Theoria

“Exploring Ways to Shorten the Ascent to a Ph.D.” from the New York Times. The only good news from this article is that I’ll be younger than the average (American) Ph.D. at time of graduation. Figures for Canada are comparable to those given for the US in the article (except Canadians tend to be about 36 at time of graduation).

But, if we’re going to be graduate students forever, why not make it worthwhile and publish? (My boss at Carleton is always telling me to publish – why don’t you publish? You’re more than willing to make a fool of yourself on your blog? What’s the difference between that and peer review? At least he isn’t trying to make me write a book, like Adam Kotsko, before moving on to the dissertation itself.) So, if you are going to make your time useful as a graduate student and you intend to publish, you could do worse than to read Thom Brooks’ “The Postgraduate’s Guide to Getting Published.”

David A. Bell discusses the recently translated “The Demands of Liberty: Civil Society in France Since the Revolution” (HUP, 2007) by Pierre Rosanvallon.

Chris Thornhill has an article entitled “Niklas Luhman, Carl Schmitt and the Modern Form of the Political” in the new issue of the European Journal of Social Theory. [UPDATE: It should be recalled that Thornhill is co-author, with Jefrrey Seitzer, of the "Introduction" to the soon to be released Constitutional Theory by Carl Schmitt]. William MacNeil, Lynda Davies and Christine Black have edited a special issue of Law, Culture and the Humanities entitled “Galactic Jurisprudence: In Space, No One Can Hear You Litigate!” (unfortunately no articles on Battlestar Galactica). The following are in the new issue of the Journal of Classical Sociology: Gary Wickham (who was in Ottawa today and who I did not go hear speak) “Expanding the Classical in Classical Sociology“; Spiros Gangas “Social Ethics and Logic: Rethinking Durkheim Through Hegel“; and Lisa Hill on “Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson and Karl Marx on the Division of Labour.”