Raining Cats and Dogma

The summer is now just past halfway over--we're in week 8 of a 14 week break (at least by my count). So how's it going?

The writing, this most recent project notwithstanding, has been going well, for all the reasons outlined in other posts.

The reading, not so well, although I haven't really set up for myself a reading schedule after I reconceived my graduate course. Fortunately, that reconception meant that I have less brand new reading to do than I did in the old format--I'll have a post or two on setting up that grad seminar as the summer goes on.

As for the related concern of teaching prep, well, that's a little pre-mature, I guess, though I did learn yesterday that one of my big classes will likely not make enrollment, and so I'll only be teaching two courses in the fall--Brit II and the seminar. I have to say, while I am ok with the redistribution of my schedule (I'll have 3 courses, but only 2 preps in the spring), I am sad about losing the Intro to Drama course--I have written up an approach for that course that I am pretty excited about, and it may be a bit before I I'll get to teach that course again.

On the personal front, I have been exercising a good bit more than in the past. While I'm hardly becoming a gym rat, I've been playing squash and soccer, as well as going to the gym for some time on the bike and the rowing machine. I haven't lost any weight at all, but I'm definitely in better shape, and my muscle-to-body-fat ratio seems to be shifting a bit. Ann and I are considering purchasing bicycles to do some riding on the rail trails around Morgantown. We'll see how that all goes.

Oh, and the idea of summer vacation? Well, I'm doing enough of that...I took yesterday afternoon off to watch Wimbledon, I've been reconnecting with my lawn (which is also good exercise, considering the slope of much of the yard), Ann and I have had some time to spend to together (We're going to see a movie this afternoon), and we've each taken a few trips individually.

Honestly, summers in the past have been so crappy--filled either with unsatisfying jobs to make ends meet, or difficult personal circumstances to wade through--that one that seems to be rolling along like this summer is feels pretty good. I want to keep on top of the writing, but so far, I'm sticking to most of my summer goals, academic and non-academic.

Posted by at 10:23 AM | Permalink

For the better part of the summer break, my writing process has been going along swimmingly--The revise and resubmit got out on schedule, the second article on parody got accepted for a book collection and is with the editor right now, and the performance review I wrote in late May has been tentatively accepted for publication. Moving along, really.

I have mentioned a couple of times in this space that the next deadline is this conference, whihc starts now in just over a week. And I am STUCK. I have had so many false starts on this thing that I cannot even tell you. The idea tis that this presentation is the early form of an article on performance studies and writing pedagogy, and I've been reading up on the relationship of performance to writing generally, of performance methodologies for teaching, of critical pedagogy and performance, etc.

And so far, here are the versions of the paper I've mapped out or started writing, or briefly considered:

--A short outline of several "ways in" to a discussion of the topic:
-----teaching students to think about writing as a kind of performance
-----Using performance studies as a subject matter topic for a writing course
-----Incoporating performance into the actual teaching of writing
This one, even in a bullet-y outline form seems to big to handle in a 20 minute presentation, although it may be the most practical to execute in the enxt week.

--A slightly more felshed out version of a performance based writing pedagogy, interspersed with sections of my own "performative writing" that briefly demonstrates some of the tactics in action, and also breaks open the bland conference paper format a bit. I'v got about 7 pages of this written, it's going too long, it doesn't have much to do with critical pedagogy or anti-disciplinarity (part of the reason I'm at this conference) as it is currently written, and it feels, well, a little less than rigorous. I am anxious about it--it is a bit of a writing risk for me to take, which is good, but I'm afraid it's risky for the wrong reasons.

--I could focus on the idea of performance studies in the writing classroom as anti-disciplinary and activist, which it certainly is, and which is going to be part of the article, and dovetails better with the conference itself, but I'd be starting over here, and I'd be returning to the plain old "reading the conference paper" format, which, after the lsat attempt, feels like a let-down.

I have no real sense of where to go from here, so instead, I'm writing this post.

All this, and the kids are going to be home for all four days of the long weekend, and Ann is out of town for part of next week, so my writing time is limited. Ugggh.

Posted by at 7:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I have a Facebook page, which I find both silly and useful, the latter for sometimes unexpected reasons. Today I got added as a facebook friend by my old friend Emer, with whom I attended middle school, and whom I haven't seen since Governor's School 16 years ago.

You may wonder what precipitated the renewed connection: Emer is finishing her PhD in East Asian Studies at Harvard, and I stumbled across her name earlier this year, and shot off an email to her to just say hello. It was one of those odd little emails where when it was all said and done, it felt kind of stupid, pointless, whatever. I gave her a little update on my life, she told me a bit about hers, and we haven't really exchanged communications since then. And this little facebook connection seems not much more consequential, although I have to say that I'm happy that she reconnected, even in this small way.

I have been thinking about how Emer functioned in my imagination, though.

We were in all the G&T classes together, we were in a 7th grade production of The Tempest that went to the Emily Jordan Folger Student Shakespeare Festival at the Folger Library in DC, and for much of those pre-teen years, I had a puppy love crush on her. After 8th grade, she and a small hand-full of other students from my school shipped off to private schools, notably St. Andrew's School in upstate Delaware, best known to most of my readers as the location for the filming of Dead Poet's Society. The thought had never crossed my mind, and though I think at the time I was jealous of those students, when my parents asked me, "You don't want to go away to a boarding school do you?" I said no, and I honestly don't know if that was my true answer, or the answer tempered by knowing that going was an impossibility anyway. Emer and I ran into each other at a handful of statewide braniac gatherings, but I was sort of a spastic teenager, and Emer seemed so focused, centered, confident, and we never really got to reconnect in any meaningful way. She got into Harvard early admission, or so I heard. In my imagination, she has become a smart, witty, friendly person who is both hip and kind. She's the image of the person I hope to become.

In the years since, I have thought of her off and on, far too often for someone with merely incidental contact. She represented for me a sort of unfulfilled promise, or more precisely, what I could've become if I'd had the means to follow certain paths, namely private school and an ivy-league education. I ended up at the local public school, whose greatest virtue was that it knew when it couldn't serve its highest performing students, and sent me off to various college-level programs--I graduated with 39 college credits. And while my dream was to attend Penn, the scholarships to American University took me there instead (and I'm still paying even for those student loans). And then onto the best grad program I could get into at Maryland. When I think of Emer, I imagine myself having gone to St. Andrew's, then an ivy, both for undergrad and grad school, and then onto, what? a satisfying tenure track job in a solid department.

Which is, oddly enough, where I am right now.

My one-time therapist would probably have gotten me to admit long ago that I contacted her months ago to tell her that I had gotten here by taking a different route than she did, to say "HA! I did it without the ivied halls." So Instead I'm admitting it here, a bit abashedly.

Of course I wish Emer no malice; I've never had anything but postive feelings about her, even when she had passed from real person to class symbol. I can guess that she may find this some day, the result of an auto-google, or the reinitiation of our frail contact, or whatever, and if you are, Emer, I only hope that your life has approached the satisfaction and joy that I have imagined for it. I hope also that perhaps I may get to meet the real person, as opposed to the figment that I had created for myself.

Posted by at 12:25 PM | Permalink

"Marge": Yes, Yes, we know. You thought we'd forgotten about you, didn't you, you pathetic little people. Well, frankly, I had. I had some rather profitable things to attend to in Germany these past few weeks (you don't think those silly Czechs managed to lose all by themselves did you??? Things at this level take delicacy, my dears, delicacy and finesse. And carefully dosed laxatives.) I've also heard that Suzanne was swanning her own way around Europe--no doubt hoping some lesser prince or noble would cast his eye her way and make her a "real princess" as every American devotee of that "chick lit" nonsense hopes.

Norman: Whatever she was doing, Suzanne didn't submit an entry, and not only do I not take late papers from my students (even those I'm sleeping with), I deplore this particular young lady's arrogant assumption that she can use her "writer's block" pass to slink into the final three. Forget it, sweetheart.

"Marge": Now, now, Norman, calm down. Just because you're stuck teaching technical writing this summer and there are absolutly no nubile beauties in sight is no reason to get your panties in a twist. I for one was as shocked as you at Suzanne's chutzpah; I didn't think she had it in her, and so I'm playing my "chief judge" card and voting her IN for the final round. Congratulations, Suzanne, you poor dear.

Norman: Chief Judge Card????

"Marge": Yes. Shall we move on?

Norman: I suppose we can agree on one thing this week--our winner. Perry, you've combined wit and suspense with classic archetypes and timeless plot twists. You're a winner, pal. Welcome to the finals.

"Marge": Daniel and Lucy, it's down to you. Frankly Lucy, I thought your typos should have disqualified you, but sadly, I think "Happy" may just be my Botox boy. How you manage to be both salacious and silly darling, I cannot tell. The world doesn't have enough of your kind.

Norman: But Daniel, Daniel, Daniel. We knew you were capable of stooping low for, ahem, source material, but "Sleeping Beauties, Part I" of the "Erotica for Women" series? C'mon! Jenna J?????!??!?!? Do you think I don't own all of her, erm, body of work? At least you'll have a bit more time to devote to your first love. Jenna J! Hmmph.

"Marge": Though I love a good cheat, sweetie, It's actually got to be a good cheat. Daniel, this was just pathetic. This is your rejection slip.

Norman: As for the rest of you, sharpen your pencils--you're in the finals of TOP NOVELIST! Your next challenge will arrive soon. And please, please, take a lesson from Daniel and to thine own self be true, lest something turn out to be rotten in, well, you get the idea.

Posted by at 10:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

While I don't want to go out and make any pronouncements about an inverse relationship between sincerity/ earnestness and blogging populatity (Jo(e) and others would confound that rule evey time, though none of them are anything like earnest all the time). Still, I've been thinking about, again, anonymity vs. well, nymity, and the tenor of my posts. And I've been thinking about a few things I've wanted to post for ages, but always felt were maybe just a little too chicken-soup-for-the-soul for my liking and have continually decided against it.

But what the hell, I've been accused of worse than being a Pollyanna (which I've been accused of), so here are the two series of posts I've been thinking about:

"Just Learning": I had this idea years ago of a Post Secret sort of thing, where people would write in about something they had just learned recently--anything from a radical new approach to particle physics to a better way to clip their nails. It grew out of a frustration with adults around me who just seemed unwilling to learn new things, and worked on the notion that "life-long learning" isn't just a classroom thing; it's a state of openness to the world around us.

Blasts from the past: We all find ourselves randomly thinking about people from our pasts with whom we've lost touch, but maybe were postivily (or not) influenced by. I think I'll occasionally start just putting up some posts about these folks, as a sort of remembrance of the way that wonderful people pass out of our lives, and as a sort of memoir-in-fragments for myself. Self-indugent surely, but this blog has had enough of that to avoid being a surprise.

I hope perhaps that these sorts of things will catch on, maybe being the sorts of things other people do on their sites.

Or not.

I'll try to put a couple up in the next week or so.

Posted by at 9:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I sound like a circus barker here: “Step right up and see the eight wonder of the world, the performing pedagogue!”

Even so, I am thinking about critical pedagogy a bit here, and about how performance can be utilized to invigorate a critical pedagogy. This is the topic of this article I’m working on and the critical pedagogies talk I’m giving at the Cultural Studies and Critical Pedagogy seminar in a few weeks.

The first things I am thinking about, though, are the ways that critical pedagogy works to de-center the teacher, while the notion of performance would seem to re-center the teacher as performer. So I need to note that every individual in the classroom is performing, from simply being a high-performing or low-performing students, to actively and consciously performing a role.

That said, what follows are some basic thoughts on the question, “In what ways can teachers enhance a critical pedagogy by embracing the notion of performance?”

* I have plenty of thoughts about integrating performance as a subject matter for the writing course, although I think this less immediately applicable for others. That said, experiences teaching two different themes: “Writing/Performing/Identity” and “The Rhetoric of Spectacle” have offered me a wealth of material to draw on in thinking about the potential of performance studies as a trans-disciplinary tool, particularly in the writing classroom.

* I am also thinking about ways that we can have students think of themselves as performers in the classroom, a couple of which I’ve already referenced above. Here though, I’m thinking about not just being a high or low performer on assessed activities, which I think is an incredibly limiting way of thinking about “student performance(s)”, but also thinking about how they perform an identity in the classroom, how writing itself is a performance of identity, and how students can leverage the radical potential of performance to remake themselves and to transform their relationship to knowledge.

Right now, though, I’m really trying to think through the notion of teachers themselves as performing.

* We perform the role of “teacher” every time we walk through the door…How might we alter this? What potential lies in this performance?

* Similarly, how is “authority” performed, and how might we use student expectations about the performance of authority and about our own performances of authority to question those expectations.

* I’m poking around with the idea of “guerilla pedagogy,” one in which the teacher stages situations that confront students with particular social realities without indicating that the scenario is in fact a performance. This sounds a lot like the work of Augosto Boal and his notion of invisible theatre, which stages precisely such situations outside of both a classroom or a theatre, at, say, a restaurant, or a grocery store.

* I also think there’s something that can be brought in from the Victor Turner/ performance anthropology camp on the nature of the classroom space as a kind of ritual. I know that some folks (including my co-editor, Randi Kristensen) have used the notion of education as a liminal space to great effect, but I’m wondering how this maps onto the role of the teacher as facilitator, and as ritual guide.

* Of course, for those of us teaching in rhetoric classes, there’s also this idea of ethos that, as we teach it to our students. I’ve found that not only paying attention to my ethos is important, but calling attention to my ethos as a classroom teacher is helpful, first in explaining the concept, but also in demystifying myself as The Teacher.

I’m sure there are lots of other ways that performance can be useful, and I’m particularly interested in seeing what those of you visiting for the Teaching Carnival think.

Posted by at 10:33 AM | Permalink

Well, all this work on Teaching Carnival X has gotten my pedagogical wheels rolling without a class to apply it to at the moment. That said, I am currently reading up for an article I’m sketching out on performance studies in the writing classroom, and as part of this process, I’m reading Ira Shor’s Empowering Education. This foundational text was written in 1992, the year I began undergrad. What’s interesting to me is how much of what Shor discusses in this text I simply regard as good teaching, not necessarily politically engaged teaching, or transformative teaching.

I wonder why this in particular seems true. I do not believe, for example, that liberals have the market cornered on good teaching—I have had some excellent teachers in my life who professed conservative values, and some real stinkers who were dyed-in-the-wool lefties. What, therefore, is the relationship between teaching for social change and simply engaged teaching toward active learning? Some thoughts on the relationship:

* Active learning often presumes a more democratic classroom. In a space where students produce knowledge for themselves, the teacher must necessarily surrender some power. Certainly, active learning can still be highly directive, and teachers can exercise a great deal of control over and active learning scenario, but at the very least, the space opened up for a student to produce her own answer is also a space opened up for a challenge of authority. That fact alone is anti-hierarchical, though the degree to which that impulse is fostered and developed depends largely on what is done with space.

* Shor discusses “Desocializing” the classroom, which he defines as:

Understanding and challenging artificial, political limits on human development; questioning power and inequality in the status quo; examining socialized values in consciousness and in society which hold back democratic change in individuals and in the larger culture; seeing self and social transformation as a joint process. (129-130)

Interestingly, to me, if you extract some key phrases--“challenging artificial . . . limits,” “questioning . . . the status quo,” “examining . . . values . . . which hold back . . . change” what we have is a (mostly) de-politicized pedagogy that still encourages good teaching. What I wonder here is to what degree these values are necessarily progressive, or invested in progressive mindsets? For those who object to my a priori marriage of good teaching and progressive ideology, let me acknowledge that the answer to this question may be “they are not at all intrinsically related.”

That said, my own experience as a student and as a teacher confirms for me that most, though not all, of the most innovative pedagogical environments I’ve been a part of are progressively engaged ones—not just run by progressive teachers, but actively engaged in a process of social change. So I want to pose a few questions, therefore:

* Am I assuming too much in finding commonalities with critical pedagogy and “good teaching?” Or am I begging the question and is my definition of “good teaching” already politicized?

* To what degree does an activist pedagogy necessitate an active pedagogy?

* To what degree does an active pedagogy suggest an activist pedagogy?

* Can a critical pedagogy be bi-/non-/a-partisan?

Posted by at 8:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

So it turns out that when most of us aren't teaching, most of us aren't blogging about teaching either. But still, after scouring the internets, waiting for del.icio.us and technorati to get caught up, and checking in on the usual suspects, I think I've managed to cobble together a nice little sampler of pedagogical delectations to please your readerly palate. Of course I've missed dozens of good posts, so in the interest of completeness (and correcting my obvious English Department bias) please send me more links.

So without further adieu, let's start by checking in with those who are actually teaching right now rather than worrying about whether they're properly frittering away a summer break:

lucyrain offers some summer session snapshots.

Steven D. Krause tells us about his summer course thus far.

bdegenaro begins a summer course.

Badger on (un?)reasonable workloads.

Others have still been blogging about end of the year issues, like the inevitable plagiarism, cheating and other academic integrity problems. Take, for example:

Alex Halavais on cheating good.

Geeky Mom on cheating with technology.

Fumbling towards Geekdom thinks students are getting the message about plagiarism.

While Schenedtady Synecdoche asks us to respect student writing as intellectual property, and also considers one case of outing student plagiarists.

Inevitably, the end of the year creates some bone-headed communiques from students, to which we can rarely respond as we'd like. Except on blogs:

From undine.

From Ancrene Wiseass. And also this.

A correspondence with Angry Prof:

lucyrain gets the stink-eye for this.

And Elouise Oyzon offers a quick note to self:

On the other hand, sometimes students reward us:

Silver in Seattle brags on his (amazing) students.

Mama Musings considers graduations and goodbyes.

And then, we get to hear what they think:
Jason Jones at the Salt Box prefers to delay reading his evaluations.

New Kid on the Hallway continues her ongoing lament about hers.

I couldn’t wait for mine.

And as usual, plenty defies categorization, even in the quiet hours of the summer...

Dean Dad on ‘A’ atudents.

Jenny from Working Blue thinks about last semester, next semester, and an activity based pedagogy.

Angry Prof hilariously studies the structure of office hours and its impact on student access.

Bardiac explores various ways to track grades.

Jason at The Salt-Box looks for feedback on designing more detailed assignments and grading rubrics.

Bitch PhD wonders about teaching teachers who teach writing.

La Lecturess maps the writing process onto the course design process:

Fumbling Towards Geekdom is afraid that students’ inattention to simple details about turning work in bodes ill for the state of their actual work.

Jill/txt guides students through analysis of online texts with an excellent worksheet.

Revision Spiral ponders teaching with community blogs or individual student blogs

A bon mot from academic coach.

lucyrain on bad athletic advising

Parts n pieces wonders about how demographic statistics affect our approach to the classroom.

Musey-me on advising grad students whose dissertations cause them pain.

Final reflections on the semester/year that was:

Revision Spiral reflects on a bipolar semester.

After a year on the tenure track, I try to figure out what's different.

See Jane Compute does a little post-mortem on teaching without tests.

[Updated: Broken links fixed. Let me know if you find more!]

More Updates: some posts that just shouldn't be missed:

Like Dean Dad's post on teaching faith (not the religious kind).

Coturnix turns up the mother lode of teaching posts (from three different blogs), including general teaching updates and lecture notes (for those of us who haven’t ventured into the science buildings for a decade or two) here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Posted by at 8:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

OK, so I took a bit of time off: to attend a beautiful wedding in the stunning Pacific Northwest, to visit my folks and take my kids to the beach for the first time, to play a couple of days of hooky with my lovely wife, to play in the inflatable pool with the kids this past weekend.

The blogger has been having a bit of an identity crisis here of late, as well. Because this blog is not anonymous, because I do blog about my work quite a bit, and because I've recently gotten some local googles of my name (from both the university and the area) and other local hits by readers I cannot identify, I've been a bit nervous about posting stuff too personal.

In fact, a blog in which I am linked by IHE for posts about teaching, in which I keep track of my writing productivity, in which I moderate a wacky faux reality-show-blog-post series, in which I post pictures of my children and personality test results, in which I work through personal and professional anxieties, and in which I post scores from the Buckskin Soccer League C-division (Last Friday, Rowdies 5, Cruisin' 5) would seem to be a bit schizophrenic, but that's life, eh, and this space is nothing if not a public performance of a fragmented human identity.

Whetehr it's appropriate to be so or not, I cannot say. Maybe I need a different space, to wipe the slate clean, or maybe I need to shape the posts here a lilttle more clearly. Your thoughts are appreciated. In the meantime, I'll be posting Teaching Carnival X, an update on summer writing, and Top Novelist results. And maybe a picture of the children.

Posted by at 1:25 PM | Permalink

Because so few have been posting about teaching lately, scouring the internets for Teaching Carnival X posts has been a time-consuming endeavor. Something is coming soon. I swear.

(Yes, I know, you're all waiting eagerly from your beach chairs)

Posted by at 1:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It's a little after 6am on the west coast, where I've awoken this morning after a long day of travel and some failed attempts at airport blogging. (I read a novel and a play on the way out yesterday). Today we finish our trip to the site of Brian and Sky's wedding in the Methau valley in Washington State, and I've been asked to read something. This particular poem is very popular one, and I understand why--i find it unfailingly lovely, and I'
m thrilled to be reading about this kind of love at a wedding rather any of those old "Love is" cliches that I frankly found it hard to avoid when trying to pick out wedding readings to suggest. So, without further adieu, courtesy of our old friend e.e.:

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands.

Posted by at 9:25 AM | Permalink

Norman: Scholars tell us that when it comes down to it, there are really only 5 basic stories, or 7, or 9 or 16, depending on which story you're talking about. In our culture, the most prototypical of them all are fairy tales.

"Marge": We're not asking you to write a simple fairy tale, though. That would be too simple for the likes of you.

Norman: No, we'd like you to revise a fairy tale in your own style. So your job is to draft up a plot treatment for a revision of a classic fairy tale that is distinctly your own.

"Marge": The winners of this week's challenge go onto the finals in, well, cyberspace, right where the rest of the challenge is. The loser, well, the loser gets a rejection slip just like all the other schmoes. You coulda saved yourself all that work and been kicked off in week one like Devorah. Ha.

Norman: I'm on Summer break, though, folks, so I have to so read some poetry at a chic wedding in the Pacific Northwest. Judging will recommence when I return, late next week.

Marge: Good luck, kids...you'll need it.

Posted by at 7:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I haven't posted in ages, I'm not sure if anyone is really even reading much these days, and I've been trying to stay on task with my summer work. But I've got a bunch of things in my head that will just have to go down in the random bullets format that proliferates:

* The next TOP NOVELIST Challenge will be out shortly, so prepare ye, o Daniel, Lucy, Perry, and Suzanne.

* My summer writing schedule is on track: so far, a revise-and-resubmit is revised-and-resubmitted; a performance review is off to the journal, and I found out this morning that an article that's been floating around for a bit has been accepted for an anthology that already seems to have a publisher. So one month into the summer and I'm meeting my writing goals.

* I'm not meeting my reading goals, mostly because I keep adding tot he list--when one play b y Edward Bond wasn't doing it for me, I read three to find the one I wanted. Four Martin McDonagh plays instead of three, and the whole Sarah Kane oeuvre. I read two Sarah Daniels plays and didn't like either of them for my purposes, and am adding a whol other playwright to my summer reading o see if her work is a better replacement.

* I'm flying to Seattle on Thursday for my friend Fritz's wedding. I get to read one of my favorite poems ever, which I may blog on Friday for my first-ever Friday poetry blogging. I'm hoping that the cross-country flights and long drive from SEA-TAC to Mazama will offer time to catch up on the reading schedule.

* The roofers are here banging on my ceiling. They are also going to clean our gutters. Hopefully all of this will help the flooding and leaking that happened here.

* Oh, I didn't tell you about the flooding? I wasn't here, but Ann was: apparently our garage was leaking from the side wall, and the water, instead of running to the drain, was going straight for the door into the house. It looks like we might eventually need to replace a bit of carpet.

* The reason I wasn't here on Friday was that I was celebrating my great friend Leslie's fantastic dissertaion defense. Dr. Jansen is doing some truly important work on female masculinity and nationalism in 18th-century England.

* Ann is starting to train with a friend of ours for a sprint triathlon, so I have decided to join her at least for some of the swim training, and maybe some of the cycling. Yesterday we went to do laps. My god that was hard. I though that, "oh, laps in the pool are a cinch, I'll be fine." Yeah right, as soon as I stop swallowing water, put my thumping heart back in its place, and get some actual form, instead of flailing about like a 12-year-old playing Marco Polo.

* I've just gotten tickets to see Toad the Wet Sprocket on tour with Big Head Todd and the Monsters. Toad will be hitting the DC area the night before this Cultural Studies and Critical Pedagogy seminar that I'm participating in. I've seen Toad, at best count, five times now (maybe six), and while they're not like my favorite band ever, I have been going with my friend Jenn for the last several. They do put on a pretty nice little show.

* This whole marriage defense emandement or whatever it's called is just pissing me off. Just to go on record there.

OK, that's plenty, I s'pose. I should probably stop procrastinating and get to work doing research on radical pedagogy and performance theory. funfunfun.

Posted by at 11:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Sometime in mid-June (probably shortly after June 15) I'll host Teaching Carnival X, with a "What I did with my school year, and what I hope to do with next year" theme. Other posts will as usual range far and wide.

Send me your link at ryan DOT claycomb at the domain mail DOT wvu DOT edu with submissions or follow this link for instructions on tagging your entries.

Special thanks to Another Damned Medievalist for the idea of a year-ender!

Teaching Carnival X is now up!

Posted by at 3:37 PM | Permalink