“I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.” In just a few days, the Ivory Tower Boiler Room will be closing the book on our first year of podcasting (and three months of blogging, too)! Over the past year, we’ve gradually come together as a team and created a visionContinue reading “July Wrap-Up: Teaching, Public Humanities, and Public Scholarship”
Tag Archives: lgbtq+
Podcast Preview: No Time to Rest
We’re scurrying around getting ready to celebrate one whole year here in the Ivory Tower Boiler Room. We’re so excited to celebrate a full year of being able to share interesting discussions with people who are passionate not only about their work, but also about sharing it with the rest of the world, and we’reContinue reading “Podcast Preview: No Time to Rest”
The View from the Wheelchair
By Erika Grumet In college, one of my friends used to say “dancing is a vertical expression of a horizontal desire.” We would go dancing at least once a week, almost every Saturday night was reserved for going to Tracks, a big gay dance club in Washington DC. Some weeks, when money was tighter, we’dContinue reading “The View from the Wheelchair”
Erika’s Big Think #3: “I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind, got my paper and I was free.”
I don’t usually think of myself as a teacher. I love teaching, but I also knew there was no way I could handle classroom politics, and so, in spite of encouragement from my parents to consider teaching as a career, I went in a different direction with my undergraduate and graduate degrees. What I ended upContinue reading “Erika’s Big Think #3: “I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind, got my paper and I was free.””
(Podcast Release) “Lev Raphael: On Being (and Not Being) a Queer Jewish Writer, Part 1”
Listeners, you are in for a treat. Not only is Lev Raphael the well-known author of lots of books from many different genres (particularly a series about queer sleuths solving crimes at universities) he is also among his interviewers’ favorite writers. We have talked before on the blog about how his work was formative inContinue reading “(Podcast Release) “Lev Raphael: On Being (and Not Being) a Queer Jewish Writer, Part 1””
Midweek Teaser
Things Some Writers Never Imagine The Boiler Room is awash in excitement right now as we get ready to celebrate a whole year of podcasting with an open mic night at Words Matter Bookstore. Even Andrew did not imagine, when he and Adam started meeting to talk and write, what the Ivory Tower Boiler RoomContinue reading “Midweek Teaser”
Podcast Drop: Jesse Green, Chief Theater Critic for the New York Times
Hey, kids! The Ivory Tower Boiler Room brought in an authority on writing, theater, and of course journalism. So naturally he and Andrew talk about Whitman the entire time. It’s fine. Jesse wrote an article on Whitman, and that was how he and Andrew originally connected. Elsewhere in the interview, Jesse gets quite detailed inContinue reading “Podcast Drop: Jesse Green, Chief Theater Critic for the New York Times”
Finding Myself on the Shelf: Uncovering My Own Identity through Queer Literature
By Erika Grumet “We dance around in a ring and suppose But the Secret sits in the middle and knows” -Robert Frost No one knows what you’re thinking when you’re wandering the library shelves. For me, they were a safe space when I had the kind of questions that no one could answer for me…evenContinue reading “Finding Myself on the Shelf: Uncovering My Own Identity through Queer Literature”
(Podcast Release) What is a teacher, what is a classroom? A Roundtable
Adam moderates our July roundtable, where he begins by having each member of the team provide their response to the questions: “What is a teacher?” and “What is a classroom?” What follows is a discussion on the role education plays in each of the team members’ lives. From Adam’s memories and analysis of his favoriteContinue reading “(Podcast Release) What is a teacher, what is a classroom? A Roundtable”
Erika’s Big Think #2, Part 2: Concluding Reflections on Stonewall
By Erika Grumet One Sunday in June, I was folding laundry with my mother. The television was on, tuned into evening news, which was reporting on “gay pride festivities” in New York City. I was a teenager, and as teenagers often do, I held opinions about many things that conflicted with my parents. IContinue reading “Erika’s Big Think #2, Part 2: Concluding Reflections on Stonewall”