Tom Lutz
Why They Call it Compassion. Internet Responses to the George W. Bush Reelection
This presentation is a meditation on emotional responses to the re-election of “compassionate conservative” George W. Bush, focusing in particular on websites devoted to anti-Bush post-election expression. The postings speak not just to the current impoverished state of American political discourse, I argue, but to various theories of compassion as well.
Tom Lutz is an Associate Professor at the University of Iowa.
Selected Publications: American Nervousness, 1903: An Anecdotal History, Ithaca (NY) 1991; These “Colored” United States: African American Essays from the 1920s, New Brunswick (NJ) 1996 (with Susanna Ashton); Crying: The Natural and Cultural History of Tears, New York 1999 (Ger.: Tränen vergießen: Über die Kunst zu weinen, München 2000); Cosmopolitan Vistas, Ithaca (NY) 2004.