Chickens and State Fairs
Dear lethargic readers, It’s one of the regrets of my life thus far that I’ve never been to a county or state fair—to my knowledge, there weren’t many (or any) on Long Island where I grew up. Thanks to...
View ArticleThe Wonders of Coffee
To students seldom awake before ten, Like many scholars, I’ve relied on coffee as a lifeline for most of my academic career. By senior year of high school, I was already bringing a plastic mug full of...
View ArticleA Thanksgiving Feast (of Archives!)
Dear preemptive vacationers, I realize there’s been a lot of food in these dispatches lately, perhaps in subconscious anticipation of Thanksgiving this Thursday. I don’t know about you, but when I...
View ArticleFoxy Brown and Aunt Jemima, Exposed
O pioneers of the digital frontier, Anyone who’s watched Spike Lee’s sometimes brilliant, sometimes obvious 2000 film Bamboozled, Ferris State University’s Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia might...
View ArticleBetter Living Through Canned Meats and Custard
To the seasonally-affective disordered, The spring semester is officially under way, and I’ve started TFing a new class: Joyce Chaplin’s wonderful lecture on American food history. We’re still...
View ArticleGood Bye, Leaven!
To the domestically-inclined, Break out your horseradish everybody! Passover is officially here, bringing with it gefilte fish, chocolate-covered matzo, brisket, and all the other healthy treats you’ve...
View ArticleCal Coolidge’s Go Kart and Other Wonders of Western MA
To anyone who’s ever read an academic monograph on the beach, The fiancé and I have relocated to Northampton, Massachusetts for the summer. For the moment, I’m still trying to find my bearings, which...
View ArticleBack to the Land, Now and Then
To the chronically tired, While I may be lazy in my scholarship, let it never be said I’m a stranger to physical labor. On Monday, I started volunteering one morning a week at a local farm here in...
View ArticleCalifornia Dreaming
Dear obsessive Netflix queue updaters, I went to San Francisco last week to do some research at a couple of non-digital archives—you know, the kind with actual, physical papers and books—but spent much...
View ArticleOld News: Ice Cream, Gay Marriage, Stamps!
Dear regular readers, Today the Lazy Scholar is experimenting with a new feature called Old News, in which current news items are paired with archival finds. Let me know if you like it! • The New York...
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