You know, I really hate being called "Miss." More even than I hate being called "Mrs." (although I certainly hate that quite a lot, too). Time to bump that post down.
Anyway, apologies for the light, boring blogging of late. This post promises to be more of the same, as I am STILL sick. On Tuesday, I mistakenly believed that I was all better; then yesterday I felt a little rough; and today I canceled classes and am drinking tea in my pajamas--which is rather nice, I confess, but this cold really must go away because I'm supposed to travel to Northern City on Saturday for a party, and I'd be sorry to miss it. Particularly because the train tickets are purchased. Also, I am tired of being sickly.
(It's not a terrible illness or anything. The sore throat has simply resolved itself into some truly annoying sinus pressure. How it went from point A to point B I cannot explain, but there you go. Gah.)
Well, so, on this unexpected day off, what will happen? One thing that is happening is that I am trying to reschedule all the comp conferences that I had arranged for today. So I will have lots more conferences than expected tomorrow, and a handful on Monday. That's kind of irritating, but oh well. The other things that are happening, however, include finishing the two books that I'm teaching next week (nearly done! hooray!) and, presumably, once I get my shit together, finishing the trifling quantity of grading that I've been carrying around with me lo these many days. I could hammer all of that out in two hours or so if I just got my wits about me, but I have been staunchly ignoring the necessity of doing so for, as I said, lo these many days. But I have told a class that they'll get their papers back tomorrow, and I must be true to my word.
Here's some superlatively good news, though: At yesterday's faculty meeting, a proposal to revise our composition sequence in a significant and pedagogically awesome way (that will, incidentally, also cut our comp loads in half for the next two years) PASSED. We are all quite delighted. A lot of work went into the proposal--not by me so much, but by my senior colleague, who did a great job--and it ought to make our students better writers while also allowing us to deploy our comp-energy in much more productive ways. Now that it's passed, we plan to spend a few days this summer hammering out the course--handouts, prompts, everything--so that it will be far less hectic and random than it normally seems to be.
I have a lot more to say about this, actually--as well as, possibly, about the objections raised against it (some legitimate, some...wow)--but that might be a post for another day.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Miss Mihi is indisposed at present
Actually, I'm feeling better, but a day spent reading Sense and Sensibility has affected my diction in too tempting a way not to indulge.
The circumstances of my reading yesterday, in fact, lend themselves nicely to such language. I spent the better part of the afternoon and evening perusing my Regency novel whilst reclining on The Minister's chaise longue atop a burgundy chenille coverlet, propped up on pillows of an Indic design, sipping hot water with lemon out of a teacup WITH a saucer and well supplied with drowsy cats. For dinner we had savory crepes and homemade apple cider--the latter a highly effective treatment for a sore throat, I should add.
And then today we have more snow, more bitterly cold weather, etc. I like the snow, but that 40-degree day we had last week has ruined me for the winter; luckily I have some fantabulous spring break plans that are more or less keeping me going right now.
Anyway, my feeling slightly better means that today cannot be spent languishing upon fainting couches and the like. I do have a few things to do. I must: confirm that what I've planned for comp tomorrow is sensible; decide what on earth I'm going to do with the five very short, relatively uninteresting poems I for some reason assigned in the survey; read some more Monmouth for the upper-level; and perhaps--perhaps--begin grading the batch of short papers I got on Friday. I make no promises. I must also conclude the laundry and make some granola. And possibly some butter, as I have an inordinate amount of cream this week. Which also means culturing some buttermilk. Annnd...yes. That's it. I'd also like to watch a movie. Perhaps some 19th-c. period piece on Netflix Watch Instantly, since I'm spending the weekend more or less in that mode.
Alas! This is quite a boring post. I don't have any real grievances at the moment, though. Nope. Sorry. Happy Sunday, everyone!
The circumstances of my reading yesterday, in fact, lend themselves nicely to such language. I spent the better part of the afternoon and evening perusing my Regency novel whilst reclining on The Minister's chaise longue atop a burgundy chenille coverlet, propped up on pillows of an Indic design, sipping hot water with lemon out of a teacup WITH a saucer and well supplied with drowsy cats. For dinner we had savory crepes and homemade apple cider--the latter a highly effective treatment for a sore throat, I should add.
And then today we have more snow, more bitterly cold weather, etc. I like the snow, but that 40-degree day we had last week has ruined me for the winter; luckily I have some fantabulous spring break plans that are more or less keeping me going right now.
Anyway, my feeling slightly better means that today cannot be spent languishing upon fainting couches and the like. I do have a few things to do. I must: confirm that what I've planned for comp tomorrow is sensible; decide what on earth I'm going to do with the five very short, relatively uninteresting poems I for some reason assigned in the survey; read some more Monmouth for the upper-level; and perhaps--perhaps--begin grading the batch of short papers I got on Friday. I make no promises. I must also conclude the laundry and make some granola. And possibly some butter, as I have an inordinate amount of cream this week. Which also means culturing some buttermilk. Annnd...yes. That's it. I'd also like to watch a movie. Perhaps some 19th-c. period piece on Netflix Watch Instantly, since I'm spending the weekend more or less in that mode.
Alas! This is quite a boring post. I don't have any real grievances at the moment, though. Nope. Sorry. Happy Sunday, everyone!
Friday, January 23, 2009
Heu mihi, indeed
I seem to have a cold!
At least, an incipient cold. My throat hurts. Also, I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't get back to sleep for a couple of hours because my furnace was making odd noises, and I feared that it would explode.
It's funny how rational such things seem at 2 am.
Well, oh well. We just closed out the second week of the semester, and so far all is running smoothly. Classes are going well, and prep is shockingly un-time-consuming, and with every semester I become more and more at ease in the classroom. I have some lovely students. I have some grading to do. But I also get to spend the weekend reading Jane Austen, which is just about perfect for a Weekend With A Cold.
And we're getting a pizza for dinner. Perhaps all is not so heu-worthy after all.
At least, an incipient cold. My throat hurts. Also, I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't get back to sleep for a couple of hours because my furnace was making odd noises, and I feared that it would explode.
It's funny how rational such things seem at 2 am.
Well, oh well. We just closed out the second week of the semester, and so far all is running smoothly. Classes are going well, and prep is shockingly un-time-consuming, and with every semester I become more and more at ease in the classroom. I have some lovely students. I have some grading to do. But I also get to spend the weekend reading Jane Austen, which is just about perfect for a Weekend With A Cold.
And we're getting a pizza for dinner. Perhaps all is not so heu-worthy after all.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Monday, January 19, 2009
Meddling with Making*
I promised to blog about something in particular, didn't I? Well, I've forgotten what it was, and I'm not going to go check right now! So I bring you this other post instead.
(Thanks to all the suggestions for my reading list, by the way. I have a lot of work to do now. Apparently this is a good thing.)
Anyway, now that the manuscript is back at the publisher's, and I'm only teaching 3 classes, and the semester isn't far enough along for me to be overwhelmed, I find myself with slightly more free time than I'm accustomed to having. I also find myself in need of something other than academic work to do--I have forbidden myself from starting on my conference papers or going back to l'article until February. On Saturday, therefore, I gave myself an Art Day. Actually, it was more like an Art Five Hours, since I ran out of steam at around 2:30, but it was truly refreshing and generally awesome.
Some context: I was an Art Girl back in high school; my senior year I even got to take two back-to-back studio classes. I was also, unsurprisingly, the Literature Girl: I ran the lit mag and sort of started up an alternative underground counter-lit mag (which we couldn't afford to print--why I was writing an anonymous counter-mag to the mag that I ran is unclear to me now; I'd have to revisit my diaries). And my two interests came together quite splendidly when, sometime in my sophomore year of HS, I discovered book arts. I gave up papermaking when I was 17 (too messy and I sucked at it), but bookbinding has remained my art form of choice ever since, with collage a strong competitor.
Since moving to Field a year and a half ago, however, I had completed zero (0) art projects. Last year my art supplies were all impounded in the storage unit back in MomTown, and this year? No excuse, really. So on Saturday I decided to warm up with a couple of collages:
[CAVEAT: I do not pretend to be a visual artist at all; I'm not even sure that I like these. They're just here because, well, this is a blog, after all, and what would a blog be without pointless self-indulgence? ]
The second one is a reflection on the soil quality of Field State.
Here's what I'm really happy with, though. I wanted to make a book, but I didn't want to take all day--so, using a couple of ideas from an instructional book, some interesting scrap paper, and a gorgeous bit of leather from a journal I made a few years ago, I invented and produced the following (it's a little more than 3" square):
The leather wraps around and closes with a pendant from a necklace that I wore a lot and loved in--coincidentally--high school.
The binding, which hasn't reproduced very well, is a coptic stitch.
Making stuff is good for me: I get totally absorbed in it in a way that nothing else (except maybe correcting formatting issues in a massive document) absorbs me (needless to say, the formatting absorption is less pleasant), and, because I am not a visual artist, the pressure that accompanies any form of writing--including creative writing--is lacking. It was, therefore, a nice day. I should do this kind of thing more often.
For your enjoyment, I also include a picture of the sweater that I knitted this fall (pattern available for purchase here):
*3 extra credit points to everyone who gets the allusion in the title. Hint: It's a Middle English text that you may have studiously avoided throughout grad school and beyond.
(Thanks to all the suggestions for my reading list, by the way. I have a lot of work to do now. Apparently this is a good thing.)
Anyway, now that the manuscript is back at the publisher's, and I'm only teaching 3 classes, and the semester isn't far enough along for me to be overwhelmed, I find myself with slightly more free time than I'm accustomed to having. I also find myself in need of something other than academic work to do--I have forbidden myself from starting on my conference papers or going back to l'article until February. On Saturday, therefore, I gave myself an Art Day. Actually, it was more like an Art Five Hours, since I ran out of steam at around 2:30, but it was truly refreshing and generally awesome.
Some context: I was an Art Girl back in high school; my senior year I even got to take two back-to-back studio classes. I was also, unsurprisingly, the Literature Girl: I ran the lit mag and sort of started up an alternative underground counter-lit mag (which we couldn't afford to print--why I was writing an anonymous counter-mag to the mag that I ran is unclear to me now; I'd have to revisit my diaries). And my two interests came together quite splendidly when, sometime in my sophomore year of HS, I discovered book arts. I gave up papermaking when I was 17 (too messy and I sucked at it), but bookbinding has remained my art form of choice ever since, with collage a strong competitor.
Since moving to Field a year and a half ago, however, I had completed zero (0) art projects. Last year my art supplies were all impounded in the storage unit back in MomTown, and this year? No excuse, really. So on Saturday I decided to warm up with a couple of collages:
[CAVEAT: I do not pretend to be a visual artist at all; I'm not even sure that I like these. They're just here because, well, this is a blog, after all, and what would a blog be without pointless self-indulgence? ]
The second one is a reflection on the soil quality of Field State.Here's what I'm really happy with, though. I wanted to make a book, but I didn't want to take all day--so, using a couple of ideas from an instructional book, some interesting scrap paper, and a gorgeous bit of leather from a journal I made a few years ago, I invented and produced the following (it's a little more than 3" square):
The leather wraps around and closes with a pendant from a necklace that I wore a lot and loved in--coincidentally--high school.
The binding, which hasn't reproduced very well, is a coptic stitch.
Making stuff is good for me: I get totally absorbed in it in a way that nothing else (except maybe correcting formatting issues in a massive document) absorbs me (needless to say, the formatting absorption is less pleasant), and, because I am not a visual artist, the pressure that accompanies any form of writing--including creative writing--is lacking. It was, therefore, a nice day. I should do this kind of thing more often.
For your enjoyment, I also include a picture of the sweater that I knitted this fall (pattern available for purchase here):
*3 extra credit points to everyone who gets the allusion in the title. Hint: It's a Middle English text that you may have studiously avoided throughout grad school and beyond.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
How nice!
Ortho and Medieval Woman have both given me Inspiration Awards! How very lovely. Thanks!
I am now supposed to nominate some other inspiring blogs. Here, after all, are the rules:
- Please put the logo of the award (above) on your blog if you can make it work with your format.
- Link to the person from whom you received the award.
- Nominate 7 or more blogs.
- Put the links of those blogs on your blog.
- Leave a message on their blogs to tell them.
1. Dr. Crazy, who always inspires me to, like, blog about something of broader significance, although that particular inspiration seldom results in action.
2. Maude, whose determination and honesty are so very inspiring in themselves.
3. Bardiac, who just seems like a really neat person.
4. Fretful Porpentine, whose life weirdly mirrored mine for a while back there.
5. Sisyphus, whose prose is too terrific to ignore.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
But First, A Question (on theory and medieval studies)
Before I write the posts I hinted at in my previous post (and when do I ever write the posts at which I hint?), I have a question for y'all, especially y'all medievalists.
I have identified a weakness in myself as a scholar: namely, I am not comfortable with theory. More precisely, I am not comfortable "applying" (for lack of a better word) theory in my research. Here's the problem, I think: My first year of grad school--about half my coursework--was All Theory, All The Time. At that point, I was not a medievalist; I imagined that I'd go into 19th/early 20th-c. literature. That all changed in my second year, and I began taking courses that would brush up my knowledge of medieval literature and language--Middle High German, medieval French narrative, Old English, paleography, etc. And I never really encountered theoretical approaches to medieval literature in the classroom.
I have to admit, too, that I was not into theory in those early years. As a first- and second-year grad student, I found it exhaustingly intimidating and difficult. So it was with great relief that I began focusing on things like manuscript transmission and paleography and auctoritas, rather than postcolonial this or that.
But now, when I do think that I'm intellectually sophisticated enough to deal with theoretical texts in a more mature fashion (hey, I liked reading Gender Trouble this summer), I feel a bit at sea--it's been a long time since I was in a specifically "theoretical" mindset. I think that there's theory implicit in a lot of my research, and I'm not looking to just drop some Derrida references in my Chaucer article, or anything like that. But when I'm asked point-blank--as I have been, in a job talk and at an MLA interview--about which theorists inform or are useful to my research, I can feel the Blank Stare of Doom settling across my brow. Or eyes. Whatever.
Anyway, so now that the MS is revised (for yes! It is in the copy center as I type, awaiting mailing), one of my next Intellectual Projects, I think, should be to read some scholarship that approaches medieval literature from an overtly theoretical standpoint. Just to see what's out there.
Here's the question, then. Any suggestions? Broadly speaking, my work is on Middle English literature, dream visions, hagiography, and visionary texts (keeping this deliberately wide open). I am somewhat, though probably insufficiently, familiar with Amy Hollywood's stuff, and I read Dinshaw's Getting Medieval ages ago (I can't remember it very clearly). Anything else come to mind as a good example of theoretically informed medieval literary scholarship?
I have identified a weakness in myself as a scholar: namely, I am not comfortable with theory. More precisely, I am not comfortable "applying" (for lack of a better word) theory in my research. Here's the problem, I think: My first year of grad school--about half my coursework--was All Theory, All The Time. At that point, I was not a medievalist; I imagined that I'd go into 19th/early 20th-c. literature. That all changed in my second year, and I began taking courses that would brush up my knowledge of medieval literature and language--Middle High German, medieval French narrative, Old English, paleography, etc. And I never really encountered theoretical approaches to medieval literature in the classroom.
I have to admit, too, that I was not into theory in those early years. As a first- and second-year grad student, I found it exhaustingly intimidating and difficult. So it was with great relief that I began focusing on things like manuscript transmission and paleography and auctoritas, rather than postcolonial this or that.
But now, when I do think that I'm intellectually sophisticated enough to deal with theoretical texts in a more mature fashion (hey, I liked reading Gender Trouble this summer), I feel a bit at sea--it's been a long time since I was in a specifically "theoretical" mindset. I think that there's theory implicit in a lot of my research, and I'm not looking to just drop some Derrida references in my Chaucer article, or anything like that. But when I'm asked point-blank--as I have been, in a job talk and at an MLA interview--about which theorists inform or are useful to my research, I can feel the Blank Stare of Doom settling across my brow. Or eyes. Whatever.
Anyway, so now that the MS is revised (for yes! It is in the copy center as I type, awaiting mailing), one of my next Intellectual Projects, I think, should be to read some scholarship that approaches medieval literature from an overtly theoretical standpoint. Just to see what's out there.
Here's the question, then. Any suggestions? Broadly speaking, my work is on Middle English literature, dream visions, hagiography, and visionary texts (keeping this deliberately wide open). I am somewhat, though probably insufficiently, familiar with Amy Hollywood's stuff, and I read Dinshaw's Getting Medieval ages ago (I can't remember it very clearly). Anything else come to mind as a good example of theoretically informed medieval literary scholarship?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)