Normally, I'd title this something about a new semester or new school year, but this was such an eventful summer, that it more feels as if the newness of fall semester is more an outgrowth of my summer activities, rather than a new chapter. Despite my intentions to be less busy than I was last summer, there were so many opportunities this summer that I struggled with figuring out which I should pursue and which to let go of.
I think I made good choices. After a whirlwind tour for my birthday (friends, family, mountains, and spending my birthday covered in bubbles dancing to My Life with the Thrill Kill Cult), I taught a five-week course in Southern Women Writers, did research in the new Dorothy Allison archive at Duke, and spent a week in the redwoods of Santa Cruz, immersed in the Dickens Universe.
There are way too many stories to tell to even begin telling them here. However, the end result has been, weirdly enough, that I have adopted a lot of new, incredibly different, weirdly healthy habits after all of these adventures. Before this summer, I tended to work upstairs, in front of the tv, staying up until two or three in the morning, and sleeping until afternoon if I could. Since I've been typically teaching after noon, I could sleep as late as eleven on teaching days, even. I'd go to jazzercise two or three times a week. I drank three or four diet soft drinks a day, and ate a lot of sweets.
Some combination of new environments and challenging (yet thoroughly enjoyable) schedules and--what, magic?--has had the end result of completely resetting my habits. Since I've been home, I think I've slept as late as ten once. Mostly, I get up between eight and nine, make some cafetierre (which I think sounds much fancier than "French press") coffee, and start the day working. I work much better now downstairs with music, rather than upstairs with television. I have at most one soft drink a day, if that. I'm working out five times a week. And the only sweets I have now are part of my bedtime ritual--chamomile tea and two Biscoff cookies, and I'm ready for bed. I've very quickly pavloved myself into feeling sleepy after this nightly ritual.
I've had similar responses to retreat-like experiences in the past--I quit smoking after one, and made the commitment to finish my bachelors and go to graduate school after another. It's definitely increasing my productivity, which I'm quite pleased with. And which is a good thing, as the threat of the job market and finding fifth year funding is looming large at the moment--I need all of the productivity I can get!
Saturday, August 31, 2013
Monday, July 22, 2013
Today's research
I arrive in Durham yesterday (yay US Air! So much better than Delta!) and went to the Rubenstein Library today, where I started my week long research in the Dorothy Allison papers. I'm here through the generosity of a Mary Lily Research Grant, for which I'm quite grateful.
The archive is a gold mine so far. There is so much already that speaks to my work.
Seeing her sequence of manuscripts for Bastard Out of Carolina has also been incredibly inspiring and impressive. So. many. drafts. And so much tightening up, and moving things around, and cutting entire scenes. A big reason why the novel is so good is that there is a hell of a lot of work in it. Good writing really does come from process--and commitment to that process, and feedback on your process--so much writing that never made it to the page.
The other day, when I reached that block in my writing, where I hit a question that I didn't know the answer to, a lot of my online writing community encouraged me to try to write through the block--and while I know that sometimes works, it wasn't the right answer at the moment. I was having an emotional reaction to hitting the block, and as long as the frustration was there, the block was going to remain. Instead, I got up and did something else for a while--and then I wrote in my dissertation notebook about the frustration, and then I was able to return to my chapter. (So I guess I sort of wrote through my block, but what was more useful was taking the break to let the emotion simmer down a bit.
Tomorrow, back to the archives. Duke is so lovely--and today was really something, as I don't think I've ever been in a special collections library that had so many people! I had to share a table for most of the day. I'm very happy to know that the collection is so appreciated.
The archive is a gold mine so far. There is so much already that speaks to my work.
Seeing her sequence of manuscripts for Bastard Out of Carolina has also been incredibly inspiring and impressive. So. many. drafts. And so much tightening up, and moving things around, and cutting entire scenes. A big reason why the novel is so good is that there is a hell of a lot of work in it. Good writing really does come from process--and commitment to that process, and feedback on your process--so much writing that never made it to the page.
The other day, when I reached that block in my writing, where I hit a question that I didn't know the answer to, a lot of my online writing community encouraged me to try to write through the block--and while I know that sometimes works, it wasn't the right answer at the moment. I was having an emotional reaction to hitting the block, and as long as the frustration was there, the block was going to remain. Instead, I got up and did something else for a while--and then I wrote in my dissertation notebook about the frustration, and then I was able to return to my chapter. (So I guess I sort of wrote through my block, but what was more useful was taking the break to let the emotion simmer down a bit.
Tomorrow, back to the archives. Duke is so lovely--and today was really something, as I don't think I've ever been in a special collections library that had so many people! I had to share a table for most of the day. I'm very happy to know that the collection is so appreciated.
Wednesday, July 17, 2013
My First Literature Class*
I just finished teaching my first college literature course during the five-week intensive summer semester. What a blast!
It was a section of English 2025, Introduction to Fiction; I had made my section a themed one on southern women writers. We met Monday through Friday from 12:40-2:10. The weekend before classes began, I had forty students enrolled in the class (plus a waitlist). However, another instructor's course fell through, so the night before classes started I got an email that my class had been split into two sections, and that half of the students would be assigned to the new section.
That meant that ultimately, I ended up with 17 students enrolled in my class--an aspect of the class that I think has a lot to do with what a wonderful experience the class was for me. With 17 students meeting five days a week, I knew everyone's name much faster than ever before, and the class quickly became the kind of classroom community that I hope for each semester. While I continued to break students up into smaller groups to encourage discussion (and mix up the groups, so that they worked with different people), pretty quickly most of the students were piping up in the full class discussions--what's more, I often had students responding to each other in the full class discussions and even disagreeing with each other. Being able to stand back while students discuss the text among themselves was just delightful.
It was so difficult to narrow the readings down--class daily for five weeks meant that I was even more limited in what I could assign. One realization I had when planning was that I didn't have to assign the readings chronologically--as an intro to fiction, and not a survey class, I didn't have to be comprehensive. That helped immensely. With this realization, I started the class with Ellen Douglas's brilliant Can't Quit You, Baby (a novel that pre-dates The Help by a couple of decades and addresses similar themes in a much more thorough manner)--I'm quite pleased with this choice. Can't Quit You, Baby set up most of the themes I wished to address in the class; throughout the course, students referenced the Douglas novel in comparison to subsequent readings. And, though I didn't realize it when making the course schedule, many students found the novel's style--the narrator's direct address of the reader, the changing points of view, and the role of the imagination in narration--to require some adjustment, so it also started the course off with the sense that students were going to need to put forth some effort.
I put a lot of credit for the course's success in my "QHQ" assignments, which I did as a student in a graduate seminar and which a colleague reported having success with in teaching an intro to fiction course. I had students submit online one per week, with a 500-word minimum. Though at the midterm (i.e., two and a half weeks in) students across the board said they liked them and found them helpful, in the course evals at the end of the semester, many students complained that they were too lengthy. I'm wondering if perhaps this fall, I might have them be 300 words. Regardless of the length, I really like like them as an assignment--they lead students through a bit more structure than a more open-ended response paper. I especially like the kind of thought that ending on a question leads to.
Plus, as summer students, the students tended to be extra-motivated. I love all of the readings I assigned. Students consistently surprised me with insights totally new to me--even of texts like Flannery O'Connor's "Good Country People," a text I thought I knew backwards and forwards.
We started with Can't Quit You, Baby, and ended with The Color Purple (two texts which several students reported crying over, along with Kay Gibbons' Ellen Foster). I'm really pleased with the arc that these two texts anchored, and I'm feeling a bit annoyed that I haven't found similar anchors for my fall literature class (which I've themed "The Many Souths," but keep having the problem that all of the texts I want to teach are set in Mississippi!). Still, I'm really pleased (and a bit relieved!) that my first experience in the college literature classroom was such a positive one. I hope that I can carry this positivity over to my fall class, and find ways to form a tight community in a class that's got more than twice the number I had this summer!
*Well, technically my second, counting last summer's Shakespeare course at Davidson for the Duke/TIP program, but that was three weeks of even more intensive coursework with gifted seventh and eighth graders, which was a unique experience.
It was a section of English 2025, Introduction to Fiction; I had made my section a themed one on southern women writers. We met Monday through Friday from 12:40-2:10. The weekend before classes began, I had forty students enrolled in the class (plus a waitlist). However, another instructor's course fell through, so the night before classes started I got an email that my class had been split into two sections, and that half of the students would be assigned to the new section.
That meant that ultimately, I ended up with 17 students enrolled in my class--an aspect of the class that I think has a lot to do with what a wonderful experience the class was for me. With 17 students meeting five days a week, I knew everyone's name much faster than ever before, and the class quickly became the kind of classroom community that I hope for each semester. While I continued to break students up into smaller groups to encourage discussion (and mix up the groups, so that they worked with different people), pretty quickly most of the students were piping up in the full class discussions--what's more, I often had students responding to each other in the full class discussions and even disagreeing with each other. Being able to stand back while students discuss the text among themselves was just delightful.
It was so difficult to narrow the readings down--class daily for five weeks meant that I was even more limited in what I could assign. One realization I had when planning was that I didn't have to assign the readings chronologically--as an intro to fiction, and not a survey class, I didn't have to be comprehensive. That helped immensely. With this realization, I started the class with Ellen Douglas's brilliant Can't Quit You, Baby (a novel that pre-dates The Help by a couple of decades and addresses similar themes in a much more thorough manner)--I'm quite pleased with this choice. Can't Quit You, Baby set up most of the themes I wished to address in the class; throughout the course, students referenced the Douglas novel in comparison to subsequent readings. And, though I didn't realize it when making the course schedule, many students found the novel's style--the narrator's direct address of the reader, the changing points of view, and the role of the imagination in narration--to require some adjustment, so it also started the course off with the sense that students were going to need to put forth some effort.
I put a lot of credit for the course's success in my "QHQ" assignments, which I did as a student in a graduate seminar and which a colleague reported having success with in teaching an intro to fiction course. I had students submit online one per week, with a 500-word minimum. Though at the midterm (i.e., two and a half weeks in) students across the board said they liked them and found them helpful, in the course evals at the end of the semester, many students complained that they were too lengthy. I'm wondering if perhaps this fall, I might have them be 300 words. Regardless of the length, I really like like them as an assignment--they lead students through a bit more structure than a more open-ended response paper. I especially like the kind of thought that ending on a question leads to.
Plus, as summer students, the students tended to be extra-motivated. I love all of the readings I assigned. Students consistently surprised me with insights totally new to me--even of texts like Flannery O'Connor's "Good Country People," a text I thought I knew backwards and forwards.
We started with Can't Quit You, Baby, and ended with The Color Purple (two texts which several students reported crying over, along with Kay Gibbons' Ellen Foster). I'm really pleased with the arc that these two texts anchored, and I'm feeling a bit annoyed that I haven't found similar anchors for my fall literature class (which I've themed "The Many Souths," but keep having the problem that all of the texts I want to teach are set in Mississippi!). Still, I'm really pleased (and a bit relieved!) that my first experience in the college literature classroom was such a positive one. I hope that I can carry this positivity over to my fall class, and find ways to form a tight community in a class that's got more than twice the number I had this summer!
*Well, technically my second, counting last summer's Shakespeare course at Davidson for the Duke/TIP program, but that was three weeks of even more intensive coursework with gifted seventh and eighth graders, which was a unique experience.
Friday, June 14, 2013
More ugliness
Once again, there's another blog post speculating about the importance of an author's appearance on the reception and success of their work. (Jonathan Franzen still hasn't let it go, either.) Jeffrey Meyers, however, doesn't limit himself to just one author, however--he composes an ugly list of 26 authors! (As well as one of "handsomist" authors for comparison.) And, unlike Franzen, he considers both men and women as ugly, instead of just singling out one author for his disdain. (Also, I don't get what his methodology is for deciding whose last name is sufficient for identification, and who requires a first name--other than all of the women have first names (because it would be too confusing to figure out which writer with the last name "Schnackenberg" he was referencing?).)
Meyers explains his "admittedly subjective judgment" as including "the homeliest, obese, and sometimes even disfigured" authors. Further, I'm pretty sure that no one on his "handsomist" list is non-white (and in my subjective opinion, I disagree with many of his assertions--I mean, Kingsley Amis? Really?). Meyers agrees with Franzen's basic premise--in Meyer's words, "Physically attractive authors make their work seem more appealing. Their lovely faces provide tangible evidence--beyond their creative talent--that they are superior beings, have become sacred icons and are themselves a work of art."
Rubbish! Do people actually believe this? That meeting certain physical characteristics genuinely makes people superior beings (let along the "sacred icon/work of art" part)? Why does phrenology keep such a strong hold on the imagination?
Meyers observes that "though unattractive women are taken more seriously than great beauties, neo-Platonic authors believed that beauty reveals inner goodness and ugliness suggests evil." Evil! Really! I suppose that, if nothing else, Meyers is reinforcing what I expect the last chapter of my dissertation to be about: female characters in southern literature who, to whatever extent, choose to be ugly. For many of them, this choice is a signal of allegiance to seriousness, to the intellectual life, the kind life led by those spinster, schoolmarmish women which W. J. Cash referred to as "horse-faced" and attributed to ugly Yankee spinsters.
Even though Meyers includes men in his hot/not lists, his commentary is primarily reserved for the women (excepting his odd aside about Hemingway claiming that F. Scott Fitzgerald wasn't all that). I fail to see the purpose of the continuing production of such essays, other than to annoy me. Their judgements are subjective and prejudiced, their assumptions are flawed, and their conclusions are insulting. Dear Internet: KNOCK IT OFF.
Meyers explains his "admittedly subjective judgment" as including "the homeliest, obese, and sometimes even disfigured" authors. Further, I'm pretty sure that no one on his "handsomist" list is non-white (and in my subjective opinion, I disagree with many of his assertions--I mean, Kingsley Amis? Really?). Meyers agrees with Franzen's basic premise--in Meyer's words, "Physically attractive authors make their work seem more appealing. Their lovely faces provide tangible evidence--beyond their creative talent--that they are superior beings, have become sacred icons and are themselves a work of art."
Rubbish! Do people actually believe this? That meeting certain physical characteristics genuinely makes people superior beings (let along the "sacred icon/work of art" part)? Why does phrenology keep such a strong hold on the imagination?
Meyers observes that "though unattractive women are taken more seriously than great beauties, neo-Platonic authors believed that beauty reveals inner goodness and ugliness suggests evil." Evil! Really! I suppose that, if nothing else, Meyers is reinforcing what I expect the last chapter of my dissertation to be about: female characters in southern literature who, to whatever extent, choose to be ugly. For many of them, this choice is a signal of allegiance to seriousness, to the intellectual life, the kind life led by those spinster, schoolmarmish women which W. J. Cash referred to as "horse-faced" and attributed to ugly Yankee spinsters.
Even though Meyers includes men in his hot/not lists, his commentary is primarily reserved for the women (excepting his odd aside about Hemingway claiming that F. Scott Fitzgerald wasn't all that). I fail to see the purpose of the continuing production of such essays, other than to annoy me. Their judgements are subjective and prejudiced, their assumptions are flawed, and their conclusions are insulting. Dear Internet: KNOCK IT OFF.
Monday, May 20, 2013
Summertime
Last summer was intense--I presented at a conference in Italy. We drove across the country for a wedding. I taught an intensive Shakespeare course for gifted junior high students. In one week, I went through seven time zones. All this while reading for exams, which I started the week before school started in the fall.
I swore this summer would be different. And yes, I'm staying in the country, and I'm teaching here. Today, however, I was trying to figure out when to schedule my trip to Duke to do research in the archives there, and realize that I don't have a lot of weeks free. My best bet is to go the week before I go to the Dickens Universe, because I know that that week will be exhausting, and when I get back, there's only two weeks until school starts. Before that, I'm teaching for five weeks, I'm presenting at the Southern Writers/Southern Writing conference (finally! I'll get to go to Oxford!), and this week I'm leaving for a week and a half to do a grand tour of friends and family, hitting Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Ohio.
Plus, you know, dissertation writing and job market preparation. Is this just some perverse quirk of mine, that I can't stay still? I would say that I can't say no, but I've said no quite a few times lately. After having been president of the WGS grad student association this year, I switched positions with the VP for next year. And I don't have any position in the English grad student association. For my summer class--which is an intensive introduction to fiction which meets five days a week for five weeks--I just cut a whole novel and two short stories from my original plan. Surely, this is progress?
It's not as though I'd want to say no to any of the things I'm doing this summer. I'm hoping to think of them as rewards along the way to keep me writing and working on my bigger projects (ie, dissertation and job docs). That, at least, is my plan for now. Stay tuned to see how it actually pans out.
(However, I will observe that last summer, though I was tired, was quite a success. I did accomplish all that I set out to do--so perhaps I should recognize that the more I do, the more I'm able to do, generally. So perhaps I should focus less on how daunting the summer seems, and instead focus on how much fun it promises to be.)
Plus, you know, dissertation writing and job market preparation. Is this just some perverse quirk of mine, that I can't stay still? I would say that I can't say no, but I've said no quite a few times lately. After having been president of the WGS grad student association this year, I switched positions with the VP for next year. And I don't have any position in the English grad student association. For my summer class--which is an intensive introduction to fiction which meets five days a week for five weeks--I just cut a whole novel and two short stories from my original plan. Surely, this is progress?
It's not as though I'd want to say no to any of the things I'm doing this summer. I'm hoping to think of them as rewards along the way to keep me writing and working on my bigger projects (ie, dissertation and job docs). That, at least, is my plan for now. Stay tuned to see how it actually pans out.
(However, I will observe that last summer, though I was tired, was quite a success. I did accomplish all that I set out to do--so perhaps I should recognize that the more I do, the more I'm able to do, generally. So perhaps I should focus less on how daunting the summer seems, and instead focus on how much fun it promises to be.)
Sunday, April 7, 2013
End of spring break
Spring break is often late here, because we get a long Mardi Gras weekend. Spring break doesn't occur until after Good Friday. I was so ready this year!
My intention this past week was to balance work with rest. It wasn't until yesterday that the ton of bricks hit me, probably after spending Friday working straight from 10 in the morning (on a writing date with a friend) to six at night (preparing for our big presentation to the Governor's Commission on anti-bullying initiatives). Yesterday, I collapsed--some sort of combination sinus/migraine headache, terribly sore neck, and nausea. I was so terribly whiny. I stayed in bed until midnight, when I had a miraculous calm in the storm--Mark made me some scrambled eggs which I devoured.
Today I was down for the count again. I'm eating, though, and feeling less nauseous. The pain is less, though it's still there. I'm dreading tomorrow--though I'd already planned to spend most of class this week showing a documentary (POV's Stonewall documentary--so good!), but tomorrow I'm on a panel for grad students about communication. Ugh. That's going to take an extra big coffee. And then Tuesday's the presentation.
I got the minimum done this week--student paper proposals responded to. Writing done. Started thinking about summer and fall syllabi, and requested a couple of desk copies. The couple of small assignments the professor whose RA I am this semester are done. I've still got bits and pieces to grade, but I'm okay with that.
As usual, it shall be a sprint to the finish. I'm thinking I may last until the end of Masterpiece Theater, and then back to sleep.
Thursday, March 14, 2013
MLA 2014 CFP--Deadlines extended!
Deadlines have been extended to *March 19* for proposals for MLA 2014!!
Alt‑Academic Feminism I: “Teaching Outside the Classroom through Digital Humanities, Women’s Caucus for Modern Languages at the MLA, Chicago, 1/9‑12/2014. Amid Fembot Collective, Black Girls Code, MOOCs, Abrogrammers, new collaborations, how are women teaching, learning, connecting (or not) via DH? 250‑word proposals to Teresa Mangum (tmangum@uiowa.edu). We invite you to propose a topic for this 2014 guaranteed session, a roundtable in which 4‑5 participants offer provocative comments to inspire lively discussion.
Alt‑Academic Feminism II: “Theorizing Collaborative Action Beyond Classrooms”: Community‑based, integrative, and service‑learning as recognized high‑impact practices but also vulnerable programs; what are models/risks of framing activist work as teaching/research/service responsibilities? 250‑word proposals to Jessica Ketcham Weber (jweber@cascadia.edu).
Alt‑Academic Feminism III: “Feminist Vulnerability on Post‑Feminist Campuses.” Success, support, problems, or backlash in developing programs/curriculum, equity in policy (e.g., FMLA, harassment), personnel (e.g., representation/workload), and hiring (e.g., contingent labor). What does it mean to live on a post-feminist campus with a pre-feminist workload? To have colleagues or administrators behave as though activism on policy, guidelines, or hiring is passé when women have “taken over”? What are the best practices to assure that workplaces support gendered issues? 250-word proposals to Michelle Massé (mmasse@lsu.edu)
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