling discussions of John Locke’s Second Treatise on Government. Reflecting on Black Lives Matter protests organized by Anchorage-based students. Facilitating reflection on “the power of the people” embodied – in virtual form – by the Student Body. Through this course, I delighted in helping to construct a self-reflective community, not just teaching students about the meanings and possibilities of democracy but collaborating on a more democratic way of being together, be that through playing Scribl.io or talking about the politics of ancient Athens. Anti-Poli
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DeLillo, Herodotus, and the stones of Athens

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 Don DeLillo’s The Names begins with what feels like a long camera take, trailing a character from behind as he walks around the streets of the Plaka, the central market district of Athens. The longer the shot continues, however, the more you realize that the man who’s leading you is not the central character. There’s someone, something else. You keep glimpsing it between the blocks, above the antennas and awnings and electrical wires. It’s apparitional, a massive presence that seems to hover in the middle distance, glimmering and impassive beneath the bright Mediterranean sunshine. At long last the character stops in an open plaza, pauses, then looks up. The camera follows. The Acropolis rises like a brilliant white column shooting skyward, its pillars and pediments strident yet effortless. The high city. I gasped when I first glimpsed the Acropolis. I was stepping onto the balcony of an apartment I’d rented for six weeks in Kolonaki, a wealthy neighborhood in central Athens. My host,
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Further reflections on the fall

Reflecting on the two courses I taught during fall 2015, I've come to realize the importance of another part of my teaching: the book club that I helped to organize and facilitate in a Philadelphia prison. Every Friday I and two of my colleagues along with seven or eight of our students from Bryn Mawr's "Arts of Resistance" 360 Cluster ( website ) traveled to northeast Philadelphia to a women's prison where we read and discussed books together for ninety minutes. We read Claudia Rankine's "Citizen," the Seamus Heaney translation of Antigone ("The Burial at Thebes"), John Edgar Wideman's "Brothers and Keepers," and some other short pieces. The books constituted our curriculum: students took turns preparing "lessons," which usually consisted in questions and activities to stimulate discussion; we left a great deal of space for the conversation to emerge and develop in the most organic way possible. ("Organic"
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