#dillonrockrohr

The Space Betwixt and Between:
Watershed Moments from Spring 2018

Katie McWain

Apr 24, 2018

The Space Betwixt and Between: Watershed Moments from Spring 2018

Photo Credit: learner.org At the end of my three years serving as a member of the Watershed Collective, I’m poised to shed the graduate chrysalis and move into the next phase of my academic career. So it’s no surprise that I’m drawn to theoretical and cultural representations of transition, upheaval, and change--fascinated by processes of becoming. With this orientation in mind, I appreciate the opportunity to reflect, not only on the phenomenal collection of posts shared by

Seeing '68: HotE Review, "No Intenso Agora" ("In the Intense Now")

Dillon Rockrohr

Feb 13, 2018

Seeing '68: HotE Review, "No Intenso Agora" ("In the Intense Now")

Last Friday evening, February 9th, João Moreira Salles visited the Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center to screen his new documentary film essay No Intenso Agora (In the Intense Now). Following the screening of the film—which was presented as a part of the Ross’s Norman A. Geske Cinema Showcase as well as the Humanities on the Edge lecture series—Salles appeared for a Q&A with the audience. No Intenso Agora combines archival footage, both professional and found amateur footage,

The Power of Praxis: Reflections on a Watershed Semester

Katie McWain

Dec 5, 2017

The Power of Praxis: Reflections on a Watershed Semester

Photo Credit: dreamstime.com As I read and reread the collection of posts our Watershed team has contributed this semester (15 truly stellar pieces of writing in all), I was struck by their shared commitment to expanding theory’s reach beyond the computer screen and into the world. These texts are saturated with calls to action, reorienting readers toward the pursuit of praxis. Although I teach writing and consider myself mathematically challenged, there is one equation I con

Restless Imagination: HotE Preview, Ronald Judy

Dillon Rockrohr

Oct 10, 2017

Restless Imagination: HotE Preview, Ronald Judy

The Humanities on the Edge lectures for this academic year take on the question of “Post-Revolutionary Futures.” If Timothy Brown’s recent lecture on the events of 1968 and the Russian Revolution laid the historical groundwork for asking the question, “Is revolution still possible?,” next week’s lecture by Ronald Judy promises to approach this question in terms of the very conditions of imagining revolution and what may follow it. On Thursday, October 19th, at 5:30pm in the S

Dillon Rockrohr

Apr 25, 2017

Watershed: Retrospective on a Semester

“Watershed” is a loaded term, though it has two general definitions. The first of these, which comes from the natural sciences, is articulated by the United States Geological Survey as “an area of land that drains all the streams and rainfall to a common outlet such as the outflow of a reservoir, mouth of a bay, or any point along a stream channel. […] Watersheds are important because the streamflow and the water quality of a river are affected by things, human-induced or not

The Post-Racial Ideology: HotE Preview, Alexandre Da Costa

Dillon Rockrohr

Feb 28, 2017

The Post-Racial Ideology: HotE Preview, Alexandre Da Costa

About two or three years ago, I joined a couple of my friends from high school to have dinner with our old American history teacher. This is a man we respected as an exemplar of good character, an intelligent man who had provoked us those years ago to think critically in new ways about the issues that have shaped our country and the debates that formed our American structures and institutions. The conversation that night, however, felt strangely alien to me despite how predic

The Exuberant Silence of an Overabundant Life

Dillon Rockrohr

Jan 19, 2017

The Exuberant Silence of an Overabundant Life

Review of All Ears: The Aesthetics of Espionage by Peter Szendy, Translated by Roland Végső "They might listen if I make no sound." (Agnes Obel, “Mary,” Citizen of Glass) The listener crouches behind the text, and though he listens alone, it would not be quite right to say that there is not a sense of timidity in the subtle voyeurism of the act. Reading theory seems so often like this - a listening, perhaps too closely, and whatever we are able to say after all has been overh

Humanities on the Edge Lecture Review: Milton S. F. Curry

Dillon Rockrohr

Sep 27, 2016

Humanities on the Edge Lecture Review: Milton S. F. Curry

Amid a year (that is, another year) tempest-tossed by a seemingly endless cycle of black Americans reported dead at the hands of the state, we begin our seventh year of Humanities on the Edge lectures, this time oriented around the question of post-racial futures. The exigency of the theme is therefore obvious. Introducing Milton S. F. Curry, Associate Dean at the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning as well as our first speaker of the y

Religious Liberty, Democracy, and the Battle against Flesh and Blood

Dillon Rockrohr

Sep 13, 2016

Religious Liberty, Democracy, and the Battle against Flesh and Blood

Donald Trump spoke about specific policy change this week, if you can believe that. At the Values Voter Summit – an event held annually in Washington D.C. by the Family Research Council, whose mission is “to advance faith, family and freedom in public policy and the culture from a Christian worldview” – Trump attempted to bolster his support among evangelical Christians by promising to repeal the Johnson Amendment. His declaration panders to the often-cresting waves of vocali

I Really Don't Know Clouds At All: HotE Lecture Review, John Durham Peters

Dillon Rockrohr

Apr 5, 2016

I Really Don't Know Clouds At All: HotE Lecture Review, John Durham Peters

Last Thursday evening, John Durham Peters visited campus to deliver the final Humanities on the Edge lecture of the semester. Entitled “Do Clouds Have Meaning? On the Relation Between Media and Nature,” the lecture raised fundamental questions about what aspects of reality we choose to imbue with meaning, what ways we find to interpret our environment, and what this relation may tell us about ourselves. Peters began his presentation with the comment that his drive here from I