I began my teaching at Bridgeport University, an institution in the city of the same name and built upon the once-estate of P.T. Barnum, an estate featuring a mansion which Barnum called “Iranistan.”
I worried that, on Barnum’s turf, students wouldn’t take me seriously. Or would. It was an odd place, spilling over with both eagerness and paranoia. I remember walking along a sidewalk with the dean of humanities. A small knot of students approached, and the dean leaned in and whispered, “Don’t let them push you into the bushes.”
I’m hardly the first to make connections.