I am a Professor of Literature 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. Then, “they” made me an administrator—first at the University of Southern California, then at American.
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, the WisCult blog builds on that fascination.
When I’m not writing about wisdom, or seeking to foster it in our students, I play guitar in a rock and roll band appropriately named The Artifacts.