It might be upside down because of how it was mass-scanned with a lot of other paper material that I cleaned out of my filing cabinet years ago, but this appeared today as I was moving some files around, cleaning up, and making sure to get most of my documents out of my University administered OneDrive account. The way politics are going at Universities and with AI scraping and all that nonsense, it's time to leave Cloud City before a deal is made to keep the Empire out of there forever. You know what sort of deal I'm talking about. I've been at my university around 18 years now and I guarantee they would sell me out to any agency for a low price. Furthermore, they would sell all my OneDrive data to an AI miner and never tell me about it. So goes the OneDrive terms of service!
But back to the list - this list hit me with nostalgia and impressed me. In 2005 I was a second year PhD student at the University of Pittsburgh. I knew I wanted to study and write about the Beat Generation - not as poets but as communication and rhetorical theorists. This list indicates that. But also it indicates a student who feels their foundations aren't quite there in rhetoric or in what inspired the Beats. It's a great list from my point of view but it also makes me want to make a summer reading list 20 years later. What should be on it? What do I need to know as I move forward into the next big project, teaching against the rising waters of authoritarianism and the dismissal of process in favor of "known truth?" There's nowhere to go; the blue waters are just as dangerous. What readings will help create an island, a base of operations? Stay tuned.