Hyde Park

The Seminary Co-op: the bookstore of my heart.

It's been a few years since I last visited Chicago. I'm in town for a wedding, and for some reason the weather decided to be perfect. I know that there are others who will understand that although Chicago is a large city, full of museums and restaurants and interesting neighborhoods, there is something that always pulls me back into the Hyde Park vortex. Could it be the books?

Random northside café. Evil RSI-aggravating mugs are a strike against them.

When I went to the Seminary Co-op, which hasn't yet moved, I was shocked to see that they didn't have Jen Fleissner's book on the shelf, and they only had one of Ian Hacking's books on statistics in the history of statistics section. These are, indeed, outrageous omissions (Women, Compulsion, Modernity is a Chicago title, for FSM's sake!), but it was wonderful to be in a place where I could have such expectations in the first place. And it's easy to imagine that they were probably gone because someone in the neighborhood had recently bought them.

Powell's. <3>

The Regenstein Library, plus
the new robot-operated underground stacks.

Another one for the "my alma mater sometimes embarrasses me" files: Twitterature.

Admittedly, I am primarily interested in Twitter because of its potential pedagogical applications.

Update: The Chronicle has more.

(Via HUP. Yes, Twitter.)

I have that warm, fuzzy feeling you get when you add A Room of One's Own to a syllabus.

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I like much of what Neil Verma has to say about the defensive The Humanities Are Dead essay. He admits near the end, though, that he doesn't know what the alternative is yet. May I propose Humanities!: The Musical?

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Oh, dear. Alma mater, could you please stop doing so many embarrassing things?

I recently learned that the University of Chicago has bought the Chicago Theological Seminary's beautiful building at 58th and University. It looks like the building will be used for the new Milton Friedman Institute.

Naturally, I found this out at the Seminary Co-op web site, and my first question was what would happen to the Co-op.

There are no plans to evict the Co-op for now. I just wonder how they will feel about their home changing from a house of God into a TEMPLE OF MAMMON.