(MLA 2023) This was a presentation on January 5, 2023 in the context of celebrating the imminent publication of Critical Memory Studies: New Approaches from Bloomsbury Press. The panelists in this Just in Time panel, "All the Memory Work that Isn't Done" were asked to reflect on the links between our contributions to the volume. Citations are from the panelists' contributions to the forthcoming volume. Since we’ve been asked to talk a ... Continue Reading
A little scratch
Today I'm working on the ending of Finding Zbaraż--because it really doesn't yet have an ending. And so at long last I am opening these DVDs that have been with me, that got transferred from VHS, that I have not managed to open during the busy days of the semester. And the first moment, suddenly, after so many audio cassettes, that there is now video: Sabti says, "And I felt very..." (she is in the middle of a story, as these videos and cassettes ... Continue Reading
Sayed Kashua’s Fog
Yesterday I almost got to read with novelist Sayed Kashua. He had driven slowly, slowly through the fog toward the airport in Champaign, Illinois, thick fog of the kind—was it Hemingway?—compared to the process of writing, where your headlights show you just a few feet in front, but at each moment you drive, the lights show you that next little bit of road. When he arrived in Chicago, all the flights had been cancelled: he would not make it ... Continue Reading