Al Filreis Blog

A Mother’s Day note for Lois Filreis, 93 y.o.

In a few minutes I’ll connect by Facetime with my mom, Lois Filreis (now 93 y.o.). It’ll be our second convo of the day. This one will be about redoing access to some online account or other. I’m happy to be of help in this sort of thing at this...

Open Access principles

Sent to me by an avid ModPo participant who cares a good deal about the underlying ideas of teaching and learning that create the collaborative ModPo vibe: from a now-defunct Canadian journal, these tenets. I especially resonate with the idea of a “temporary, collectively held space.”  

Jeff Martinek (class of 1987)

My brilliant former student (class of 1987) Jeff Martinek has been a professor at Iowa Wesleyan for many years—and recently won a teacher-of-the-year award. A local newspaper covered the commencement speech he gave to the graduating class. He recalled his Penn graduation in Franklin Field. From his speech: “It was...

Review of “1960”

Review of 1960 by Rob Baxter: Al Filreis’s 1960: When Art and Literature Confronted the Memory of World War II and Remade the Modern, is a compendium of the belated responses of fiction, poetry, history, painting, sculpture, film television and every medium of art and communication to the language defying...