Melville House author David Graeber is the star of “Barter That,” a parody of Young Money’s “Roger That” video produced by students in a York University anthropology class. In the song, Graeber’s rethinking of the history of barter (from Debt: The First 5,000 Years), is channeled by Ajay, who goes by the name “Young…
The “academic spring” uprising of professors against academic publishing giant Elsevier has led to at least a partial victory: in a statement released late Monday, the publisher announced it was withdrawing its support of the Research Works Act, a proposed piece of legislation that would…
Even as the uprising against scholarly publisher Elsevier continues to spread — see this report from the Sydney Morning Herald about Australian academics joining in, and this CBC report about the revolt in Canada — the Financial Times reports that Elsevier has “hit back” at its…
Good news out of the Jefferson City, MO, Federal District Court yesterday, according to this report from the American Civil Liberties Union: A federal district court ruled today that the Camdenton R-III School District must stop censoring web content geared toward the lesbian, gay, bisexual…
What’s next in the Elsevier boycott? Well, first of all, says Neil Stewart of City University London in smart overview on the blog of the London School of Economics, “What can’t be denied is the scale of the public relations disaster for Elsevier — whether or…
The protest against academic journal publisher Elsevier continues to grow explosively, with another 1,000 professors joining the 5,000 we reported yesterday who have signed a petiton vowing not to peer-review or submit papers for any of the Dutch publisher’s scientific journals. At Duke University, prominent mathematician…
An “academic spring” has broken out against scientific journal publisher Elsevier, says a New Scientist report by Jacob Aron. According to the report, “Inspired by a University of Cambridge mathematician, over 5000 academics have agreed to boycott publishers Elsevier, vowing not to peer-review or submit…
In the Chronicle Review, Mark Bauerlein writes about the issues involving literary scholarship and the hard road ahead for authors trying to be heard in a field awash with theses. He writes, “Because after four decades of mountainous publication, literary studies has reached a saturation…
Vladimir Sorokin, author of The Queue, Day of the Oprichnik, and The Ice Trilogy, is wrapping up month as writer-in-residence at Stanford University. Known as much for his shocking scenes (sex between clones of Stalin and Krushchev in his novel Blue Lard helped lead to…
Lorin Stein, editor of The Paris Review, has written a delightful list of the great works of literature he has not read: I have never got through Henry Green’s Living or Concluding, though neither one is a long book, and I have sometimes heard myself call Green my “favorite”…
