For some reason, the new Year really begins for me on the first day of the Spring semester, which this year at GW, is quite early. The intervening days between MLA and today, then, which are usually good times to catch up on a little writing, were spent syllabus planning (and burping babies, but that's just the new reality of my reduced productivity).

The bad news is that two articles on parody (on parody as psychic excess, and on parodic spectatorship) remained unrevised, and another on narration in Death of a Salesman and Streetcar remain unresearched.

The good news is that I've got a great syllabus ahead of me, and some exciting things to do with writing about food. Accordingly, this space will often be a test space for ruminations on the class, the discussions we embark on, and occasionally even my own responses to the prompts I give my students.

Of course other ruminations will surely make their way into the discussion, but for a few months, this will be a website obsessed with appetites and consumption.

And finally, Happy New Year (since according to my academic calendar formula, today is an odd interpretation of New Year's Day). May all of your best syllabus intentions come to fruition.