I spent a few hours last night in the emergency room at the local hospital. It turned out to be nothing--I'd had discomfort in my chest and neck and running down my left arm that I thought might be cardiac--but once I was there I had to stay there, for a long and boring while, getting tended to maybe once every twenty minutes. I had a book and I had PBS's pre-debate coverage on the t.v., but what I found most engaging was watching and listening to the hospital staff bustling back and forth.
Ever since I started this job, I've found myself enormously interested in the worklives of others whose jobs don't occur in a typical office environment--and especially those whose jobs involve continual, short-term interactions with the public: hairdressers, for example, see a different client every 30 or 60 minutes all day long, while clergymen and -women spend a certain amount of time "on stage"--but also have an endless series of individual meetings, many of them urgent, with couples getting married, families planning funerals, individuals in crisis. A clergyperson's worklife is probably most analogous to a professor's, in the sense that it involves roughly the same component parts (there's an administrative and office component, a performative component, a caring-profession component, and also a solitary and studious component), but I think of my hairdresser every time I schedule a day of student conferences and have to gather my energy up to make friendly chit-chat with each of fifteen successive students who walk through my door with a first draft of a paper.
I also try to remember, when I visit my hairdresser or meet with my priest--or buy stuff at the grocery store or take my car in for servicing--that although the other person's job may involve serving me, it's a dynamic relationship: I have a right to good service, but I'm the one entering their workplace; what I do there can make their workday more pleasurable or more exasperating.
So in that same spirit, I was interested in the ways the hospital staff interacted with each other and with me: the in-take nurse was brusque and impatient, putting me on the defensive and making me feel very small and stupid (why hadn't I called my doctor first? why would I think these symptoms could be cardiac?), but everyone else was warm and friendly and kind. I was handled by at least eight different people, not counting the front desk staff--three nurses, one physician's assistant, an EKG tech, two X-ray techs, two transport personnel (who wheeled me to and from the X-ray room)--and every single one introduced him or herself by name and job title, explained what they were doing, and made pleasant chit-chat in interstitial moments or as time allowed.
I came away very impressed with the hospital staff, not just their professionalism and training, but also all the intangibles that amount to bedside manner and putting a patient at ease. The X-ray techs were solicitous about my bare feet (which weren't cold, but they insisted on finding me socks) and had an amusing routine involving the questions they were required to ask me (said one, deadpan, in a G-man voice "we need to know. . . what you know"), and the transport personnel were cheerful and funny, joking with me about whether a hospital, in the name of public health, should even allow patients to watch the presidential debates.
Coming as this visit did just at the middle of the semester, when I'm emailing students about exam and paper grades and setting up appointments to calm anxieties and suggest strategies for improvement, it reminded me that small interactions matter a lot. The brusque nurse wasn't intending to be mean--maybe she'd had a bad day, and I'm sure she sees lots of hypochondriacs who panic and go to the ER for every little thing. But if she'd been typical of the hospital staff, I'd have left ashamed and reluctant ever to return, lest I be scolded for crying wolf. The other personnel were efficient and obviously very busy, but they listened when I talked, they smiled, and they treated me and my symptoms seriously. I left feeling reassured--and very pleased with my local healthcare community.
I need to remember this when a student drops by my office unannounced when I'm frantically prepping for class, or goes on and on about some irrelevant thing long after I've answered their questions and I have three other students lined up outside the door. Being brisk needn't mean being unkind. And we could all stand to work on our bedside manner.
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Friday, October 12, 2012
Better than I thought/worse than I thought
As my previous post suggests, I'm knee-deep in academic dishonesty paperwork. But in the course of chasing down one apparent case of plagiarism, I made a new and possibly more horrible discovery.
Without going into the specifics, let me present a roughly analogous fictitious example. Let's pretend that I'm teaching a 20th-century American novel, and I get a pretty good essay with one entirely gratuitous paragraph claiming that some event in Chapter Five is an allusion to the French and Indian War.
This strikes me as mildly odd: it's not impossible that there's an allusion to the French and Indian War--I can see what the student is talking about--but there's no reason why there should be; it doesn't add any layer of meaning to the scene or to the novel as a whole. Moreover, it's a little weird that a student should make this particular observation (I mean, the French and Indian War? The average undergrad doesn't know squat about that).
So I run a few checks, and bang! There that claim is, in SparkNotes--a whole stupid argument about this stupid supposed allusion (which I'm now even less convinced by). The student hasn't taken anything verbatim, and nothing else about the essay seems suspicious--but come on: The French and Indian War! A twentieth-century novel! It can't be a coincidence.
I haul the kid in, and he's surprised and terrified. The student stammers out that he loves this novel, and read it in high school, at the same time that he was taking a class in Early American history. He remembers this allusion, because he thought it was so neat, the first time he read the book, to know what his English teacher meant when she referenced the French and Indian War--because he'd just studied that in history class.
Oh.
Got it.
His high school teacher was cribbing from SparkNotes.
Imagonna bang my head against a wall for a while now.
Without going into the specifics, let me present a roughly analogous fictitious example. Let's pretend that I'm teaching a 20th-century American novel, and I get a pretty good essay with one entirely gratuitous paragraph claiming that some event in Chapter Five is an allusion to the French and Indian War.
This strikes me as mildly odd: it's not impossible that there's an allusion to the French and Indian War--I can see what the student is talking about--but there's no reason why there should be; it doesn't add any layer of meaning to the scene or to the novel as a whole. Moreover, it's a little weird that a student should make this particular observation (I mean, the French and Indian War? The average undergrad doesn't know squat about that).
So I run a few checks, and bang! There that claim is, in SparkNotes--a whole stupid argument about this stupid supposed allusion (which I'm now even less convinced by). The student hasn't taken anything verbatim, and nothing else about the essay seems suspicious--but come on: The French and Indian War! A twentieth-century novel! It can't be a coincidence.
I haul the kid in, and he's surprised and terrified. The student stammers out that he loves this novel, and read it in high school, at the same time that he was taking a class in Early American history. He remembers this allusion, because he thought it was so neat, the first time he read the book, to know what his English teacher meant when she referenced the French and Indian War--because he'd just studied that in history class.
Oh.
Got it.
His high school teacher was cribbing from SparkNotes.
Imagonna bang my head against a wall for a while now.
Sunday, October 07, 2012
Tuesday, October 02, 2012
Real life
Over the weekend, a freshman at RU was beaten to death, in her dorm room, by her boyfriend from back home.
I didn't know her, and most of what I know about the situation comes from published news reports, which themselves don't have much to say: just names, ages, photos. (I won't link. If you must know, you can find the story on Google in one three-hundredth of a second.) If there was a motive, no one knows it. But who the fuck knows why a man kills his intimate partner? Even when there's a reason, there isn't a reason.
We mystify and romanticize and infantilize college students, even those of us who teach them--imagining their lives as uniquely free, uniquely sheltered, and even over-sheltered (for all the talk about helicopter parents, I've never actually met one). But our students live in the real world as fully as we do. Sometimes it's realer than we can imagine.
Rest in peace.
I didn't know her, and most of what I know about the situation comes from published news reports, which themselves don't have much to say: just names, ages, photos. (I won't link. If you must know, you can find the story on Google in one three-hundredth of a second.) If there was a motive, no one knows it. But who the fuck knows why a man kills his intimate partner? Even when there's a reason, there isn't a reason.
We mystify and romanticize and infantilize college students, even those of us who teach them--imagining their lives as uniquely free, uniquely sheltered, and even over-sheltered (for all the talk about helicopter parents, I've never actually met one). But our students live in the real world as fully as we do. Sometimes it's realer than we can imagine.
Rest in peace.
Saturday, September 22, 2012
Life's hard all over
I'm eligible for a sabbatical next year, which at RU means either a semester at full pay or a year at half. At some point over the summer, it became clear that this was a no-brainer: of course I'd be applying for the full year.
This is an option that--at least in my particular financial circumstances--is only possible because I have a partner with a full-time job who makes an equivalent salary. Even then it'll be a stretch, budget-wise. On the other hand, it's also the only way that I can both keep my job and live with my partner (albeit temporarily).
And I've gotta say, I'm not thrilled by the mildly resentful reactions I've gotten from a handful of male academics (not all at RU, but generally all with kids and/or spouses who don't work full time) when I've mentioned that I'm applying for the full year. "Must be nice!" They say. Or, "Boy, wish I could do that--but someone's gotta pay the bills!"
Look. I want to say. I'm lucky to be part of a couple with two solidly middle-class incomes, in an affordable part of the country, and no dependents. But you get to live with your spouse year-round, every year; you only have to pay for one household; and you get to choose whether to have kids. I don't live with my spouse full-time. We have two households, in two different cities, plus significant commuting expenses. And you have no idea whether we want kids, because they aren't an option as our lives are currently structured.
Are there perks to this arrangement, financial and otherwise? Sure. And you'd better believe I'm going to take advantage of them. But there are downsides, too, and it makes me wild when people make casually thoughtless remarks about how hard their own lives are without considering who they're talking to (like the older man telling his reluctantly single and childless female colleague, "Oh, I can't make it to that talk tonight--I'd like to actually see my family for a change").
But this post isn't about the thoughtlessness or unexamined privilege of men who benefit from traditional domestic structures, or at least I'd like for it not to be just about that. I'm sure I don't fully recognize the stressors that afflict such men--or indeed the stressors of any of my colleagues whose personal and domestic lives are notably unlike my own. I don't know what it's like to bear the burden of being the sole breadwinner, or of trying to juggle parenthood and a career. I can imagine, but have only the briefest of experiences, being unwillingly single in a place with a limited dating pool. I don't know what it's like to be a racial or sexual minority trying to find a partner in a culturally homogeneous area. I don't know how embittering it is to live or teach somewhere that I despise, or where I feel personally thwarted.
Not all hardships are equivalent, of course: some are ultimately unsustainable, and others come with compensatory advantages (having someone to lean on emotionally is tremendous, but having someone to split household chores with is also pretty tremendous). But most domestic and personal arrangements have some upsides along with their downsides.
So I'll tell you what: I'll try harder to imagine and sympathize with your hardships if you try harder to imagine mine.
This is an option that--at least in my particular financial circumstances--is only possible because I have a partner with a full-time job who makes an equivalent salary. Even then it'll be a stretch, budget-wise. On the other hand, it's also the only way that I can both keep my job and live with my partner (albeit temporarily).
And I've gotta say, I'm not thrilled by the mildly resentful reactions I've gotten from a handful of male academics (not all at RU, but generally all with kids and/or spouses who don't work full time) when I've mentioned that I'm applying for the full year. "Must be nice!" They say. Or, "Boy, wish I could do that--but someone's gotta pay the bills!"
Look. I want to say. I'm lucky to be part of a couple with two solidly middle-class incomes, in an affordable part of the country, and no dependents. But you get to live with your spouse year-round, every year; you only have to pay for one household; and you get to choose whether to have kids. I don't live with my spouse full-time. We have two households, in two different cities, plus significant commuting expenses. And you have no idea whether we want kids, because they aren't an option as our lives are currently structured.
Are there perks to this arrangement, financial and otherwise? Sure. And you'd better believe I'm going to take advantage of them. But there are downsides, too, and it makes me wild when people make casually thoughtless remarks about how hard their own lives are without considering who they're talking to (like the older man telling his reluctantly single and childless female colleague, "Oh, I can't make it to that talk tonight--I'd like to actually see my family for a change").
But this post isn't about the thoughtlessness or unexamined privilege of men who benefit from traditional domestic structures, or at least I'd like for it not to be just about that. I'm sure I don't fully recognize the stressors that afflict such men--or indeed the stressors of any of my colleagues whose personal and domestic lives are notably unlike my own. I don't know what it's like to bear the burden of being the sole breadwinner, or of trying to juggle parenthood and a career. I can imagine, but have only the briefest of experiences, being unwillingly single in a place with a limited dating pool. I don't know what it's like to be a racial or sexual minority trying to find a partner in a culturally homogeneous area. I don't know how embittering it is to live or teach somewhere that I despise, or where I feel personally thwarted.
Not all hardships are equivalent, of course: some are ultimately unsustainable, and others come with compensatory advantages (having someone to lean on emotionally is tremendous, but having someone to split household chores with is also pretty tremendous). But most domestic and personal arrangements have some upsides along with their downsides.
So I'll tell you what: I'll try harder to imagine and sympathize with your hardships if you try harder to imagine mine.
Friday, September 14, 2012
How to have ideas (a remedial course)
This semester I'm doing something I haven't done in a long time: I'm keeping a notebook. Sure, I've always taken notes--I buy legal pads in bulk for my reading and research and endless to-do lists--but not since the days when I thought I was a creative writer have I carried around a notebook for jotting down disconnected observations and ideas.
I just never saw the point. For 10 years, I was working on one big project: my dissertation-turned-first-book. I published a few unrelated articles in that time, but each one was a well-defined project, often in response to a commission or CFP, and each one, like my book chapters, had both physical and digital files into which I could dump any ideas I had on the spur of the moment and refer back to at a later date. And as a matter of temperament, I dislike having too many things going on at once. I want to bore down into one project at a time, and I like to finish one thing (or one part of a thing) before starting another.
But as my first book began to approach its final form, I started to feel at loose ends. I didn't have much on the back-burner--stuff that I was eager to write conference papers on or work up into an article. Even after the parameters of my second book project started to take shape and I wrote the better part of the first chapter, I had the nagging feeling that that wasn't enough: Book Two might take me five years or it might take me ten, but however long it took, I'd need to be publishing more than just the one or two articles I could profitably extract from it.
I needed, in short, to be having ideas.
"But I'm not an idea person," I told some friends. "I'm basically not creative. I don't have a fertile mind. I mean, I'm insightful and whatever, and dogged as hell. Once an idea comes along, I can do more with it than most people. But they don't come around all that often. I can't make something out of nothing, ya know."
It was suggested to me that I was protesting too much, and that what I really needed was to pay attention to ideas as they arose.
Thus, the notebook. And thus my extremely ambitious research plan for the semester: read everything I've assigned my students. And have thoughts about it. And write some of those thoughts down.
It's so crazy, it just might work.
I just never saw the point. For 10 years, I was working on one big project: my dissertation-turned-first-book. I published a few unrelated articles in that time, but each one was a well-defined project, often in response to a commission or CFP, and each one, like my book chapters, had both physical and digital files into which I could dump any ideas I had on the spur of the moment and refer back to at a later date. And as a matter of temperament, I dislike having too many things going on at once. I want to bore down into one project at a time, and I like to finish one thing (or one part of a thing) before starting another.
But as my first book began to approach its final form, I started to feel at loose ends. I didn't have much on the back-burner--stuff that I was eager to write conference papers on or work up into an article. Even after the parameters of my second book project started to take shape and I wrote the better part of the first chapter, I had the nagging feeling that that wasn't enough: Book Two might take me five years or it might take me ten, but however long it took, I'd need to be publishing more than just the one or two articles I could profitably extract from it.
I needed, in short, to be having ideas.
"But I'm not an idea person," I told some friends. "I'm basically not creative. I don't have a fertile mind. I mean, I'm insightful and whatever, and dogged as hell. Once an idea comes along, I can do more with it than most people. But they don't come around all that often. I can't make something out of nothing, ya know."
It was suggested to me that I was protesting too much, and that what I really needed was to pay attention to ideas as they arose.
Thus, the notebook. And thus my extremely ambitious research plan for the semester: read everything I've assigned my students. And have thoughts about it. And write some of those thoughts down.
It's so crazy, it just might work.
Monday, September 10, 2012
Never forgetting
Eleven years on, it takes me a few seconds to remember, when scheduling things for September 11th, exactly why that date registers so strongly in some emotional quadrant of my brain.
And you know, to hell with "never forget." I wrote last year about exasperation as an appropriate response to terrorism, but this year I'd go further: forgetting is also an appropriate response, if by that we mean not holding the day (and ourselves) hostage forever to pious sentimentality.
Because there's forgetting and then there's forgetting. It's not "forgetting" what happened to let the actual date pass unremarked; in fact, that should be our goal. Regular life--holding normal classes and going to bullshit meetings and getting irritated by traffic jams and broken photocopiers--is actually the profoundest kind of victory over terrorism.
Regular, boring, ordinary life. We're lucky to have it. And it's the luxury of the quotidian that I'll be celebrating this September 11th--and hopefully for many more.
And you know, to hell with "never forget." I wrote last year about exasperation as an appropriate response to terrorism, but this year I'd go further: forgetting is also an appropriate response, if by that we mean not holding the day (and ourselves) hostage forever to pious sentimentality.
Because there's forgetting and then there's forgetting. It's not "forgetting" what happened to let the actual date pass unremarked; in fact, that should be our goal. Regular life--holding normal classes and going to bullshit meetings and getting irritated by traffic jams and broken photocopiers--is actually the profoundest kind of victory over terrorism.
Regular, boring, ordinary life. We're lucky to have it. And it's the luxury of the quotidian that I'll be celebrating this September 11th--and hopefully for many more.
Wednesday, September 05, 2012
Reversion to the mean
After today's insanely early department meeting, I decided I owed myself a trip to DSW. I spent a long time looking for THE PERFECT pair of black pumps to replace my worn-out almost-perfect pair (and the two other not-at-all-close-to-perfect pairs I've been making do with). I bought these, which are exactly what I was looking for: sturdy, stylish, tall.
And then I spent even longer considering a pair of low-heel pumps, or maybe flats. . . but somehow, instead, wound up with what can only be described as "dress clogs" (Clarks brand, no photo available). Now, I'm not a clog-hater; there are plenty of groovy women in the academy--and in my native land, the Great Pacific Northwest--who can rock 'em. But it's fair to say that I never imagined a world in which I myself would own clogs.
But 37 appears to be the age at which I'm no longer able to hike all over town in heels, and I've recently started inserting cushions in the fore part of many shoes I wore comfortably for years. And suddenly, I understand the walking clog: tall enough to wear with long, boot-cut jeans, dressier than sneakers, and just the thing for a day of urban tourism.
Or maybe it's that academic womanhood has finally fully interpellated me: first cats, now clogs. What--I hesitate to ask--could be next?
And then I spent even longer considering a pair of low-heel pumps, or maybe flats. . . but somehow, instead, wound up with what can only be described as "dress clogs" (Clarks brand, no photo available). Now, I'm not a clog-hater; there are plenty of groovy women in the academy--and in my native land, the Great Pacific Northwest--who can rock 'em. But it's fair to say that I never imagined a world in which I myself would own clogs.
But 37 appears to be the age at which I'm no longer able to hike all over town in heels, and I've recently started inserting cushions in the fore part of many shoes I wore comfortably for years. And suddenly, I understand the walking clog: tall enough to wear with long, boot-cut jeans, dressier than sneakers, and just the thing for a day of urban tourism.
Or maybe it's that academic womanhood has finally fully interpellated me: first cats, now clogs. What--I hesitate to ask--could be next?
Sunday, September 02, 2012
If you must be a grasping machiavel, be better at it
Something I knew long before my most recent publishing disappointment:
You should not list, on a C.V. that you post publicly and that you point everyone toward (via your Facebook page, your faculty profile page, etc.), the specific press with which your book is currently under review.
You should especially not do this if you're a famously ambitious young scholar who regularly burns bridges and dicks people over in outrageous, gossip-producing ways.
Because there are people out there who will check up on your career from time to time. Some of them may wish you well, but others will fear or envy or flat-out despise you.
And all of those people will notice when Fancy Press A and Fancy Press B are no longer the places where your book is "under full review," but are replaced in that vita line by a third wishful-hopeful prospective publisher.
It's not that I don't appreciate the opportunity to indulge in a little schadenfreude at the expense of someone who shat on a friend of mine. But I'm pretty sure you don't actually wish for every person you've ever met to have access to the details of your professional setbacks.
This has been a public service announcement.
You should not list, on a C.V. that you post publicly and that you point everyone toward (via your Facebook page, your faculty profile page, etc.), the specific press with which your book is currently under review.
You should especially not do this if you're a famously ambitious young scholar who regularly burns bridges and dicks people over in outrageous, gossip-producing ways.
Because there are people out there who will check up on your career from time to time. Some of them may wish you well, but others will fear or envy or flat-out despise you.
And all of those people will notice when Fancy Press A and Fancy Press B are no longer the places where your book is "under full review," but are replaced in that vita line by a third wishful-hopeful prospective publisher.
It's not that I don't appreciate the opportunity to indulge in a little schadenfreude at the expense of someone who shat on a friend of mine. But I'm pretty sure you don't actually wish for every person you've ever met to have access to the details of your professional setbacks.
This has been a public service announcement.
Friday, August 31, 2012
Our previous teaching selves
It's the end of the first week of classes at RU, and I'm teaching what may be the perfect schedule, relative to my scholarly interests: Shakespeare (comedies and romances), Bible as Literature, and a senior capstone on Milton. But scholarly interests aren't the same as scholarly expertise, and the Bible class--which I'm "borrowing," on a one-time basis, from a colleague who's actually trained in Classics and New Testament studies--is humbling me considerably.
To all appearances, the class is going perfectly well: discussion never lags and the students may be the most lively and engaged of my three classes. I'm enjoying the course and I'm fully prepared and indeed overprepared for every session (I gave them an assignment in advance of the first day, so we've already had two real class meetings). But teaching an entirely new class, on new material, dealing with genres, time periods, and cultures in which I've received no formal training--well, it makes me aware of how much I take for granted in my other classes, where I have, by now, significant confidence in my own expertise and authority.
To be sure, questions come up in every class that challenge me or that I don't know the answer to, and I probably screw up important dates or mischaracterize historical events from time to time even in classes that are solidly within my area of expertise. But I don't worry that such things will happen, or that at any moment a student might ask a question that I can't answer, thereby stripping off the veneer of my authority and revealing How Little I Truly Know.
But that's how I feel in this class, and I'm reminded that it's how I used to feel in all my classes, not so long ago. I was excited, but seriously freaked out, to teach my first Shakespeare class six and a half years ago: I knew the plays, sure, and it was my time period--but I didn't know the criticism at all! And I wasn't a drama specialist! And I didn't know anything about theatrical conventions, or play-going in England, or any of that stuff. GAAAAAH!
Until this week, though, I'd forgotten that I once felt that way about Shakespeare. Over the past seven years, I've taught seventeen Shakespeare classes. I attend the Shakespeare Association conference almost every year, I've read dozens of books on Shakespeare and Early Modern drama with my reading group, and I've even started doing some of my own work on Big Willie. I know the contemporary scholarship as well as many recent PhDs in Shakespeare, and I teach better. Sure, I'd have to really step up my game if I got asked to teach a senior capstone or M.A. seminar on Shakespeare, and I'll never get hired at a research institution as a Shakespearian, but at the 300-level, in a large-discussion format, with this particular student population? Dudes, I ain't bragging when I say I'm a fucking fantastic teacher of Shakespeare.
I'll never be as good of a teacher of biblical literature as I am of Shakespeare, and that's fine. It's not my field, I'm not going back for another degree, and RU hires specialists, not generalists; I'm lucky to have this opportunity to stretch in ways that benefit my research. But as nervous-making as it is to take on something totally new, it's also oddly nice to revisit my earlier and less confident teaching selves. It's nice, first and foremost, to have new stuff to learn and fresh pedagogical challenges to tackle--but it's also nice to be reminded of all the things I've already mastered.
To all appearances, the class is going perfectly well: discussion never lags and the students may be the most lively and engaged of my three classes. I'm enjoying the course and I'm fully prepared and indeed overprepared for every session (I gave them an assignment in advance of the first day, so we've already had two real class meetings). But teaching an entirely new class, on new material, dealing with genres, time periods, and cultures in which I've received no formal training--well, it makes me aware of how much I take for granted in my other classes, where I have, by now, significant confidence in my own expertise and authority.
To be sure, questions come up in every class that challenge me or that I don't know the answer to, and I probably screw up important dates or mischaracterize historical events from time to time even in classes that are solidly within my area of expertise. But I don't worry that such things will happen, or that at any moment a student might ask a question that I can't answer, thereby stripping off the veneer of my authority and revealing How Little I Truly Know.
But that's how I feel in this class, and I'm reminded that it's how I used to feel in all my classes, not so long ago. I was excited, but seriously freaked out, to teach my first Shakespeare class six and a half years ago: I knew the plays, sure, and it was my time period--but I didn't know the criticism at all! And I wasn't a drama specialist! And I didn't know anything about theatrical conventions, or play-going in England, or any of that stuff. GAAAAAH!
Until this week, though, I'd forgotten that I once felt that way about Shakespeare. Over the past seven years, I've taught seventeen Shakespeare classes. I attend the Shakespeare Association conference almost every year, I've read dozens of books on Shakespeare and Early Modern drama with my reading group, and I've even started doing some of my own work on Big Willie. I know the contemporary scholarship as well as many recent PhDs in Shakespeare, and I teach better. Sure, I'd have to really step up my game if I got asked to teach a senior capstone or M.A. seminar on Shakespeare, and I'll never get hired at a research institution as a Shakespearian, but at the 300-level, in a large-discussion format, with this particular student population? Dudes, I ain't bragging when I say I'm a fucking fantastic teacher of Shakespeare.
I'll never be as good of a teacher of biblical literature as I am of Shakespeare, and that's fine. It's not my field, I'm not going back for another degree, and RU hires specialists, not generalists; I'm lucky to have this opportunity to stretch in ways that benefit my research. But as nervous-making as it is to take on something totally new, it's also oddly nice to revisit my earlier and less confident teaching selves. It's nice, first and foremost, to have new stuff to learn and fresh pedagogical challenges to tackle--but it's also nice to be reminded of all the things I've already mastered.
Friday, August 24, 2012
Ethnic pride group requests greater ghettoization
Today's New York Times has an article about an Italian-American group suing Columbia for what the group claims is misuse of a donation made in the 1920s. The legal merits of the case seem awfully thin--the suit is brought by descendents of the original donors and there appears to be no money left to misspend--but I'm interested in what the case says about the extremely limited, even ghettoized understanding of "Italian culture" advanced by the aggrieved descendents.
The case concerns a large, beautiful building (now landmarked) built in the 1920s by a group of Italian-Americans and Italian immigrants and donated to Columbia to support the study of Italian culture. According to the Times, "For decades, the house served as a hub for Italian scholarship and community at Columbia. The university's Italian department resided in the building. A donated collection of some 20,000 volumes of Italian literature lined the shelves." Now, however, the Italian department is housed elsewhere, there's no longer an Italian cultural student group, and the 20,000 books are housed in the main library.
But the building is still used to support Italian scholarship--in fact, it's now owned by the Italian government: by the 1990s the building needed millions of dollars' worth of renovations, so Italy purchased the building, paid for the renovations, and then gave Columbia a 500-year lease on the place. It now houses the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America, "[h]alf of [whose] board of guarantors are appointed by the university and half by the Italian government."
And yes, you guessed it: even though the building is jointly run by Columbia and by actual Italians, and it exists to support and promote the work of Italian scholars and scholars of Italy, that isn't Italian enough for the donor descendents: in their suit, they claim that Columbia "owe[s] a fiduciary duty of obedience to the donor families to ensure that La Casa is used to diffuse Italian history, culture, art and literature to promote the educational and spiritual uplift of Italians in America." Instead, they charge, the building has become an "enclave for Columbia staffers and traveling European academics, including many in disciplines wholly unrelated to Italian history and culture."
To the extent that the complaint is about a reorientation away from undergraduates, the donor descendents have a partial point: the Italian Academy's activities aren't aimed primarily at undergraduates, though their schedule of events from the past few years does include regular public lectures on topics in Italian culture, readings of Italian poems in translation, and concerts of Italian music (and the Italian Department's undergraduate homepage publicizes those events).
But although the donor descendents might reasonably think that this isn't what their ancestors had in mind in the 1920s and 1930s, it's equally reasonable to think that their ancestors would have been thrilled that, eighty years on, Italy and Italian Americans don't need a separate building, library, or advocacy group to celebrate their cultural achievements. In the early twentieth century, Italian Americans were still a ghettoized and despised ethnic group. It makes sense that an immigrant organization would wish to instill pride in its sons and daughters by promoting the glorious achievements of the Old Country in ages past. But in the early twenty-first century--seriously, is there any non-English-speaking country that Ivy League students want to visit more than Italy? Majoring in Italian--like majoring in French or art history--is understood as signalling someone's membership in the elite.
Surely an immigrant group has arrived once that's the case--and once the study of Italy and Italian culture isn't limited to ancient Rome and Renaissance Florence. Isn't the opportunity to learn about (and from) twenty-first-century Italian neuroscientists, sociologists, and industrial designers a real recognition of the creativity and innovation of the Italian people?
Well, you'd think.
The case concerns a large, beautiful building (now landmarked) built in the 1920s by a group of Italian-Americans and Italian immigrants and donated to Columbia to support the study of Italian culture. According to the Times, "For decades, the house served as a hub for Italian scholarship and community at Columbia. The university's Italian department resided in the building. A donated collection of some 20,000 volumes of Italian literature lined the shelves." Now, however, the Italian department is housed elsewhere, there's no longer an Italian cultural student group, and the 20,000 books are housed in the main library.
But the building is still used to support Italian scholarship--in fact, it's now owned by the Italian government: by the 1990s the building needed millions of dollars' worth of renovations, so Italy purchased the building, paid for the renovations, and then gave Columbia a 500-year lease on the place. It now houses the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America, "[h]alf of [whose] board of guarantors are appointed by the university and half by the Italian government."
And yes, you guessed it: even though the building is jointly run by Columbia and by actual Italians, and it exists to support and promote the work of Italian scholars and scholars of Italy, that isn't Italian enough for the donor descendents: in their suit, they claim that Columbia "owe[s] a fiduciary duty of obedience to the donor families to ensure that La Casa is used to diffuse Italian history, culture, art and literature to promote the educational and spiritual uplift of Italians in America." Instead, they charge, the building has become an "enclave for Columbia staffers and traveling European academics, including many in disciplines wholly unrelated to Italian history and culture."
To the extent that the complaint is about a reorientation away from undergraduates, the donor descendents have a partial point: the Italian Academy's activities aren't aimed primarily at undergraduates, though their schedule of events from the past few years does include regular public lectures on topics in Italian culture, readings of Italian poems in translation, and concerts of Italian music (and the Italian Department's undergraduate homepage publicizes those events).
But although the donor descendents might reasonably think that this isn't what their ancestors had in mind in the 1920s and 1930s, it's equally reasonable to think that their ancestors would have been thrilled that, eighty years on, Italy and Italian Americans don't need a separate building, library, or advocacy group to celebrate their cultural achievements. In the early twentieth century, Italian Americans were still a ghettoized and despised ethnic group. It makes sense that an immigrant organization would wish to instill pride in its sons and daughters by promoting the glorious achievements of the Old Country in ages past. But in the early twenty-first century--seriously, is there any non-English-speaking country that Ivy League students want to visit more than Italy? Majoring in Italian--like majoring in French or art history--is understood as signalling someone's membership in the elite.
Surely an immigrant group has arrived once that's the case--and once the study of Italy and Italian culture isn't limited to ancient Rome and Renaissance Florence. Isn't the opportunity to learn about (and from) twenty-first-century Italian neuroscientists, sociologists, and industrial designers a real recognition of the creativity and innovation of the Italian people?
Well, you'd think.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Getting It Published: Part 8
Start placing your bets now, kids: just how many installments will this series run?
As you'll recall, my last update on the status of my book project did not contain good news. But after a week of moping, I knocked out a revised book proposal and sent it and a sample chapter to a handful of presses.
Then I did a whole lot of waiting. Like, weeks of waiting. Almost two months of waiting. I received a couple of noncommittal signs of possible interest, but nothing too spirit-raising--until, quite suddenly, two equally-good presses decided at virtually the same moment that they were both Very Interested. And both wanted to send the manuscript out for review. Immediately.
All of which reminds me of nothing so much as my dating life in days of yore: long self-pitying periods where no one seemed to look my way, followed by brief and confusing periods where two or three suitors showed up at once. (Followed, of course, by more sad and lonely stretches of self-pity.)
But this isn't a bad problem to have. Moreover, the press I've decided to go with is better in several ways than the place I was working with for two years and that eventually rejected me. (The astute observer might comment that here, again, there are parallels with my romantic life.) Press #2 has an equivalently high reputation, but it gives more individualized attention to its books: they're handsome, well designed, and priced so that normal people can afford to buy them.
So that's where things stand for now. I'm happy, I guess, if "happy" means oscillating between fits of wild optimism--this could actually work out! Maybe even rather soon!--and dour fatalism: I could fail here, too, and be even further from seeing the damn book in print. It's hard not to worry that maybe I just write an awesome proposal, but the book itself doesn't live up to its billing.
But the only way to know is to sit on my hands and wait some more.
As you'll recall, my last update on the status of my book project did not contain good news. But after a week of moping, I knocked out a revised book proposal and sent it and a sample chapter to a handful of presses.
Then I did a whole lot of waiting. Like, weeks of waiting. Almost two months of waiting. I received a couple of noncommittal signs of possible interest, but nothing too spirit-raising--until, quite suddenly, two equally-good presses decided at virtually the same moment that they were both Very Interested. And both wanted to send the manuscript out for review. Immediately.
All of which reminds me of nothing so much as my dating life in days of yore: long self-pitying periods where no one seemed to look my way, followed by brief and confusing periods where two or three suitors showed up at once. (Followed, of course, by more sad and lonely stretches of self-pity.)
But this isn't a bad problem to have. Moreover, the press I've decided to go with is better in several ways than the place I was working with for two years and that eventually rejected me. (The astute observer might comment that here, again, there are parallels with my romantic life.) Press #2 has an equivalently high reputation, but it gives more individualized attention to its books: they're handsome, well designed, and priced so that normal people can afford to buy them.
So that's where things stand for now. I'm happy, I guess, if "happy" means oscillating between fits of wild optimism--this could actually work out! Maybe even rather soon!--and dour fatalism: I could fail here, too, and be even further from seeing the damn book in print. It's hard not to worry that maybe I just write an awesome proposal, but the book itself doesn't live up to its billing.
But the only way to know is to sit on my hands and wait some more.
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Religion that serves you
There are a lot of twenty- and thirtysomethings at the church I attend, which isn't particularly surprising: my parish is a lively and active one, located smack in the middle of an artsy neighborhood popular with college students and recent grads.
Some of the young people are energetically involved in the life of the parish, while a larger number are more or less just passing through: they're living in the area for a few years, they're in the habit of going to mass, and this is the most convenient church. Others really just seem to be passing through: probably once a month we wind up seated near a young couple who seem ill at ease and uncertain about even the basic responses or the order of the mass. My standard assumption is that such couples are church- or faith-shopping, or contemplating marriage: one or both might have been raised Catholic and been away for a while, and they're trying us on to see if we fit.
I've got no problem with that, or with passers-through of any variety; I've tried on churches myself. During one period of my life I was so unable to decide between one extremely conservative and one extremely progressive parish that I just floated back and forth between them for four years. (What attracted me to the one repelled me in the other, and vice versa.)
What I do have a problem with is those people who act as though whatever it is that they want or expect from a church requires nothing--no effort, no participation, not even a little friendliness and good humor--in return. They want to walk in and feel immediately comfortable, immediately special. Having some tenuous identity as Catholics means they should have RIGHTS! Rights to rites, in fact, for nowhere is this attitude on greater display than in nonpracticing Catholics who want to get married or have their kids baptized in the church.
Today was a baptism. We have a lot of baptisms at my church, sometimes as many as three or four a month, and I generally find them delightful. Babies tend to be cute; their families tend to be happy; and the two priests who serve our parish are warm and genial and extremely well-practiced (rarely does a baptism add five minutes to the usual length of the service). But today was not one of the delightful ones.
I was serving as lector, so I'd heard the parish administrator talking to the presider before mass about the baptismal family. She mentioned that they seemed confused and unfamiliar with the service, so would need more guidance from the priest than usual. Whatever, I thought. New parents are allowed to be flakey and confused, or the baptism might have been the grandparents' idea; who knows.
But I spent all mass staring at this family (they were seated in the first two rows and I was seated up in the sanctuary) and I couldn't figure out whose idea the baptism could possibly have been. They all looked like they'd been dragged there against their will. The parents, the godparents, all four grandparents, and several adult siblings were present, and no one seemed to have any idea what was going on. One set of grandparents made an effort--they sang the songs from the hymnal and used the pew cards to follow the new responses--but no one else did. No one else attempted a response, recited even the Lord's Prayer, or so much as picked up a pew card or opened a hymnal (though they all received communion). The baby's parents nudged each other and whispered during the homily. Throughout, the looks on the faces of the family members ranged from stoic endurance to sour displeasure.
And you know, I'm all for being welcoming. I'm fine with meeting people where they're at, and I understand that lots of cultural Catholics have a sentimental attachment to ritual and fetishize various signifiers of the religion without actually wanting to be a part of a community of faith. I don't love that attitude, but insofar as cultural Catholicism indicates a genuine attachment to the religion of a person's childhood, my position is that it's a net good for those of us who are practicing. Such people often send their kids to Catholic schools. They show up en masse for the baptisms and first communions of their nieces and nephews. They have relatives who go to church regularly--they may even have an aunt or uncle who's a nun or a priest--and many of them think occasionally that they really should start going to church again themselves. They belong to a community, in other words, that supports the community of actual believers.
As I say, I get this. What I do not get is people who think religion--or whatever symbolism or meaning or social benefits they think accrue to religion--comes entirely without participation. Belief may be personal, but religion is relational. It's about community. It depends on community. And being a part of a community means that you have to give at least a little something in return. Like, say, your engaged and interested presence, however infrequently you may show up.
But for some people, even that seems a terribly high bar.
Some of the young people are energetically involved in the life of the parish, while a larger number are more or less just passing through: they're living in the area for a few years, they're in the habit of going to mass, and this is the most convenient church. Others really just seem to be passing through: probably once a month we wind up seated near a young couple who seem ill at ease and uncertain about even the basic responses or the order of the mass. My standard assumption is that such couples are church- or faith-shopping, or contemplating marriage: one or both might have been raised Catholic and been away for a while, and they're trying us on to see if we fit.
I've got no problem with that, or with passers-through of any variety; I've tried on churches myself. During one period of my life I was so unable to decide between one extremely conservative and one extremely progressive parish that I just floated back and forth between them for four years. (What attracted me to the one repelled me in the other, and vice versa.)
What I do have a problem with is those people who act as though whatever it is that they want or expect from a church requires nothing--no effort, no participation, not even a little friendliness and good humor--in return. They want to walk in and feel immediately comfortable, immediately special. Having some tenuous identity as Catholics means they should have RIGHTS! Rights to rites, in fact, for nowhere is this attitude on greater display than in nonpracticing Catholics who want to get married or have their kids baptized in the church.
Today was a baptism. We have a lot of baptisms at my church, sometimes as many as three or four a month, and I generally find them delightful. Babies tend to be cute; their families tend to be happy; and the two priests who serve our parish are warm and genial and extremely well-practiced (rarely does a baptism add five minutes to the usual length of the service). But today was not one of the delightful ones.
I was serving as lector, so I'd heard the parish administrator talking to the presider before mass about the baptismal family. She mentioned that they seemed confused and unfamiliar with the service, so would need more guidance from the priest than usual. Whatever, I thought. New parents are allowed to be flakey and confused, or the baptism might have been the grandparents' idea; who knows.
But I spent all mass staring at this family (they were seated in the first two rows and I was seated up in the sanctuary) and I couldn't figure out whose idea the baptism could possibly have been. They all looked like they'd been dragged there against their will. The parents, the godparents, all four grandparents, and several adult siblings were present, and no one seemed to have any idea what was going on. One set of grandparents made an effort--they sang the songs from the hymnal and used the pew cards to follow the new responses--but no one else did. No one else attempted a response, recited even the Lord's Prayer, or so much as picked up a pew card or opened a hymnal (though they all received communion). The baby's parents nudged each other and whispered during the homily. Throughout, the looks on the faces of the family members ranged from stoic endurance to sour displeasure.
And you know, I'm all for being welcoming. I'm fine with meeting people where they're at, and I understand that lots of cultural Catholics have a sentimental attachment to ritual and fetishize various signifiers of the religion without actually wanting to be a part of a community of faith. I don't love that attitude, but insofar as cultural Catholicism indicates a genuine attachment to the religion of a person's childhood, my position is that it's a net good for those of us who are practicing. Such people often send their kids to Catholic schools. They show up en masse for the baptisms and first communions of their nieces and nephews. They have relatives who go to church regularly--they may even have an aunt or uncle who's a nun or a priest--and many of them think occasionally that they really should start going to church again themselves. They belong to a community, in other words, that supports the community of actual believers.
As I say, I get this. What I do not get is people who think religion--or whatever symbolism or meaning or social benefits they think accrue to religion--comes entirely without participation. Belief may be personal, but religion is relational. It's about community. It depends on community. And being a part of a community means that you have to give at least a little something in return. Like, say, your engaged and interested presence, however infrequently you may show up.
But for some people, even that seems a terribly high bar.
Monday, August 13, 2012
Populism, yeah, yeah
It's probably not a coincidence that, just as the Presidential campaign starts to heat up, the soundtrack to "Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson" has gone into heavy rotation chez nous. The musical is, for my money, one of the best pieces of theatre of the past decade--and a smart, nasty take on the dysfunctions of American popular democracy. We were lucky to catch a performance a couple of years ago.
A decent assemblage of show clips:
And one of my favorite songs in its entirety:
A decent assemblage of show clips:
And one of my favorite songs in its entirety:
Wednesday, August 08, 2012
Divas vs. team players
Around the time that I started this job, someone on the internet had this advice for new faculty: if you act like a diva, you'll get treated like a diva.
In its original context, this advice was meant in a strictly limited way: the author was encouraging new faculty not to feel obligated always to be "team players" if that meant never saying no, never having time for their own research, and taking on burdensome service assignments while their other colleagues always seemed too busy to do their fair share. Those who act like divas by prioritizing their own needs and insisting on the value of their own work, argued the advice-giver, are usually accorded more respect--and their needs, time, and scholarship assumed to be more consequential.
I think of this advice often; in fact, I thought of it today when I had to send someone a cold, bluff-calling email: no, you're the one who dropped the ball; I will not make this ridiculous sacrifice because you didn't have your shit together--and in fact, if you can't come up with a better solution, I'll just withdraw from this thing that benefits me not at all but that you're depending on me to do.
(Ahem.)
But as good as this advice is in some contexts, it cuts another way, too. If you act like a diva--that is, like an unstable, impossible-to-please, crazy person--people will treat you like one: they'll say whatever they have to say to make you stop throwing things, and then vow never to work with you again. And unless your value to them or the institution is so high as to make you irreplaceable, they pretty much won't.
We're all familiar with the professor who swears he'll quit his job! if some minor thing happens or doesn't happen--or who tells you he'll never forgive you! if you vote a certain way in a department meeting, or teach a class he considers his exclusive property, or whatever. And in my experience, those people are not taken seriously. They're ridiculous, because their demands are out of all proportion to what they're bringing to the negotiating table. (You'll quit? Yes, please! You'll never speak to me again? Wait--is that a promise?)
The key to being a successful diva, I think, is actually to be a good team player. If it's clear that you value the mission of the place as a whole, and want it to succeed, and if you're pulling your weight on a departmental or institutional level, you can throw the occasional fit or make the occasional big demand when (and this is key!) you're genuinely being disrespected or not having your essential needs met.
And, of course, when you can live with the consequences. A diva doesn't say she's going to walk if she's not prepared to walk.
In its original context, this advice was meant in a strictly limited way: the author was encouraging new faculty not to feel obligated always to be "team players" if that meant never saying no, never having time for their own research, and taking on burdensome service assignments while their other colleagues always seemed too busy to do their fair share. Those who act like divas by prioritizing their own needs and insisting on the value of their own work, argued the advice-giver, are usually accorded more respect--and their needs, time, and scholarship assumed to be more consequential.
I think of this advice often; in fact, I thought of it today when I had to send someone a cold, bluff-calling email: no, you're the one who dropped the ball; I will not make this ridiculous sacrifice because you didn't have your shit together--and in fact, if you can't come up with a better solution, I'll just withdraw from this thing that benefits me not at all but that you're depending on me to do.
(Ahem.)
But as good as this advice is in some contexts, it cuts another way, too. If you act like a diva--that is, like an unstable, impossible-to-please, crazy person--people will treat you like one: they'll say whatever they have to say to make you stop throwing things, and then vow never to work with you again. And unless your value to them or the institution is so high as to make you irreplaceable, they pretty much won't.
We're all familiar with the professor who swears he'll quit his job! if some minor thing happens or doesn't happen--or who tells you he'll never forgive you! if you vote a certain way in a department meeting, or teach a class he considers his exclusive property, or whatever. And in my experience, those people are not taken seriously. They're ridiculous, because their demands are out of all proportion to what they're bringing to the negotiating table. (You'll quit? Yes, please! You'll never speak to me again? Wait--is that a promise?)
The key to being a successful diva, I think, is actually to be a good team player. If it's clear that you value the mission of the place as a whole, and want it to succeed, and if you're pulling your weight on a departmental or institutional level, you can throw the occasional fit or make the occasional big demand when (and this is key!) you're genuinely being disrespected or not having your essential needs met.
And, of course, when you can live with the consequences. A diva doesn't say she's going to walk if she's not prepared to walk.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)