I've been a bit quiet lately, mainly because my writing has, unusually, taken me elsewhere. A few weeks ago now, I received an email out of the blue from an editor at Public Humanities . He was inviting me to write an article on Taylor Swift's new album, The Life of a Showgirl . The editor -- who is a professor at Harvard -- pitched the piece as part of an "Of The Moment" roundtable, a space that " offers articles that are short, peer-reviewed, open access, and written for a
