I am seriously beginning to think that I work at Hogwarts. Yesterday night was the first of several salons to be organized by the Duke Africa Initiative (DAI).
As per the Chronicle article I linked to, the DAI “serves to consolidate the efforts of Duke professors who have research interests on the African continent.” The DAI was generous enough to give me a small grant to organize a conference on African political economy African political economy on campus in a few weeks.
Last night’s salon was held in the Gothic reading room, at room in Duke’s Perkins library which is exhibit A in support of my claim that I work at Hogwarts:
And here is exhibit B: Duke researchers are working on an invisibility cloak.
I rest my case.
No Posts Until Next Week (and a Poem for Thanksgiving)
It’s Thanksgiving in the United States this Thursday, so I am enjoying all this “free” time to catch up on things unrelated to teaching. As a consequence, there will not be any new posts until November 26.
In the meantime, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I was recently reminded of John Donne‘s famous Meditation 17: