The Right Way to Get an MFA

I’m going to get my MFA in Directing (for theatre) in the fall.  Yay!  I present below a combined listing of advice I think I would have appreciated and an annotated timeline of theatre and life events leading up to my decision to attend an MFA program.  I know that none of my suggestions below are easy to do.  I just present it as stuff that I suspect might have been helpful to me on the way to getting into an MFA program. First, a few conversations in recent years that really affected me: At my old day job, helping 22 year old coworker unload the dishwasher, she tells me that she is applying for grad school.  “What else am I going to do, keep doing this sh*t for another five …

The Thin End of the Wedge: Faculty House, Columbia University, and the Future of Higher Education in America

While news of the ongoing labor dispute at Columbia University’s Faculty House has gotten out—you can read about it in The Nation—its full implications remain obscure.  On its surface the fight appears straightforward: Faculty House is a branch of Columbia University’s Dining Services and located on its East Campus. An event space and upscale restaurant ostensibly for Columbia faculty and their guests, it employs 34 workers. On March 31, 2013, their contract expires. It has been an awful contract, exploitative, and of questionable legality. It is a contract which the workers want to change. The story of this dispute is about stolen tips; it is about “part-time” workers pulling …

David Greenberg Doesn’t Hate Howard Zinn Because He Was a Bad Scholar, but Because He Was a Radical

Rutgers historian David Greenberg has written a hit piece on Howard Zinn that would be hilarious if it weren’t so cringe-inducing.  Actually, it is hilarious.  Greenberg has taken to the pages of The New Republic to remind the world that the late, great Zinn was a puffed-up piece of nothing, whose work ranks at about the level of a coloring book in scholarly terms.  Why?  Because Greenberg is far more sophisticated than all that. Dumping on Zinn is, unfortunately, a bit of a cottage industry, and the celebrated Boston University historian and activist makes an easy target.  His books are widely read, yet he has a good deal more street cred than the airport-reader-and-civil-war-buff …

A Mediating Mess: How American Post-WWII Media Undermined Democracy

Editors notes: This review originally appeared in The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics, and Culture (5.2, pages 254 - 257).  Unfortunately, in its original publication, the review  misidentified Professor Morgan as Edmund rather than Edward. These errors  have been corrected here. Apologies to Prof. Edward P. Morgan for the mishap. When the Swift Boat controversy engulfed the 2004 election campaign, America’s obsession with the Vietnam War once again reared its ugly head.  Democratic candidate and decorated Vietnam Veteran John Kerry’s staunch opposition to the war upon his return from deployment drew harsh critiques from conservatives in the early 1970s and in 2004.  The …

Debunking the Mythical Discourse Surrounding Public Housing: Part IV of the UHA 2012

In ToM's final installment of its 2012 UHA coverage, our correspondents present a detailed report regarding one of the conference's perpetually most popular subjects: public housing. With a packed house in attendance, the UHA’s six roundtable presenters provided a coherent and compelling argument against prevailing myths regarding public housing.  Considering the success of documentaries like The Pruitt Igoe myth in recent years, new interpretations of public housing’s legacy have come to the fore. Leading figures in urban housing including Kenneth Jackson and Alexander Von Hoffman among others attended, making for a lively post presentation discussion.   From Le Corbusier influenced …

Steel Towns, Motor Cities, and Cuban Refugees: Part III of the 2012 UHA Conference

Welcome to the third installment of ToM's four part coverage of the 2012 UHAs.  You'll detect a clear bias in favor of aged/renewed rust belt cities with a flourish of transnationalism at the end via the Cuban Revolution and post WWII Miami.  If you missed Part I click here and for Part II here. Panel – Rust Belt Cosmopolitanism Joshua Akers – Settling the City: Urban Homesteading and the Construction of Markets in Detroit “It stands out on the highway like a creature from another time/ It inspires the babies’ questions for their mothers as they ride/ But no one stopped to think about the babies or how they would survive/ We almost lost Detroit, this time.” - …

Crime in the City and the Curious Case of Philadelphia: Part II of the 2012 UHA

"Is their such a thing as Philadelphia exceptionalism?" asked one observer at this year's UHA.  Undoubtedly, over the past two UHA's (2010, 2012), Philadelphia has enjoyed the attentions of more than a few historians. With this in mind, ToM correspondents provide a glimpse at some of the work being done on the City of Brotherly Love.  Crime and policing emerged as another area of increased interest at this year's conference.  San Francisco's Chinatown, New York's Washington Heights, and yes, West Philadelphia provide case studies focusing on crime's influence on political mobilization, urban renewal, race relations and community activism. For part I of ToM's 2012 UHA coverage click …

Impending Hurricanes, Alternative Sexualities, and Tourism – Part I of the 2012 UHA Conference

Welcome to the 2012 Urban History Conference.  Hurricane Sandy loomed over the event like depression in a Tim Burton film, and ToM's editors and contributors send our best wishes to everyone on the Eastern seaboard. Much like our 2010 coverage, we did our best to cover an array of topics but inevitably the conference’s size and density placed limits on our correspondents. Nonetheless, ToM's endeavored to bring you several snapshots from the conference. Consider these imagistic academic instagrams rather than a comprehensive take on the event itself. Part I – Sex and the City   Panel - The Sexual City in the Americas: Tourism, Migration, and Race in Mexico City, Miami, and New …

The Internet’s Not Just for Porn: The Pros and Cons of Online Education

But can online education ever be education of the very best sort? It’s here that the notion of students teaching teachers is illuminating. As a friend and fellow professor said to me: “You don’t just teach students, you have to learn ’em too.” It took a minute — it sounded like he was channeling Huck Finn — but I figured it out. -- Mark Edmundson, UVA English Professor in the New York Times, July 19, 2012 When Mark Edmundson penned his critique of online education, it came on the heels of a highly contentious dispute at the University of Virginia in which its Board of Visitors dismissed and then reinstated president Teresa A. Sullivan, largely over what it perceived as …

Crayons, Fraternities, and Military Historians: The Perception and State of American Military History

During his luncheon talk at the 1997 meeting of the Society for Military History, John Lynn revealed that a colleague of his at the University of Illinois had inquired if military historians write in crayon. Eleven years later, John Shy, professor emeritus of history at the University of Michigan, reported at the 2008 meeting of the American Historical Association that the head of an American history department proclaimed military history “as of interest only to hormone-driven fraternity boys.”   In the world of academia, a common belief among military historians is that non-military historians tend to equate military history with popular narratives focused narrowly on guns, battles, …