Occupation author, professor Role Author Name James Twitchell | Nationality United States Language English | |
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Books 20 ads that shook the world, Lead Us Into Temptatio, Adcult USA, Living It Up: Our Love Affai, Branded Nation: The Marketing | ||
James B. Twitchell is an author and former professor of English. He was born in 1943, in Burlington, Vermont. His undergraduate, Masters and PhD were all from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1962, 1966 and 1969.
Twitchell was a widely published, widely quoted tenured professor at the University of Florida when in 2008 an investigative reporter at the Gainesville Sun found a pattern of plagiarizing passages from other writer's work. The University decided to suspend Twitchell, with reinstatement conditional on Twitchell properly attributing each instance of plagiarism or close paraphrasing. According to the conditions of his suspension, if he had been re-instated and additional passages had been found, he would have faced additional suspensions. Twitchell, who was already in his sixties, chose not to appeal the ruling, and to resign his position. Inside Higher Education quoted Grant McCracken, a blogger whose idea Twitchell had used, characterizing his comment as gracious: “As for Twitchell, it's sad. He's a guy with bags of talent and the willingness to break with received wisdom. I hope he keeps writing.”
Works
In its most vulgarized and solipsistic state, epiphany is what currently is marketed as a God wink. Here the believer is encouraged to take some coincidence, like winning the lottery or recovering from sickness, as evidence of a higher power at work. So Squire Rushnell, in When God Winks at You: How God Speaks Directly to You Through the Power of Coincidence, tells of a woman who goes to church and just happens to sit next to the birth mother she was seeking. The mother was attending services for the first time! "Every time you receive what some call a coincidence or an answered prayer, it's a direct and personal message of reassurance from God to you," he contends. Narcissism itself becomes proof of divine selection.