Raining Cats and Dogma

The Intrepid Explorer
Originally uploaded by Ryan Claycomb.

Posted by at 2:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Molly and purple flowers
Originally uploaded by Ryan Claycomb.

Posted by at 8:07 PM | Permalink

Last night was my first game in the Buckskin Soccer League, the local adult Soccer League. My team, the Rowdies, is in the C division (A is competitive, B is competitive, but for men over 30 and women, and C is well, not competitive). We are so non-competitive that we never paracticed, never met as a team nothing, beforehand.

I was recruited to the team by Catherine Gouge, a colleague of mine and an all around sporty type person, but she and the couple of other people I knew that she had recruited weren't there for various reasons, so when I arrived (amidst a thunderstorm, no less) I knew no one.

When I finally did locate my team, I had to confess to them that the last time I had put on shin guards was 1987. I'm 100 pounds heavier and 14 inches taller than I was then. I was small and quick then, and (because I wasn't really coordinated with either foot) claimed to be left footed, though I am right-handed. As for last night at 6:30? I didn't know whether I'd be able to kick left-footed or really even at all.

I streched and warmed up and figured out that I was still as reliable left footed as right footed, and my foot speed was still comparatively good, so I played left wing almost the whole night: two 45 minute halves, shorthanded, which meant that there were no subs. Our team scored no goals, but I think I was pretty successful getting the ball downfield and crossing it in. We just couldn't seal the deal. So ultimately, I think, score one for my legs, which after all these years, still remmembered a little soccer.

This morning? well, score one for the sport of soccer, which is having its revenge on my poor quads. Lots of water, lots of advil, and I'm going to try to get out for a walk this evening.

Posted by at 2:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

As readers may intuit from the TOP NOVELIST competition, Ann and I like our elimination reality competition shows, especially Project Runway, and this Spring, to a lesser degree, Top Chef. Now as foodies (God I hate that word), we’ve really been impressed by a lot of the chefs themselves, but less so by the competition…some of the downright creepy and potentially demeaning challenges, some of the actual characters (Stephen, Miguel, and Dave all had me grinding my teeth).

But the real opportunity that this show had that it completely squandered was a chance to take on the sexism that’s often found in professional kitchens. OK, yes, the show had equal numbers of male and female contestants, though the female contestants were less likely viable ones in the competition. The two who were there until the final four, Lee Ann and Tiffani, were awesome chefs.

The thing is, I was rooting for TIffani hard core. As a female chef who outed herself as queer in an early episode, she surely has faced a lot of resistance, and to survive in a lot of kitchens, women often have to ramp up the testosterone level to show that she can be one of the guys on the line. Doubt it? Just read Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential

So what bothered me so much was a) the deference that the judges, particularly superstar chef Tom Collicchio gave to male contestants, and worse b) the number of time that it was insinuated that Tiffani was a bitch, or worse, in the most famous line of the show, Dave’s declaration that “I’m not your bitch, bitch.” Had she been a male, she may not have been the most beloved contestant, but she would have commended for running a tight ship. Instead, she was the show Bitch, and it torpedoed what I think should have been her ultimate victory.

Project Runway has a summer season coming up, and I’m stoked. If Top Chef returns for a second season, we may watch, but if it looks to repeat this season’s mistakes, we’re turning it off.

Posted by at 2:18 PM | Permalink

Well, sort of. Actually, what I got this evening was the statistical report for the bubble-in questions for one of my two classes, the Brit Lit class. There are a few baffling results, but generally, these results are statistically very similar to what my students said last semester. According to the percentiles, my scores rank in the 90th percentile for the college (87th for the University) for overall teaching effectiveness, which makes me quite happy. What’s odd is that this semester (very much in contrast to last semester) students gave me lower-than-average ratings for mastery of subject matter (I have NO idea why) and whether they “enjoyed going to class.”

That last one is my own fault. Eighteen of the questions are predetermined, and five of them I get to choose from an extensive list. “Enjoyed going to class” must have been the result of a personal sense of self-loathing the day I made my requests.

I think my comp scores are already in, but they come directly to the composition office, so I don’t get them electronically. I suspect those will be a bit better than last semester’s.

Here’s the thing. I have been totally chomping at the bit to see these things. I can’t put my finger precisely on why, except that it feels like much the same impulse I had as a student to ask “Do you have our papers yet?” which is one of my least favorite questions of all time to have to answer. But I sure do know why it’s being asked.

Even at this late date, I want to be rated, and rated highly. I want to max out the “excellents” in the annual review, I want off-the-charts course evals, I want chili peppers on my RMP site. I wanted there to be a high pass option for my oral exams, not ‘cause I knew I’d get it, but because I wanted to have something more than pass/fail to tell me how I’d done. Back when I had a therapist, she had something to say about this…

Someday, I’ll learn to be satisfied because I’m satisfied, not because someone tells me I’m satisfactory. Not today, though.

Posted by at 2:16 PM | Permalink

So the other night, I was reading bedtime stories to Lilah, and I heard this weird chirping noise that seemed to be coming from just on the other side of the wall, which happened to be an external wall.

Or maybe it was in the room. I checked to make sure it wasn’t coming from her CD player. Then I checked to make sure there wasn’t some sort of funny bug caught in her overhead lamp. Then I checked to make sure the same bug wasn’t dying on the little shelf above her crib.

More twittering. At this point I’m pretty sure it’s not in the room, but fear that whatever it is, it’s in the walls.

After Lilah goes down for the night, I stick my head out the front door too look at the external wall that would be housing the noise in Lilah’s wall. I’m thinking hornet’s nest, or worse, since we have cedar siding, termites. There are a few bees buzzing around, but not enough to suggest a nest in the walls.

The next morning when I got her up, the noise was even louder, definitely animal, probably not insects. I stick my head outside again, and scan the wall. Nothing. And then, discreetly, a sparrow sticks her head out of the wall, where a knot in the siding had been poked out. She’s got her nest in our house.

At first I thought I’d need to do something, but we’ll probably wait until summer to patch it up. After all, it’s nice to know that someone is sheltering her babies in the same place we shelter ours…

Posted by at 2:15 PM | Permalink

The spam has been insane over here at the herders, so much so that our host shut us down...We're up and running right now, but looking for a way to cut back on the spam. We've been considering a CAPTCHA for verification, but the disability issues are a little troubing, and so we're working on other options as well.

Anyway, I'm here for the time being; I'm turning comments back on, and hoping that the spam doesn't start back up again. Keep your fingers crossed.

Oh, and I'll be posting a bunch of stuff that I've been saving up for the last few days . . .

Posted by at 2:11 PM | Permalink

"Marge Schottenheimer": Though we asked you to write a simple beginning, it took you all to the very time limit to get your entries in. I'm amazed any of you get anything started, let alone finished.

Norman Poulenc: Oh, Marge, clearly you have never actually been burdened by the muse...

"Marge": And you, Norman, have never been burdened by an actual responsibility. But enough about you. Let's talk about these entries.

Norman: Beginnings follow schemas, and the best beginnings can both invoke and capitalize on the schema, while at the same time, twisting it, or even shattering it to pieces. The worst beginnings are trampled by the very conventions they are working with.

"Marge": Which is, indeed, the case for N. Darling, the idea of parodying the Bible is indeed an ambitious undertaking, but for the n-th time, you've given us a brilliant little gimmick with no actual story, no heart, no soul. Fortunately for me, I, too, have neithe4r heart nor soul, and so I suffer no pangs of remorse when I deliver you your rejection slip. You are dismissed, dear. Go write a scathing parody of me on your blog, which I won't read anyway.

Norman: Now that we've got that out of the way, we can discuss the remaining entries:

Daniel, we thought that yours would open into yet another wandering soul trying to find himself abroad, but you have mercifully taken us out of the interior world of your insipid angst, and given us some deliciously earthy details. Alas, it was the donkeys in love that saved you.

Suzanne, you are a master (mistress?) of convention, and for your thousands of surely adoring readers, you never disappoint. For the millions who will never read you, well, they can't be disappointed by the predictability of prose they don't read that features yet another rhetorical question posed by every Manhattan 20-something career gorl since 1950. But alaas, we cannot fault you for doing well what you do.

Ah, Perry, so hard-boiled, so impenetrable, so jaded. The first person address of the reader immediately brings us into your story. If only there were a sense of the story that followed.

And Lucy, after last week's cop-out, the judges were prepared to send you packing (indeed, if "Marge" had had her way, your rejection slip may have accidentally been dipped in poison ivy oils. accidentally, of course). But your beginning is both conventionaly and craftily subversive. Norman's only regret is that he doesn't have Penny Adler's number. Though "Marge"'s respect for you is returning, though, don't rule out the possibility that Ebay might be contacted with an anonymous tip about possible copyright infringement. In the meantime, Lucy, you are the winner. congrats.

Stay tuned for the next Top Novelist challenge, to be posted soon.

Posted by at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

X-posted from the claycomb twins:

For several nights before Ann left for Ireland, Collin had had a bit of trouble settling down for bed, and so more than once, one of us had to go into his room at 8:30 or 9:00 to soothe him down. On a couple of occassions, Collin had whispered something incomprehensible to me through his pacifier. Unable to figure it out, I usually said something like, "OK, buddy, go to sleep." While Ann was gone, it so happened that one evening Collin was having a bit of a hyper bedtime, and so I ended up staying with him a bit longer. And there it was again, the same syllables whispered through his pacifier--cocopababa, cocoba pa na.

"What are you saying pal?" I asked, and popped the pacifier out of his mouth.

He rolled over onto his tummy, and pulled up his shirt and said it again...

I knew that he wanted me to rub his back, and it dawned on me that he wanted me to sing something for him (which his daycare providers do when he's having trouble napping).

"Buddy, do you want me to rub your back and sing 'Copacabana'?"

"Yes."

He was asleep in five minutes.

Posted by at 10:42 AM | Permalink

Now if this common sense policy were just a standard, instead of a newsworthy anomaly . . .

Vie Inside Higher Ed:

Dartmouth College graduate students who are primary care providers will receive their full stipends and health benefits for 12 weeks following the birth or adoption of a child, under a new policy announced this week.

Posted by at 1:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

As I have composed these other wrap-ups, I've struggled to get at how this year was different from most other years, since lord knows at earlier institutions, I had done my share of service, research, and teaching. But I could not entirely put my finger on what made this year feel so, well, new. I'm not interested in or able to discuss the ontological status of my subjectivity in the context of a tenure track job in this forum, but I think in practical terms, the notion of the academic subjectivity of a tenure-track faculty member warrants scrutiny.

In Major League Baseball, with its extensive farm system, you can be a rookie, even if you've playing in Triple-A for years. Your first year in the Bigs, not matter what your age or experience, is your rookie year. Hideki Matsui of the Yankees was techniaclly a rookie, despite having a 1,000-plus games-played streak in Japan.

So here, I am a rookie with years of playing time, but I'm also in the Bigs, so to speak.

The difference between now and those other years of experience? I am constituted differently as an academic subject. Part of the changes I am tracing are certainly Institutional, but many seem like part of the profession.

* I suddenly feel serious labour and status inequities for those ranked below me--senior lecturers who have been at this University for years and teach more are paid less and struggle in this system in ways that I do not. There has even been a slight deference (I hate the word, but that's a bit what it feels like) from some who are as qualified as I am, but haven't landed a TT job yet. This feels weird, and unearned, and unjustified.

*Composition is something that I think I am supposed to treat as a chore. Now, after 8 years teaching or administrating composition, I don't mind the break I'm getting next year, and I went looking for this job in part so I could find a bit more variety in my teaching duties. But in my first year here, I was very active with Undergraduate Writing, but I got subtle advice from more than one source that I should be careful about getting too closely tied to composition. eck.

*The prospect of leaving is different...I'm hard-pressed to say how, and right now, I have no intention of leaving, which is precisely the difference, I guess. I could go on the market at some point in the future, but it's not a mandatory thing looming on the horizon as it was for several years. But before, I was expected to leave eventually; now I am more or less expected not to leave.

*The only thing really "looming" per se is tenure, and I'm not worried about that at all, with the humane requirements we have here. In fact, if all goes well (knock on wood) I'd have my minimum publishing covered by the end of year two, perhaps year three. Much of this is work that was already in progress before I got here, and yet I have always had a sense that landing a TT job made me a "real" scholar, which is baloney, I recognize, but I had still internalized, and I imagine that in many ways, I'm still reinforcing that notion to my students, and perhaps even my friends, which is crappy.

*In fact, it's the very notion of gatekeeping, or policing certain kinds of academic boundaries, that marks the academic subjectivity of a TT faculty member, particularly at a PhD granting institution. Before, I was knocking at the gates: Undergrad admissions, the honors capstone, MA admissions, the MA thesis defense, PhD admissions, comprehensive exams, the dissertation defense, the job search, eight opportunities to be weeded out, if you will (how many ciurcles of hell did Dante count? I'm thinking he missed one or two). Now more than ever, I am tending those gates. I'm on the PhD admissions committee, I'm on the qualifying exams committee for the department, I've offered my input on job candidates, and I'll be on both dissertation committees and job search committees before too long, virtually none of which I'd ever been of status to do in the past. The only gate left for me to pass, really, is tenure, and that's more a "let's see if we want to keep you in," rather than "let you in." I need to think a lot more about this particular responsibility, and the power it has suddenly granted me. It's hardly ruling the world, but it's power nonetheless, and it can be misused.

*This notion of being an insider plays out in some other ways, too. I think I mentioned in the research post that I'm being sought out and accepted into discussions in small ways that had never happened before, and credit for this is due, I think, to the fact that I've already been vetted. I'm in, if you will. I don't know. maybe I'm constructing this whole inside/outside business myself, because while there is an outside of academia, what consittutes inside is hazy. Was I inside academia as an undergrad? as an M.A.? as a Ph.D. student and GTA? as a degreed contract faculty member?

Last summer, I participated in the bloggy book group discussion of my colleague Donald E. Hall's The Academic Self. I think I felt that that moment, just before I began the TT job, was one where an authentic academic self was being constituted, that I had entered into subjectivity as an academic. I hoped (and still do hope) to craft that selfhood carefully, but I'm coming to understand how much that selfhood is co-constructed with an institutional subjectivity that was already in place (though perhaps not immutable) when I entered into it.

Posted by at 10:06 PM | Permalink

Many of you may not know of Sheila, but devotees of her grace (mostly a handful of friends of mine from undergrad) know that in times of great parking need, a quick prayer to her often yeilds results. A simple "Sheila-la-la-la-la!" intoned as you circle around the streets of a crowded Dupont circle often brought us the gift a lovely spot, close to our destination that was just the right size for our vehicle.

Sheila clearly has a thing against institutions of higher education. The high commute population at UMaryland meant that the wide expanses of parking were often full to brimming, and a good spot often still meant a ten-fifteen minute walk to my building. At GWU, the urban setting meant that parking was unavailable for anything under 15 bucks at any time except Sundays. Here, the absence of flat spaces and an environmentally fragile river together mean that acreage devoted to parking is already maxed out, slim though it is. So Sheila either dislikes universities, or perhaps it's just that I'd used up much of my parking kharma circing around tony DC neighborhoods.

Indeed, during my entire first year here, I had to park in perhaps the farthest lot from my buiding, a ten-minute walk (uphill going home) across two very busy streets, half of which through a student slum (and I don't use that word lightly: more than one house was condemned) that smelled farily bad during several different weather conditions.

Today, Sheila smiled on me again. After a year's wait, I was finally moved to one of the lots closest to my building, which cuts about 15 minutes off of my daily commute each way. I went to campus today just because I could "stop in" without risking a ticket.

Thanks be to Sheila!

Accordingly, my entire first year

Posted by at 10:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Norman: Critic Steven Kellman writes that a novel's opening must break the ice, so to speak. "The ice,” he says, "must be broken with something sharp, or melted with something warm." So whether your ice pick is a a woman who is not beautiful, though men often think so, or even Stately, plump Buck Mulligan, or your melting tactic is to go with a truth universall known, or perhaps a description of the best of times and the worst of times, you've gotta begin somewhere, and the beginning has to keep the reader beginning.

Your challenge this week, contestants? An excellent opening line. Just one, maye two sentences. Nothing more.

"Marge Schottenheimer": There is a twist: Though Daniel, N. Lucy, Suzanne, and Perry are the only remaining contestants, anyone can submit an entry, and anyone can win. Yet only one of the remaining contestants can lose. You have until Monday.

Norman: And Daniel is on notice...allegations of plagiarism from a woman writer in Appalachia have surfaced, so you should take care not to pull an Opal Mehta on us. We find it no coincidence that the post was "accidentally" lost during the technical difficulties of the past week.

"Marge": And Lucy's on notice, too. First for being a romance writer who takes a pass on a sex scene, and then for trying to accuse the judges of subterfuge. Of course, you won't find that comment on this site...technical difficulties indeed. Good luck contestants. And others? Bill, Patricia, Sadie, Nels, Julia, Phillip, Devorah? You're welcome to join back in the fun for a week.

Posted by at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

I noticed recently that Chuck mentioned that he had attended and evangelical Christian university for a time, specifically, Lee University, which, if I’m not mistaken, is affiliated with the Church of God denomination out of Cleveland TN. I too spent much of my boyhood and teenage years in the same evangelical denomination, and find that its influence has shaped me (by resistance more than by embrace, obviously) a great deal.

The nature of that past is something that I find at once shameful (or at least, I am ashamed by it), but also startlingly common. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve sheepishly admitted my speaking-in-tongues days when someone else at the table pipes up, “me too!”

Is it me, or is there an inordinate number of academics (particularly in textual/cultural studies fields, perhaps) with a background in evangelical, charismatic, and/or fundamentalist Protestantism?

The narrative I’ve created for myself is that that kind of alternate education taught me to attend closely to texts (I was a champion memorizer of Bible verses), and it was that same close attention that taught me how to read closely, then critically, and then skeptically. The church’s rhetoric taught me the tools of its own undoing.

I’d love to hear from others, particularly those with such backgrounds, about how their religious upbringing has affected or even effected their choice to be academics.

In the meantime, a few further connections:
My parents currently attend a church with a chemistry prof as a member. He is constantly trotted out as evidence that intellectualism is compatible with a literal interpretation of sacred text, and his science background has apparently led him to run church classes on creationism and ID. And yet most times when I go there, I find such a virulent anti-intellectual streak that I can’t help but feel personally attacked.

A second story: When I was a teen, our church frequently had revivals, where evangelists would come in a for a week deliver nightly sermons, followed often by ecstatic prayer calls, speaking in tongues, laying-on-of-hands, and prophecy. I was prophecied over many times, and told that I was going to be an architect, a pastor, and a carpenter (just like Jesus). At the time, the pastor one was the most compelling, but even that one I found to be problematic for me.

And yet, in a way, I think that the models at the pulpit have become among my most influential models for teaching—not my only models, certainly, but influential ones. I know from lots of observation how to transition from philosophical problem to textual evidence to analysis to story. I know how to develop the “That’s gotta make you think” line. I know how to use the rhetoric of inspiration—particularly in writing classes, where changing the world becomes a real possibility.

I may here sound skeptical of religious faith, or at least evangelical faith. But I would contend that the jury’s still out. I think these institutions are often highly problematic, but I think that many practicing evangelicals can be thoughtful, ethical people, especially when they are able to apply moral judgments to political situations for themselves, and not based on church dogma. I respect (though disagree with) my parents faith, as well as that of several friends. And when it comes down to it, much of my own identity, ethical, intellectual, and professional, is shaped by the very tradition that I have tried so hard to distance myself from. In particular, I find Hugo's blog to be representative of the kind of thought I respect that tries to reconcile fervent Christianity and intellectual discourse (Though yes, I believe they do need reconciliation--and I'd love to hear Hugo's thoughts on any of this).

I remain curious to hear what others think.

Posted by at 10:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

* Ann just left for a short trip to Ireland to do some research for her novel. While the kids are in daycare during the day, my mom is coming to visit for a few days on Wednesday, and Ann's trip is, indeed, a short one (really only three nights in Southwestern Ireland), I am not exactly relishing the prospect of not having her around for five or six days.

* After discovering a roof leak in the laundry room during a downpour on Friday, I have just learned from a roofer that we can a) patch the roof, which has already been done "to death" in this particular spot and would only last ayear or two, b) actually fix the immediate problem by replacing half the roof for roughly $7K or c) replace the whole roof for roughly 15K, which probably needs to be done soon anyway.

* As much as I was ready for the semester to end, I seem to have forgotten that I usually hate summer break. Yes, I like the flexibility that it affords me, and as I've mentioned, I'm already getting some writing done, but I really do love teaching, and the time i spend in the classroom (and the attention I get there--remember, I'm a big 'ol extrovert) really serves to keep me energized. In short, teaching sustains me in a very real way, and I miss it already. And so right now, I'm just itching for my course evals (does that make me weird?).

* After a school year in Morgantown, I've made some friends, but right now, I'm very much missing the friends in DC that we left behind--some of whom, admittedly are no longer in DC, but still, I miss y'all.

* I'm kinda hungry, and should go eat lunch.

As Toad (of Frog and Toad fame) likes to say when he is unhappy, "Blah."

Posted by at 11:35 AM | Permalink

Part of the reason I haven't psoted much recently is that i've been dealing with a bunch of spam that the Moveable Type filters aren't picking up. Well, at one point, I accidentally sent all of my comments to my junk folder. For comments before mid march, this was fine, since anything older than sixty days was waiting at the bottom of the folder and could immediately be dumped back into my regular comments listing.

Over the last sixty days, though, I'd gotten a good 100 comments or so (including all of the TOP NOVELIST proceedings) and I'd have to weed through the junk to find them. This wasn't too terribly hard on any given page, since with all of the URLs in spam comments, real ones are easy enough to spot even as you scroll down fairly briskly. Except for that I had 7700 spam comments over that period, including about 1000 in the last two days. So on any given page of 125 comments, often only one would be legit, and sometimes, i'd go for 500-600 entries without a real one.

Ugh.

Anyway, I found most of them, but a few (including a few TOP NOVELIST posts, like this past week's winner), are gone, I suspect for good (though Daniel may be able to find his and repost his).

Whatever. Comments have returned for the time being, but if spam remains a problem, I may need to try something else.

Posted by at 8:00 PM | Permalink

spam trouble. WIll enable comments in a bit (not like there's much to comment on, but...)

Posted by at 1:29 PM | Permalink

we're thinking about teaching (although some are surely still teaching).

At any rate, an excellent Teaching Carnival IX is up at "Adventure in Ethics and Science."

Posted by at 8:10 PM | Permalink

Writing projects.

I thought I had a manageabble writing schedule planned out for the summer, one that included a book review for Theatre and AutoBiography. I had not planned on also writing up a performance review of Studio Theatre's Guantanamo for Theatre Journal, nor a book review of Penny Farfan's Women, Modernism, Performance for Performance Research, both projects which I had proposed at various points over the past 6 months and had heard nothing about.

Fortunately, the book review and the performance review are projects that do not feel all that onerous to me--in many ways they will simply involve adding a certain modicum of style to the notes I have on them laying around, but all told, that's two weeks of writing time that cuts into the longer projects I was hoping to work on. The upside is that together, they make a fairly decent summer of writing even if nothing else gets done, which won't likely be a problem anyway.

Posted by at 3:52 PM | Permalink

The semester ended last Friday, and my grades were in by Wednesday, so summer break's been on for about a week. But I'm finding that I'm keeping my sanity by doing what I do all year long: Working.

So far, I've been to a meeting for the Very Important Committee (aka Time-Consuming Committee) I've been elected to for next year. I was alos very involved in the all-day professional development workshop for Engl 102, where the new in-house text/guidebook was received with fairly high levels of enthusiasm (yay!). I have also mowed the lawn and weeded the entire front (which was no mean feat, and those who know me IRL are also likely to know that I do very much indeed consider any lawn care to be work.

The other project that has had my brain clicking away this week is an article revision I'm working on. I started working on this argument four or five years ago (although its roots go back even further than that--to a paper I wrote for an M.A. class on narrative theory). Basically, what I'm trying to do with these revisions is to figure out how What Judith Butler (and her critics) say about parodic performance in "Real Life" (esp. drag) has to do with parodic theatrical performance. I first presented the basis for the argument at the 2002 Narrative conference, and then incorporated it into dissertation chapter that got cut entirely from the dissertation. That chapter was cut down into two different articles which I first sent out in 2003. This one's been floating around from journal to journal, each with its own sometimes-valid-sometimes-pointless critiques, garnering an occasional revise-and-resubmit, which is where it is now.

This set of revisions, however, are the most substantial since the argument was part of a chapter, and they are more sophisticated than they ever have been. Of course the two big sticking points (as they always are with Butler, and as they are really complicated by actual theatrical acting) are agency and subjectivity. However, I think I just had a brainstorm today (while planting grass seed in the spot where our tree fell last fall) that may get me through the argument. All I need to do now is get it on paper and get it out the door to the journal that wanted these revisions. Wish me luck.

In the meantime, Ann is getting ready for her trip to Ireland to do research for her novel...meaning I'll be a lone with the toddlers for a few days. Now there you really need to wish me luck! OK enough with the rambling post. Something more substantial will be up here soon.

Posted by at 12:06 PM | Permalink

My freind Christy Zink send this email
" The Village Voice steals your "top novelist" idea and makes a joke about plagiarism in the same breath."

Heh. Scoopin' the Voice.

New contest coming today.

Posted by at 11:36 AM | Permalink

People, people, people, this is Marge S. speaking. Did you READ the instructions for this week's challenge? Did you read the part about "exorcising timidity"? Oh, I see, you thought I said "EXERCISE timidity." Which you did. Also cowardice, and slinking shiftiness. Pathetic, all of you.

Now, now, Marge, don't lump young Daniel in there. I thought he did a remarkable job. Certainly got me going without my morning venti almond latte. Loved the nipple ring touch, reminded me of a student I had a few years ago . . . wait, no, that wasn't where she had rings . . .

Shut up, Norman. I concede that Daniel did, as directed, produce a sex scene in which at least one character, well, I believe a common way of putting it is "got off."

And there was promise of more!

Shut up, Norman. Daniel wins. Let's move on, shall we? Lucy, that pathetic little fraud, took a pass when she is supposed to write these things for a living! Suzanne, who had so many luscious possibilities to work with, not least of which was sex on the office copier, gave us a make-out session, N. copped out with some kind of shady narrative device that I didn't even understand--

Ummm, I could explain it to you if you'd like, Marge.

I wouldn't.

Well at least let me continue our excoriation of contestants. Perry, you were the absolute worst in my book, the worst. Your whining, whinging list of the troubles you encountered revealed your absolute absence of vision, when clearly your subconscious writerly instincts were telling you to write a sex scene Iinvolving kumquats, in German. Good God, man. Must I spell everything out for you? Nonetheless, and Marge, I believe we agree on this, it is Bill and Patricia, who cravenly submitted nothing AGAIN, who are, well, out.

Bill and Patricia, this is your rejection slip. Not, apparently, that you care, either of you.

For the rest of you, our next challenge will be posted very soon. And please, people, try to actually come up with literature this time???

Posted by at 12:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

As at many other large state flagship universities, the research is a large component of my job duties, although for tenure it is not as onerous as it could be, to be sure. The minimum requirement for tenure is four major articles, not necessarily a book. The thing is, that just a benchmark, and the four articles I published before taking this job don't count. The actual requirement for tenure is "a preponderance of 'good's and 'excellent's" on my annual evaluations. What this means is that even if I did have a book, I wouldn't necessarily earn tenure, especially if I published it early and never published anything again. Ultimately, it's a system that rewards consistent small-scope research and not larger projects, so that taking a year off to work on getting the book out the door isn't quite feasible. Fortunately, my sense is that a couple of conferences or a minor publication like a book review will earn a "Good," so overall, it's a humane and workable system.

So yes, it's whatever what used to be an R1 is now, and I have a nice teaching load (3/2) and a manageable research load. So I'm not sweating the research, on the one hand. On the one hand, since I had taught a 4-credit 2/2 at GW, I knew the 3/2 here wasn't going to leave me hours and hours of time to read and write to my heart's content.

So I more or less have the same amount of writing time as I've always had.

OK. I got the diss. written that way, so I began the year confident enough that I'd be able to meet my goals, and here's what I've gotten done this academic year.
*An article on narrative beginnings in drama for a book collection
*A conference paper of entirely new material that is the beginning for a new chapter for the book.
*A conference paper of material from the diss that was pretty thoroughly revised for the conference, and for the book chapter it is likely to become.
*A conference paper of material from the diss that was barely changed, and will likely appear as is in the book.
*Some preparatory material (cfp, draft proposal, etc.) for the anti-disciplinarity project.
*An abstract submitted on an already-completed article on parodic spectatorship for a book collection (I should hear about that soon).
*A workshop for another piece on parody in revise-and-resubmit limbo that is simply waiting for me to return to it and send it back.

So all in all, I haven't been a total slacker. Here's what I've got slated for the summer, and I think that this is a writng plan just on the optimistic side of realistic.
May: Work on both parody articles to get them both ready to send out to wherever they might get sent out to.
June: Stuff for the anti-disciplinarity project--draft materials for the intro and for an article that I'll write if it's needed: I'll be presenting the latter as work-in-progress at a seminar with the series editors and some others this July.
July: Revisit the Sarah Kane paper to expand it to a chapter, and write a book review I've been asked to do.
August: Finish the Sarah Kane stuff, and prep for the beginning of the semester. We'll likely be getting submissions for the anti-disciplinarity project in August as well, and I'd like to go into the school year thinking about revising my book introduction and working up a proposal.

OK, even as I type it, I realize that it's on the optimisitc side of optimistic, but I'm shooting for it.

How is any of this different now that I'm on the tenure track? I'm actually a bit more relaxed about it, because tenure seems a significantly less daunting process than actually securing a job. At least I'm not competing with 100 others for the one tenured slot. Also, for whatever reaason, I'm being asked to do stuff--present at conferences, write book reviews--which has never happened before. The fact that I don't feel like an interloper knocking at people's door for opportunities to peddle my intellectual wares makes a huge difference. I don't know if it's the position I now hold or the fact that the publications I do have have gotten around a little bit. I also don't know whether the position has anything to do with whether stuff is being accepted or not; I suspect in one case that is has, in others I doubt it.

Overall, I like to do the research, and I get excited by new ideas--my own and the ones I'm reading. I am happy about this position because I feel like it asks me to do that on a timetable that is completely within my capacity to read, write and publish. And I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this continues for the foreseeable future.

Posted by at 1:35 PM | Permalink

I’m sitting at the front of the room while my Brit Lit II class works on their final exam, and all of this prompts me to do some reflective writing on teaching here, at the end of my first tenure track year.

I guess to a certain degree, calling this a first year of anything more than a new institution becomes meaningless, because I cannot currently perceive a great many ways that being on the tenure track has affected either the way I approach the classroom or the way my students approach me. While one or two students in the composition class can probably make a distinction between a junior faculty member and a GTA, generally, the authority my position brings isn’t changed by the degree to which I have always worked to establish a kind of intellectual authority while simultaneously make myself seem more vulnerable (bringing in details of my life outside the university, being willing to laugh at myself, performing a kind of ridiculousness at times to lighten the mood).

That said, this is the first year at this new institution, and I have, on many occasions reflected on how this institution is different. The primary difference seems not to be intelligence, even though both of the other institutions at which I’ve taught, Maryland and GWU, maintain consistently higher profiles. I maintain that my smartest students here and my smartest students at any of those schools could all hold their own with one another in intellectual discourse.

Of course the range of students here is much wider than at past schools, but that has more to do with preparation than with something like intellectual capacity. The public school system in this state seems to verge on disastrous, from all I’ve heard (although I confess I have no first-hand knowledge), and so many students come in to my class thinking that all they need to do is summarize to earn a strong grade. The notion of knowledge production is foreign to many students in a way that it hasn’t been at more cosmopolitan institutions.

The other factor here is diversity, and it’s a big one. At GWU, diversity was big factor to be sure, but I’d maintain that class diversity was a bigger problem there: there were fewer working class students, and certainly fewer working class students of color, and even fewer rural working class students. And so a deeply entrenched middle-class cosmopolitan identity got entrenched among the students there in a way it can never be here.

Here the students are less uniform in terms of class, and perhaps even region (with a large minority coming from PA/NY/NJ/MD because even the in-state tuition here is inexpensive). But the prevailing ideologies here are distinctly pro-white-patriarchy.

While in my comp classes this year, I have tried to take on more pop-culture oriented topics (food politics and advertising, respectively), it is the prevalence of a white masculine ethos that has been the subject of the most insistent inquiry in my British Lit class. In my first semester I really felt like I had run into a brick wall in asking the students to think about the these texts as cultural documents that reflect attitudes about gender. Many students, while willing to do the “we’ve come a long way baby” thing with women, were unwilling to question how discourses of masculinity might change or need to change.

This semester, that process hasn’t changed only because I’ve been more persistent about it. Making white masculinity the central discursive concern of the this class has first of all allowed me to actually get a number of less obviously ideological concerns: the function of the sublime in Romanticism as a gendered concept, the division of Jekyll and Hyde as a Darwininan anxiety about a muscular kind of masculinity as animalistic, the figure of the troubling mythical warrior-poet as protector of Mother Ireland in a great deal of Irish Modernism, etc.

As they were from the fall, I expect my teaching evaluations this semester to be strong. My RMP “overall quality” rating is a ridiculously high 4.9 (even I don’t think I’m that good), and students seem to have fun in my classes while reporting that they think they’re learning a lot. But evaluations aren’t everything.

In fact, I put the most stock in what the writing looks like. In my Lit classes, then, the results are strong, especially considering what I saw on the first batch of papers last semester. I’ve developed a packet on writing arguments about literature (which it seems everybody has—we should probably compare notes on these things) that seemed to cut off a lot of problems at the pass.

In my comp classes, I’m not so sure. The curriculum I teach is sort of halfway between what I taught at GW and at UMd, but the results are much more like those at Maryland. I think the state school profile, credit hours in the classroom (4 @ GW, 3 here), and class sizes (22 at MD and here, 15 at GW) say more about this than my teaching per se, but The writing has not been so good here. I think I need to post about grade norming from school to school, because Any given GW class of final papers would have gotten mostly A’s here and any given WVU class of final papers would have gotten mostly C’s at GW. In technical matters (grammar, citational systems, organization) these students are significantly less prepared than their peers even at Maryland, a closer institutional peer—and there I was teaching Freshmen; here I’m teaching the second level composition class—sophomores and juniors.

I have mentioned often that I am committed to teaching compositon well, but after more or less 8 years of teaching and/or administrating for composition, I am looking forward to a break from it next year. In the fall, I’m teaching my first grad seminar (on post-war British Drama) and returning to my two 200-level bread-and-butter courses, Brit Lit II and Intro to Drama. In the meantime, I’ve got a lot of writing to do, and a post about doing research on the tenure track is forthcoming.

technorati tag: teaching-carnival

Posted by at 12:10 PM | Permalink

Little angel
Originally uploaded by Ryan Claycomb.

Ann and I usually rotate which parent takes a child to Kindermusik, and today was Lilah's day to go with me. I love these days, because Lilah loves them. She loves music, she loves the activity, she loves singing (she's got remarkable pitch for a two-year-old), and I think she loves her Daddy.

Lilah is also potty training, more-or-less cold turkey. No pull-ups, just diapers during nap- and bed-time. otherwise, it's been big-girl underpants and accidents until the clean-clothes run out. So you can see why I was a little nervous about Kindermusik, and the errands that typically follow: today, Lowe's, Michael's crafts, and the gas station.

At Kindermusik, Lilah and I danced to a Botswanan folk song. We banged on a drum made out of a coffee can. We shook little shakers to the beat. We twirled in circles and waved hello and goodbye to our friends (mostly, by the way, moms and grandmoms. We had one other father attend regularly last semester, and a great uncle this semester, and otherwise, I'm the only guy. Another reason to love the flexibilitty of this job). When class was over, Lilah looked at me and asked "We go home now?"

After our stops, and a planned potty check, we snuggled up on the sofa to watch a little Sesame Street, and I made sandwiches--grilled "lilah-cheese" for her and a turkey and gouda for me. We looked at photos on the computer during lunch: "Oh Look! Who's that with baby Lilah?"

After lunch we went back to her room for naptime: I read her two books and told her a story about her baby dolls climbing a tall tree to find out what was glittering on top. On the way, the pass a chipmunk storing acords, a robin feeding her baby, a woodpecker pecking for bugs, a caterpillar spinning its cocoon, and a bug munching on a leaf. When they reached the top of the tree, they find that it was the sun glinting through the leaves, and feeling the warm sun on their cheeks and the cool breeze on their skin, the baby dolls fell asleep on the tallest branches.

I covered her up in her crib--these are surely the last days of that piece of furniture--and closed her door quietly behind me. I went and slept for 2 hours, she slept 45 minutes longer than me.

After nap was over, we split a kiwifruit and a piece of bread with blackberry jam on it, and waited for Ann and Collin to come home. I had to go out and make some photocopies for my exam tomorrow, but by the end of the day, when I put Lilah to bed, I had had a good day. And Lilah had had no accidents.

I know that for myself, such a life everyday would be very very hard to sustain. The moments are sweet and warm, and in some important ways sustaining, but they do not nourish other parts of my brain the way my career does. But for a day with my beautiful daughter, it was a wonderful one.

Posted by at 10:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Composition Portfolios graded and grades submitted. Last final is tomorrow morning at 8 a.m. Now I've jut got to administer them, grade them and submit the grades. Hopefully, I'll be done (for the semester, at least) by this time tomorrow.

I want to continue doing some wrap up of my first year on the tenure track, but I think I want to get grades done first...although maybe I'll take my laptop to the exam tomorrow...that could work...

Posted by at 7:54 PM | Permalink

Norman Poulenc: It's the first scene that most teenage boys write, and the sort of scene I've been trying to perfect for years, in my fiction and in my personal life. It's the sort of thing best suited to dreams and revenge fantasies.

"Marge Schottenheimer": Oh Norman, quit patting yourself on the back. The contestants should ace this thing. Especially Lucy. And Suzanne.

Norman Poulenc: Watch out! Lucy and Suzanne, when "Marge" says something's easy, that's when you have to keep an eye open for the daggers to come sliding from their hiding places in her Ivory silk sleeves. Some of us can hold our own with the likes of her, but the more timid should beware.

"Marge Schottenheimer": While we're on the subject of timidity, contestants, you should exorcise that little virtue this week, since your challenge, plain and simple, is to write a sex scene, in your own inimitable styles. Make it hot, make it readable, and make it literature.

Norman Poulenc: Your deadline is Thursday, but the show is being judged by at least one academic now, so deadlines are more, how shall we say? fungible.

Posted by at 9:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)