Fordham University will soon host what promises to be a trendy (i.e., gender, etc.-fixated) conference on the HBO series The Sopranos. Scholars from around the world will ponder such vital topics as:

  • “Carmela Soprano: Fighting Our Battle?”
  • “Wops and WASPs: Using ‘The Sopranos’ to Teach about Race and Racism”
  • “Tony Soprano as Feral Father: Patriarchy in the Age of Hybridity,” and
  • “A Family That Eats Together, Kills Together: Food as Metaphor in ‘The Sopranos.’”

The confab, titled “The Sopranos: A Wake,” was apparently contrived, comments the New York Post, “as a way of mourning the revered show’s passing” a year ago. One Fordham prof, Paul Levinson, so reveres the series as to pronounce it “the equivalent of the Beatles, of Shakespeare, of a great piece of fiction which redound through the ages.”

A little too soon to call, don’t you think, Dr. Levinson? Aren’t you indulging in a bit of what the Bard called, in Love’s Labour’s Lost, “three-piled hyperboles”?