It has been a long time since I have updated this website and before I am caught up in the end of the semester hustle, I figured it would be wise to take a few minutes to give an account of where things stand and what I have been up to.
Over the Summer I submitted my second-to-last dissertation chapter on W.E.B. Du Bois. In it I explore how Du Bois drew on his social-scientific training and his readings of debates concerning Darwinian evolution in two key early works–John Brown and Darkwater–in order to combat social Darwinism and scientific racism in the opening decades of the twentieth-century. These hybrid texts are really fascinating and in writing the chapter I really started to feel the coherence of the dissertation and realize some of its relevance to contemporary debates in the humanities.
Alongside my academic work, I’ve been spending a good amount of time in the shop building bookcases, cabinets and desks for friends. Woodworking is both physically and intellectually gratifying. Nothing compliments my long held interest in Aristotle, Kant, and the American pragmatists quite like transforming sheets and boards of wood into functional objects. The experience of being in the shop and working through the unpredictable snags and sudden insights is continuous with what I’ve always found so exciting about writing, reading and teaching literature. My hope is that this Winter isn’t so severe that it makes being in the shop an impossibility. See below for a few pictures of some of the things I have built over these last few months.
James H. Searle 