Phil Christman

About

Phil Christman teaches first-year writing at the University of Michigan and is the editor of the Michigan Review of Prisoner Creative Writing. His work has appeared in The Christian Century, Paste, Books & Culture, and other publications. His most recent books are How to Be Normal and Midwest Futures.

Adventures Close to Home

from The Varieties of Travel Experience, Volume 26, Number 2

The cases for travel are often sillier than the cases against, and I think it’s important to question them.

The Monster Discloses Himself

from By Theory Possessed, Volume 25, Number 1

There is a world within the world, and that world is not, as it is for the Marxist, a metaphor. It’s where the lizard people meet.

Small-Town USA

from Political Mythologies, Volume 24, Number 1

A small town might well be angry; it is asked to do everything.

The Strange Undeath of Middlebrow

from Who Do We Think We Are?, Volume 23, Number 1

Everything that was once considered lowbrow is now triumphant.

The Cinema of Inadvertence, or Why I Like Bad Movies

from Eating and Being, Volume 21, Number 3

We bad-movie watchers have our own anticriteria, the sorts of badness we prefer.

Mary Midgley, 1919–2018

from Animals and Us, Volume 21, Number 1

Mary Midgley’s writing was profound but rarely technical; she trained her sights on general problems.

Friedman’s Demon

from Animals and Us, Volume 21, Number 1

Can neoliberalism’s conceptual structure be traced directly to medieval Western Christianity?

On Being Midwestern

from The End of the End of History?, Volume 19, Number 3

Small wonder that Midwestern cities, institutions, and people show up again and again in the twentieth-century effort to determine what, in America, is normal.

Fanfares for the Common Man

from The Post-Modern Self, Volume 19, Number 1

Those who write about the rural, white, poor South often alternate between disgust and empathy.