NDQuesday: Reading (and Writing)

The plan is this. I need to spend this morning working to smush (a technical, writerly term) together my four mini-essays on the humanities in the age of austerity. 

For those of you who don’t know, four weeks ago,  I started writing my contribution to the North Dakota Quarterly special issue dedicated to Humanities in the Age of Austerity. If you haven’t read the first part of this article, you can find it here, you can find the second part here, the third part here, and the fourth part here. With any luck, I’ll have these combined into a single document by, say, noon.

In the meantime, I urge you to go and check out North Dakota Quarterly. The last month or two have been very good to the Quarterly, with some remarkably thoughtful and insightful contributions. Today, we posted Matt Masur’s review of Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s The Vietnam War, last week, we posted Mark Jendrysik’s review of Bjork’s Utopia. We also posted Crystal Albert’s heartfelt reflection on the passing of William Gass and, the week before, Aaron Poochigian’s poem in memory of his late father and NDQ contributor and editor, Don Poochigian. Cari Campbell’s sweeping review of The Mission of Herman Sternand a free “insta” book from our newly named art editor Ryan Stander round out the posts in the new year. 

So stay tuned to this blog for updates on my contribution to the humanities in the age of austerity issue of NDQ, but, for this morning, check out what’s been happening over at NDQ.