I am a Professor of Literature Emeritus and former Provost and Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at American University. Over the course of my scholarly career, I have written a dissertation on authorities and anarchies, a first book on failed revolt, a second book on confusion and trauma, and produced a multi-media project on the paranoid style.
One constant in my scholarship has been a fascination with cultural production in the wake of traumatic events: the Paris Commune, May ’68 in France, the Kennedy assassination, 9/11. In exploring and promoting real pockets of wisdom in our apparently unwise age, Wisdom Matters and the WisCult blog clearly build on that fascination.