Marianne Janack is the John Stewart Kennedy Professor of Philosophy at Hamilton College in Clinton, NY USA. She is the editor in chief of Book XI: a Journal of Literary Philosophy. She has a PhD in philosophy and an MFA in creative writing. You can read more of her work in her newsletter on Substack. Email: mjanack [at] hamilton.edu
Website: https://hamiltoncs.org/janack/
by Marianne Janack The distinction between utopias and dystopias is often murky. In Ursula LeGuin’s story, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”, a utopian society is built on suffering; Lois Lowry’s The Giver portrays a world in which the absence of pain depends on the absence of choice; Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World portrays…
by Marianne Janack When I ask people if they actually read all the things that they were assigned to read during their college education, they all tell me that they didn’t. And, in fact, I didn’t either. I got behind in a Nineteenth Century Russian Literature course (so many giant books!) and resorted to the…
by Marianne Janack Synaesthesia is one of those phenomena that make the scientific study of perception difficult. Its general characteristic is that, as one researcher puts it, extraordinary experiences follow from ordinary sensory in-put. Some synaesthetes hear in color; some hear something and it makes them feel like they have been touched (physically) by something…
by Marianne Janack Visiting a grocery store forces you to face irrationality. Should I buy the Jax, which I love? Or should I refrain? The store doesn’t carry my cat’s favorite brand of food anymore. Should I buy something that’s sort of like it? Go to another store a short drive away that carries it? …