Intellectual Affairs

Scott McLemee writes Intellectual Affairs each week. He also blogs at Quick Study.

The most recent Intellectual Affairs columns:

There Is Nothing Outside the Txt  Oct. 15

Is digital shorthand the end of literacy? Scott McLemee listens to a linguist. more

Ig-Nobel Thoughts  Oct. 8

Is U.S. literature too insular and media-crazed to merit notice by the Swedish Academy? Scott McLemee asks around. more

The Playboy Philosopher  Oct. 1

Bernard-Henri Lévy has become an American media superstar. Scott McLemee thinks his fifteen minutes are about up. more

Past columns

Below, find all previously published Intellectual Affairs columns.

• The Anti-Intellectual Presidency  Sept. 24
• D.F.W., R.I.P.  Sept. 17
• Prospero’s Island?  Sept. 10
• The End of the End of the End of History?  Aug. 27
• Cogito Interruptus  Aug. 20
• Poli Sci Fi  Aug. 13
• It’s All About the Oil  Aug. 6
• Lucy in Disguise  July 30
• A Debt of Honor — Skipped Out On  July 23
• It’s All Geek to Me  July 16
• Towards Helhaven  July 9
• Digital Daze  July 2
• Plenty to Go Around  June 25
• Books Exposed, Part Two  June 18
• Two Hundred and Counting  June 11
• Books Exposed  June 4
• From Plymouth Rock to Plato’s Retreat  May 28
• Sex: The Revolution  May 21
• The Workhorse  May 14
• Becoming Richard Rorty  May 7
• ‘All the Sad Young Literary Men’  April 30
• Deployed  April 23
• French Theory  April 16
• In Search of Max Faber  April 9
• The 2.0 Decade?  April 2
• All for Nought?  March 26
• The Truth? I Can’t Handle the Truth!  March 19
• The Soiling of Old Glory  March 12
• The Whole World Was Watching  March 5
• Bookshelf and Self  Feb. 27
• Zombie Nation  Feb. 20
• Objection!  Feb. 13
• Blue Skies Ahead?  Feb. 6
• The New York Review of (Little Red) Books  Jan. 30
• Ballad of the Borderland  Jan. 23
• Hillary-ious  Jan. 16
• The Hopped-Up Conference Hopper  Jan. 9
• Back to Methuselah  Jan. 2
• Studying the Inhumanities  Dec. 19
• Starting Out in the Evening  Dec. 12, 2007
• Around the Web  Dec. 5, 2007
• Beyond Islamophobofascism  Nov. 28, 2007
• Man Bites Dog  Nov. 21, 2007
• Talking to Himself  Nov. 14, 2007
• Makin’ Bacon  Nov. 7, 2007
• Regrets, I’ve Had a Few  Oct. 31, 2007
• To the Things Themselves  Oct. 24, 2007
• Be Aware (Beware)  Oct. 17, 2007
• Good Grief  Oct. 10, 2007
• The Bulldozer and the Big Tent  Oct. 3, 2007
• Mark of Zotero  Sept. 26, 2007
• Mess o’ Mobilizations  Sept. 19, 2007
• Wide-Stance Sociology  Sept. 12, 2007
• Tough Liberal  Sept. 5, 2007
• 40 Years of ‘The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual’  Aug. 29, 2007
• Oh, Canada  Aug. 22, 2007
• Open Library  Aug. 8, 2007
• Sailing from Ithaka  Aug. 1, 2007
• Off the Shelf  July 25, 2007
• Pottering Around  July 18, 2007
• The LaRouche Youth Movement  July 11, 2007
• Casaubon on Viagra  June 27, 2007
• Mass Culture 2.0  June 20, 2007
• Requiem for a Heavyweight  June 13, 2007
• C.L.R. James Meets Tony Soprano  June 6, 2007
• Bookapalooza  May 30, 2007
• Beach Blanket Bingo  May 23, 2007
• Speak, Memory  May 16, 2007
• Sex! Politics! Dubious Footnotes!  May 9, 2007
• Digital Masonry  May 2, 2007
• Critical Mass  April 25, 2007
• The Eternal Sophomore  April 18, 2007
• A Dish Best Served Cold  April 11, 2007
• Hard Wordes in Plaine English  April 4, 2007
• Indies Under Fire  March 28, 2007
• Party in the Streets  March 21, 2007
• Remember Baudrillard  March 14, 2007
• From Grub Street to the Ivory Tower (and Back)  March 7, 2007
• Motivation and Its Discontents  Feb. 28, 2007
• The Invisible Woman  Feb. 21, 2007
• Eros Unbound  Feb. 14, 2007
• Legitimation Crisis  Feb. 7, 2007
• Critical Condition  Jan. 31, 2007
• Facing the Question  Jan. 25, 2007
• Chaos Theory  Jan. 17, 2007
• The Great Man Theory  Jan. 10, 2007
• Against Phalloblogocentrism  Jan. 3, 2007
• Criticism, Character and Tenure  Dec. 27, 2006
• The Philadelphia Story  Dec. 20, 2006
• What Said Said  Dec. 13, 2006
• Beyond the Context of No Context  Dec. 6, 2006
• Quote Unquote  Nov. 29, 2006
• Where’s Herman?  Nov. 22, 2006
• You Hide, They Seek  Nov. 15, 2006
• The High and the Low  Nov. 1, 2006
• Not Just For Java  Oct. 25, 2006
• Defiance!  Oct. 18, 2006
• Like a Rock  Oct. 11, 2006
• War Thoughts at Home  Oct. 4, 2006
• A Liberal Dose of Reason  Sept. 27, 2006
• Liberty, Equality ... Diversity?  Sept. 20, 2006
• State of the Annotation  Sept. 13, 2006
• All Plots Move Deathward  Sept. 6, 2006
• The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly  Aug. 30, 2006
• The Global Exception  Aug. 23, 2006
• Divided Mind  Aug. 9, 2006
• The Power of Postpositive Thinking  Aug. 2, 2006
• A Moralist of the Mind  July 19, 2006
• Aggregate This!  July 12, 2006
• Public Access  July 5, 2006
• Grab Bag  June 28, 2006
• Pressing On  June 21, 2006
• A Wiki Situation  June 14, 2006
• The Truth? You Can’t Handle the Truth!  June 7, 2006
• Hog Wild!  May 31, 2006
• Euston.... We Have a Problem  May 24, 2006
• The Kircher Code  May 17, 2006
• We, the People...  May 10, 2006
• Wheat and Chaff  May 3, 2006
• A Day in the Life  April 26, 2006
• A Slice of Cheesecake  April 19, 2006
• The Silencer  April 12, 2006
• Lazy Me  April 5, 2006
• Oh, Good Lord...  March 29, 2006
• Legal Jams  March 22, 2006
• Paradise Lost?  March 15, 2006
• The New Math  March 8, 2006
• Doing the Lord’s Work  March 1, 2006
• D’Ho!  Feb. 22, 2006
• The Heart Has Its Reasons  Feb. 15, 2006
• Professional Correctness  Feb. 8, 2006
• Dysfunction Junction, What’s Your Function?  Feb. 1, 2006
• Stolen Words  Jan. 25, 2006
• Notes from the Underground  Jan. 18, 2006
• Beyond Consolation  Jan. 11, 2006
• Literature to Infinity  Jan. 4, 2006
• Aiming the Can(n)on  Dec. 21, 2005
• The Formless Form  Dec. 14, 2005
• Thinking at the Limits  Dec. 7, 2005
• A Killing Concept  Dec. 1, 2005
• Piled Higher and Deeper  Nov. 29, 2005
• From the Workshop  Nov. 22, 2005
• Meet the Press  Nov. 17, 2005
• Radio Free Moby  Nov. 15, 2005
• Democracy at Risk  Nov. 10, 2005
• Whereabouts Not Known  Nov. 8, 2005
• Campus Sexpot  Nov. 3, 2005
• Dialectics of Disaster  Nov. 1, 2005
• A Child’s Garden of Culture and Atrocity  Oct. 27, 2005
• Festivus Cerebration  Oct. 25, 2005
• Law and Ordure  Oct. 20, 2005
• Noise in the Stacks  Oct. 18, 2005
• The Chosen Few  Oct. 13, 2005
• Hitler — the Classic?  Oct. 6, 2005
• Quarterly Report  Oct. 4, 2005
• A Dogged Pursuit  Sept. 29, 2005
• Inquiring Minds Want to Know  Sept. 27, 2005
• Things Done in Secret  Sept. 22, 2005
• Class Dismissed  Sept. 20, 2005
• Necessary Evils  Sept. 15, 2005
• The Žižek Effect  Sept. 13, 2005
• White-Collar Hell  Sept. 8, 2005
• After the Deluge  Sept. 6, 2005
• All Booked Up  Sept. 1, 2005
• Will to Power  Aug. 18, 2005
• Reading Left to Right  Aug. 16, 2005
• The Awkward Age  Aug. 4, 2005
• Other Casualties  Aug. 2, 2005
• Violence and the Sacred  July 28, 2005
• Inner Checks and Political Balances  July 26, 2005
• Gone Fishing  July 21, 2005
• Op. Cit. Etc.  July 19, 2005
• A Classic Revisited  July 14, 2005
• Real Knowledge  July 12, 2005
• Throat Culture  July 7, 2005
• Pass It On  June 30, 2005
• I, Meme, Mine  June 28, 2005
• Locating Bourdieu  June 23, 2005
• Ambiguous Legacy  June 21, 2005
• Not So Wilde  June 16, 2005
• Mind on Fire  June 14, 2005
• Silence in the Stacks  June 9, 2005
• Of Metaphors and Moving Vans  June 2, 2005
• Show Clio the Money!  May 31, 2005
• Listening to the Witness  May 26, 2005
• Remembering Ricoeur  May 24, 2005
• The Consecrated Heretic  May 12, 2005
• Information, Please  May 10, 2005
• Isn’t It Ironic?  May 5, 2005
• Impure Literature  April 28, 2005
• The Plug-In Drug  April 26, 2005
• Strangely Enough  April 21, 2005
• Write On  April 19, 2005
• Living on the Edge  April 14, 2005
• Read This!  April 11, 2005
• Bellow’s Gift  April 7, 2005
• Of Blogs and Dialogues  April 5, 2005
• Travels in Weblogestan  March 29, 2005
• Falling Into the Generation Gap  March 24, 2005
• The Inconsistent Luddite  March 22, 2005
• Under the Influence  March 17, 2005
• Sex and the Single Genius  March 15, 2005
• Keeping It Real  March 10, 2005
• The Lecturer’s Tale  March 8, 2005
• This, That and the Other Thing  March 3, 2005
• In Black and White  March 1, 2005
• Derrida’s Wake  Feb. 24, 2005
• Defending Derrida  Feb. 22, 2005
• Academic Freedom, Then and Now  Feb. 17, 2005
• A Critique of Pure BS  Feb. 15, 2005
• Among the Randroids  Feb. 10, 2005
• Narcissus With an iPod  Feb. 8, 2005
• Cafeteria Style  Feb. 3, 2005
• Free Refills  Feb. 1, 2005