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Praesidium

A Journal of Literate and Literary Analysis 

Proceed to current issue.

A hard-copy version of Praesidium can be produced and sent to you at a cost of $25 per year.  You may either make a donation in this amount to help us cover costs--OR you may simply request the hard copy by contacting us.  An anonymous donor has pledged to pay the fees IN YOUR NAME as a gift.

9.4 (Fall 2009)

The Adventure of Melóra and Orlando

Translated from Irish Gaelic by John R. Harris

Community and Identity in Late Modernity

Mark Wegierski

If A, Then B: Straight Answers in Twisted Times

Peter T. Singleton

Four Sounds, and Then a Fifth (poem)

Alan McGinnis

Love Story: Version 0.5 (short story)

Ivor Davies

 

9.3 (Summer 2009)

From Arcadia to Empire: The Aeneid’s Elusive Allegory  (Part Two)

John R. Harris

The Politics of the Professoriate: The Prospects for Higher Education Reform

Michael Sugrue

The Antinomian Academy: A Response

John R. Harris

Michael Lythgoe: Four Poems  

A Politician Counts His Sheep (poem)

Alan McGinnis

The Old Man and the Boys of Summer (short story)

Peter Singleton

 

9.2 (Spring 2009)

The Power of Then

Steve Kogan

From Arcadia to Empire: The Aeneid’s Elusive Allegory

John R. Harris

The Absurd Reich Or, On the Politics of Demonic Nothingness

Gary Inbinder

Faith, Reason, Charity, and Liberalism: A Response

John R. Harris

Technophobes Roil Nation, Rile Lawmakers

Staff

Parallel Failures (poetry)

Alan McGinnis

Memento Mori (short story)

Ivor Davies

 

9.1 (Winter 2009)

“The Catastrophe”: What the End of Bronze Age Civilization Means for Modern Times

Thomas F. Bertonneau

“Era of Change” Brings Little Hope for Literacy

Staff

Thoughts Out of Season: The Future of Traditionalism

Mark Wegierski

“I Refute It Thus”: History, Politics and Education

A Memoir on the Genesis of My Manuscript

Michael Sugrue

Medea’s Stepsisters: The Toxic Alchemy of Feminism, Self-Esteem, Ignorance, and Youth

John R. Harris

Fault Line Sonnets and Night Nurse (poetry)

Michael H. Lythgoe

Erebos (short story) 

J. S. Moseby

 

8.4 (Fall 2008)

Measure, for Measure: The Bible Contra Puritanical Christianity

 Michael Sugrue

The Feminine Figure in Painting

Peter T. Singleton

Messages to the French: The Six Radio Broadcasts of Jules Romains to His Countrymen in Occupied France from 1940 to 1941  

Translated by John R. Harris

The Shulamite (poem)

David Z. Crookes

Virus Scan (poem)

Alan McGinnis

Laestrygonia (short story)

J. S. Moseby

 

8.3 (Summer 2008)

The Vanishing Cultivated Girl and her Replacement: From Reading Novels to Talking Trash on Campus

Thomas F. Bertonneau

Literacy’s Mystic Moon: The Flow and Ebb of the Sublime Through the English Classics

John R. Harris  

Traditional Social Philosophy: A Sketch of an Idea

Mark Wegierski

Internal Bickering Nixes Establishment of Private Neo-Conservative Liberal Arts College

(Thomas F. Bertonneau)

Summer Storm (poem) 

Alan McGinnis

Next Door Burned Ucalegon (short story)

Ivor Davies

 

8.2 (Spring 2008)

A Kinship Forgotten, A Rebellion Overlooked: Evangelical Influences on English Romanticism (Part II)

Sean Trainor

The Tyranny of Numbers

John Matthew Fox

Freedom Grows on Trees: A Eudemonist Economics (Part II)

John R. Harris

iBrain: The Future of Mind Power

Rosalinda Nava

College Professors Seek to Rediscover, Redefine, and Revivify Goals of Higher Education

Thomas F. Bertonneau

“OLD KING COLE”: article abstract 

David Z. Crookes

A Stone Map

Requiem on the Frontier of Day  (poems)

Michael Lythgoe

Epimenidean Vignettes (short stories)

Peter Singleton

 

8.1 (Winter 2008)

Dr. Paterson Visits the Library While the Cool People Wiki and Blog

Thomas F. Bertonneau

The Emergence of Media: Humanity’s Endgame

Mark Wegierski

A Kinship Forgotten, A Rebellion Overlooked: Evangelical Influences on English Romanticism (I)

Sean Trainor

Freedom Grows on Trees: A Eudemonist Economics (I)

John R. Harris

High College Costs, Low Student Achievement, Driven by Global Warming – Researchers Say

Thomas Bertonneau

Converse Experience

J. S. Moseby

 

7.4 (Fall 2007)

A Taxonomy of North American Society’s Narratives of Catastrophe and Dissolution

John R. Harris

Space Exploration, Technology, and the Possible Futures of Humanity

Mark Wegierski

The High Hills: Frederick Delius and the Secular Sublime

Thomas F. Bertonneau

Invitation to Opposing Voyages

J. S. Moseby  

 

7.3 (Summer 2007)

The New Berlioz: Musical High Romanticism in an Age of Technical and Ideological Correctness

Thomas F. Bertonneau

Orality and Literacy Revisited: Beleaguered Allies Against the Technical Onslaught of the Visual

John R. Harris

Ends of the West

Mark Wegierski

Painting Dick Tracy into Heaven  (poem)

Michael H. Lythgoe

Still Life (short story)

Fiona MacAlistair

 

7.2 (Spring 2007)

Facilis Descensus Averno, Part II: A Diffusely Comparative Study of Romantic Illusion and Social Dissolution

John R. Harris

Planet-Wide Cultural Struggles Over Definitions of Freedom, Order, and Security Will Determine the Shape of the Future

Mark Wegierski

Drugged Reality

Mark Wegierski

Socratic Method in Comp 101: Wringing Simple Truths from Complex Essays

Peter Singleton

Continental Shelf

J. S. Moseby

Requiescat Oriana Fallaci: A Poem, A Prayer

Peter Singleton

 

7.1 (Winter 2007)

Religion Against Itself: The Revolt of the Elite of the United Church of Christ

Howard S. Schwartz  

Facilis Descensus Averno , Part I

A Diffusely Comparative Study of Romantic Illusion and Social Dissolution

John R. Harris

Modernity and the Machine: Viewpoints on Technology and Society  

and

(Postscript) Interpreting the Millennium: The Dilemma of Hypermodernity

Mark Wegierski

And Deliver Us from English

Mark Notzon  

The Ghost of Caesar’s Wife

Ivor Davies  

 

6.4 (Fall 2006)

Just What Did Robin Hood Really DO for the Poor?

Jim Stebinger

Realist Fiction and the Femina Immolata: Comparative Literature on Trial

John R. Harris

Work, Holidays, Leisure, Recreation, and the Search for Meaning in Late Modernity

and

What Remains Creative in the Heritage of Marx's Thought

Mark Wegierski

An Interview with Michael Lythgoe, Poet of Brass

John Harris

That That "That" Restricts... Rules for Snobby Fools

Staff 

The Show Goes On

J. S. Moseby

 

6.3 (Summer 2006)

A Synthetic Meditation on Baseball, Racism, Closed Systems, and Spiritual Rigor Mortis

John R. Harris

Three Poems from Troubled Lands

Ralph S. Carlson

Pyotr’s Long Short-Cut (fiction)

Peter Singleton

 Melville and His Marxist Critics

Steve Kogan  

6.1-2 (Winter/Spring 2006)

“I, Martian”:  The Autoscopy of a Science Fiction Addict

Thomas F. Bertonneau

The Narcissus Narcosis: A Platonic Dialogue on the Plight of Culture in Contemporary Society

John R. Harris

Traditionalist Themes in Science Fiction and Fantasy

and

Science Fiction, Pop-Culture, and the World-Historical Crisis

Mark Wegierski

Some Highly Impolitic Thoughts on Cultural Decay, Peasantry, and the Mexican Diaspora

Peter Singleton

Night Draft

J. S. Moseby

Friedland, from Confessions of the Creature

Gary Inbinder

 

5.4 (Fall 2005)

The Post-Literate Student and the Anti-Literate Academy: A Bad Match at a Crucial Moment

John R. Harris

A Dark Turn in the Pop-Culture: "Bleak Future" and Occult-Horror Subgenres in Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Gaming

Mark Wegierski

Dark Futures in Gaming: Some Further Explorations

Mark Wegierski

Teacher, Make Me Wise!

Staff

Four Poems

Michael H. Lythgoe

Career Year (short story)

J.S. Moseby

 

5.3 (Summer 2005)

How Never to Write a "Scholarly Article": On Falling Afoul of Academic Bigotry

John R. Harris

Christian Virtues in Star Trek (TOS)

Kim Paffenroth

Star Trek Cultural Vector and Hollywood Cash-Cow

Mark Wegierski

Some Thoughts on Herbert Marcuse vs. Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

Mark Wegierski

Window Without a View (short story)

Ivor Davies

 

5.1-2 (Winter-Spring 2005)

True Stories, by Lev Razgon: Literature and the Soviet Genocide

Steve Kogan

The False Conservatism of the Cynic's Utopia: Kant, Machiavelli, and Truthfulness

John R. Harris

Three Essays for Students: On Topics Various and Sundry and Illustrative of Problems Faced by Beginning Writers

Thomas F. Bertonneau

Deconstructing Arthur

Gary Inbinder

Two Brief Essays on Politics, the Economy, and Western Culture

Mark Wegierski

Reviews of Recent Books Which Strive to Define Contemporary Culture

 Mark Wegierski

Reviews of Reuven Brenner, The Financial Century: From Turmoils to Triumphs; Richard P. Nielsen, The Politics of Ethics: Methods for Acting, Learning, and Sometimes; and Myron Magnet, The Dream and the Nightmare: The Sixties' Legacy to theUnderclass.

Poetry Corner: Three Poems

The Lost Karankawa and Catalogue of Slips, by David Adams; Lost Indictment, by John Harris

Dry Thaw (short story)

J.S. Moseby

 

4.4 (Fall 2004)

Can Glory Blaze from the Void?  Thoughts on the Tenuous Connection between Painting and Literacy

John R. Harris

Putting a Period to the "Quote" Issue

Staff

Have Late Modern Values and Technology Made Great Art Impossible?

Mark Wegierski

War on a Rainy Afternoon: Boardgames and Myth-Making

Mark Wegierski

What Are Historical Boardgames or Wargames? An Introduction

Paleocons vs. Neocons in Board Wargames

Review of the Magazine: GameFix: The Forum of Ideas and of "Near-Future Conflict" boardgame Crisis 2000: Insurrection in the United States!

Review of the "Near-Future Conflict" Boardgame, Minuteman: The Second American Revolution

Fashion Art and the Moral Imagination

Gary Inbinder

"The Prize for the Race" (short story)

Ivor Davies

R. S. Carlson and Michael Lythgoe: Four Poems Working, Walking, and Well-Being

John R. Harris

Four Poems in Paint

Jonathan Chaves

 

4.3 (Summer 2004)

Confessions of a Symphomaniac: Of Luck, Music, and the Training of the Soul

 Thomas F. Bertonneau

Three Short Essays on Taste and Technology

"In the New Millennium: Five Internet Visions from a Technoskeptic"; "Can the Internet Challenge Today’s Informational and Cultural Monopoly?"; "For a New Cultural Criticism"

Mark Wegierski

Five-Finger Exercise for the Hairy Paw: How Music Might Rehabilitate Literacy

John R. Harris

Cosmic Dualism, Moral Freedom, Teleology, and Natural Rights

Gary Inbinder

Teleology and Music: Editor’s Postscript

John R. Harris

A Generation X-er Declines to Defend Contemporary Music

Kelly Hampton

"The Mendicant Professor Vows Poverty of Expression"

Jim Pangborn

"Reading The Wall Street Journal" and "Imprints"

Michael Lythgoe

Two Musical Italian Short Stories:

"The Tympanist" by Aldo Camerino and "Music" by Giovanni Guareschi

(translated by Gianna DiRoberti)

"Liminal Negligence"

J.S. Moseby

 

4.2 (Spring 2004)

The Aesthetic Crisis of Post-Literacy: How Lack of Finesse Feeds Moral Collapse

John R. Harris

The Judgment of Paris

Gary Inbinder

A Young Person’s Guide to Postmodernism

four polemical book reviews by Paul Sonnino

Goldsmith, Blue and Green

review-essay by Mark Wegierski

Death Sentence: The Decay of Public Language, by Don Watson

reviewed by Margaret Turnbull

Words in Spring’s Hour Glass: Three Poems

Ralph S. Carlson

Terminal Promotion (short story)

Ivor Davies

Dr. Palaver, Word Therapist

 

4.1 (Winter 2004)

Pessimism au Pied de la Lattre; Ideological Illiteracy and the Vertical Invasion of the Barbarians

Thomas F. Bertonneau

Reviews of Recent Books

The Skin of Culture: Investigating the New Electronic Reality,

by Derrick de Kerckhove

The Unconscious Civilization, by John Ralston Saul

The Revolt of the Elites: and the Betrayal of Democracy, by

Christopher Lasch

Political Theory for Mortals: Shades of Justice, Images of Death Contestations: Cornell Studies in Political Theory, by John E. Seery

 George Grant: A Biography, by William Christian

reviewed by Mark Wegierski

Recovered Body, by Scott Cairns

reviewed by Michael H. Lythgoe

There is an Isle: A Limerick Boyhood, by Criostoir O’Flynn

reviewed by Peter Singleton

On Eternity and Moral Reason: Why Clocks Keep Ticking in Heaven

John R. Harris

El Día de Hoy (short story)

Ivor Davies

Santa’s Death (poetry)

John R. Harris

 

3.4 (Fall 2003)

Daggerpoints and Loggerheads: Intellectualism and the Decline of the West

John R. Harris

"And From Our Correspondent In…"

R.S. Carlson

To the Prophets: An Essay on Romanticism

John D. Wright

Postscript to Essay on Romanticism: Author and Editor Trade Thoughts

John Wright and John Harris

Translated Excerpts from Pierre Lasserre’s Le Romantisme Français

Gianna DiRoberti

"Third Degree" (short story

)Ivor Davies

Life Via Electron: "Da News" and "Prayers from Belgrade" (poetry)

R.S. Carlson

 

3.3 (Summer 2003)

Judges of the Past

Jonathan Chaves

Look Homeward, Angela

Staff

Daggerpoints and Loggerheads: The Twentieth Century’s Fatal Division into

Ideological Camps

John R. Harris

Transgressive Technologies: Does a Posthuman Dystopia Await Us?

Mark Wegierski

"Diagnosis" (poem)

R.S. Carlson

Four Poems by Michael H. Lythgoe

Hommage à Baudelaire: Three Prose Poems

John R. Harris

"White Cover" (short story)

J.S. Moseby

Dr. Palaver

 

3.2 (Spring 2003)

Kicking the Stone and Viewing the Icon: Realist Epistemology Between Heaven and Earth

Jonathan Chaves

Daggerpoints and Loggerheads: A Sad Time’s Taste for Perverse Oppositions

John R. Harris

"Some Mornings on the DMZ" and Other Poems

R.S. Carlson

War of the Worlds: Post-Literate Reporting Meets the Ugliness of Truth

Peter Singleton

Spontaneous Overflow

Ivor Davies

Star-Mangled Banner

Staff

Footprints in the Snow of the Moon

J.S. Moseby

Common Sense Strikes Out

Staff

 

3.1 (Winter 2003)

Foreign Language and the Enemies of Literacy: An Addendum

John R. Harris

Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million, by Martin Amis 

Reviewed by Thomas F. Bertonneau

No More Mr. Nice Guy for "Zero Tolerance"

Peter T. Singleton

Generation X-Minus-One Goes to Hell in a Tenure Package

Staff

"Rings" on the Screen: Peter Jackson’s Valiant Defense of Moral Coherence

Kelly Ann Hampton

Auto Focus (movie review)

Mary Grabar

The Forsytes Were Better in Hindsight

Staff

"Footprints in the Snow of the Moon" (excerpt from novel)

J.S. Moseby

Dr. Palaver, Word Therapist

 

2.4 (Fall 2002)

A Sampling of Pronouncements from Our Cultural Elites

Steve Kogan

"So Cool"

R.S. Carlson

 Literature and Literacy: The Decline of Reading and the Stultification of Student Prose

Thomas F. Bertonneau

"And Choice of Sides or Pronoun"

R.S. Carlson

"From a Safe Distance"

R.S. Carlson

Who Needs Enemies? The Peculiar Struggle of Literary Studies at Christian-Affiliated Colleges

John R. Harris

"Fish in a Barrel"

Ivor Davies

 

2.3 (Summer 2002)

Thinking is Hard: How a Damaged LiteracyvHinders Students from Coming to Grips With Ideas

Thomas F. Bertonneau

The Dusty, Dog-Eared Book: Space Well Wasted

Peter T. Singleton

Post-Literacy, Biblicism, and the Death of Christianity: Big Party in the Wading Pool 

John R. Harris

"Three Sketches of Post-Social Society"

Fiona MacAlister

If It Keeps Them Quiet, Is It True?

(Staff)

Dr. Palaver, Word Therapist

Three Poems

R.S. Carlson

Three Poems

Michael H. Lythgoe

 

2.2 (Spring 2002)

The Intimate Message of Foreign Language: One Small Curricular Step Toward Restoring Reason

John R. Harris

It’s Been Said Before (Jules Romains)

Staff

Bimbos in Limbo: Will the Real Bobo Please Stand Up?

Gianna DiRoberti

William James Visits Yosemite in 1898

and

Itinerary and Chronology of William James’s California Trip (August 1898)

Allan Shields

Pieta

Joseph Soldati

Who Shall ’Scape Whipping?

Staff

R.S. Carlson: Three Poems

Ralph Carlson

Seeing Space

J. S. Moseby

Postscript to Seeing Space: An Interview with the Author Straight Shaft

Ivor Davies

Watch on the Wry

Staff

Dr. Palaver, Word Therapist

 

2.1 (Winter 2002)

Toward Anthroponomy: How Western Culture Has Become Its Own Worst Enemy

John R. Harris

Academentia: Making History

Mary Grabar

Clowning with Cloning: Where Clouds of Witness End and Cloudy Witlessness Begins

Peter Singleton

The Anthropological and Psychological Origins of Political Correctness…  with Emphasis on Howard Schwartz’s The Revolt of the Primitive

Thomas F. Bertonneau

Three by R.S. Carlson

Ralph Carlson

Counsellor Dan and Biddy Moriarty Have a Go at Each Other

Staff

Postscript to Tacitus

Giles Maskell

Dr. Palaver, Word Therapist

 

1.4 (Fall 2001)

Rest in Peace, World Trade Center: Live Unsettled, Mankind

Peter T. Singleton

Academentia: Terror in the Tower

Mary Grabar

The Jargon of Mock Ethnicity: Multiculturalism and Diversity as Virtual Thinking

Thomas F. Bertonneau

The Arduous Path Up Spengler’s Decline: An Idealist Responds to Destiny

John R. Harris

Two Notes on Boys and Men:

Why All the Fuss About Alcibiades?

and

How Calamity Jane Rewrote the [Her]story of the West

(staff)

"Alpha" Is for "Acephalic"

(staff)

Nihilist’s Progress: From Marx to Feminism to Misogyny

Gianna DiRoberti.

Three by R.S. Carlson

Ralph Carlson

Running On Empty

J.S. Moseby

Dr. Palaver, Word Therapist

"Holy Warrior"

John R. Harris

 

1.3 (Summer 2001)

Breaking Line at Payback Time: Victim-Ideology’s Culture of Rage

Peter Singleton

Express Train to 1929

Steve Kogan

No "Middle" in Middle America, No Aristotle in the Academy

Kelly Ann Hampton

Semper Inutile: In Praise of the Useless

John R. Harris

Three Poems Under Clear Skies

Pantoum for Gardeners (Michael H. Lythgoe)

Intimations of Spirality (John R. Harris)

It's Been Said Before (Jacques Barzun)

(staff)

Baseball Strikes Out

 (staff)

Dr. Palaver, Word Therapist Contemporary Antiquities

J.S. Moseby

 

 

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