I think this will set the right tone for this post:
About a year ago, another eighteenth-centuryist and I talked about the “fact” that eighteenth-centuryists have a history of becoming department administrators–chairs, graduate directors, undergraduate directors, etc. In her department, both the chair and the graduate chair are eighteenth-centuryists; my senior colleague is our department’s undergraduate director. This conversation was, in part, about my likelihood of someday becoming an administrator–do I want to; if so, when; what kind of administrator, etc.?
For as long as I remember, I’ve liked to be in charge of things and, if I can’t be in charge, I at least want to know what’s going on, why it’s going on, and how it’s happening. This has led me to accumulate a sizable record of department, college, and university service in my first 7 years as a faculty member at OU. Take this month, for example. I just finished up the site visit for a department’s 7-year review, which took two days. I’ll help with another department’s review in two weeks. Both of these will result in 5-page reports that I’ll have to help write. I’m also participating in near weekly meetings of a faculty senate committee and the monthly meeting of the faculty senate. I’m coordinating the annual review of my department chair, and I’m coordinating the review of my department’s current policies and procedures. I present a colleague’s tenure case to the department on Friday and will probably serve on at least one college promotion and tenure committee in late February. I’m also writing an article and a conference paper for a conference in late February. I am exhausted, yet I’m only at the beginning of most of this work!
But I’m not complaining. One of the things that I learned in conducting the 7-year review earlier this week is that I enjoy this kind of stuff. I enjoy participating in administration, and I love knowing what’s what. It’s fascinating to see how another department, which is fairly comparable to mine in size, scope, and programs manages itself in ways that are sometimes similar to my department and sometimes quite different. It also fascinating to see how members of other departments either do or do not get along with one another. I definitely learned this week that my department has it really good in some ways and that we’re much worse off than this other department in other ways. It’s a whole new level of information and involvement. It was exhausting, but I really enjoyed being able to do it.
I don’t know when or even if I’ll become an administrator in my department. I think I have a lot of the requisite skills, knowledge, and experience to be a good administrator, but I’m not sure I’ll seem old enough when the next round of administrative turnover happens.
But either way, I’m not going to sweat it too much right now. I’m enjoying my current level of participation, and that’s all that really matters. In the meantime, I’ll keep singing along to Donna Summer and (metaphorically) dancing the streets!
The lead actor in this film is actually McAvoy, pictured here in a promotion shot for the Toronto Film Festival. He is the heart and soul of this story, and McAvoy does an excellent job showing us how and why his character can become involved with Amin and then slowly realize all of his mistakes in doing so. He manages to embody his character with an idealism that seems genuine, especially as we come to see it as based, at least in part, on a fundamental racism. He wants to “make a difference” in Africa, but he knows nothing about the continent or the nation of Uganda. His idealism is ultimately exposed as naivete.
The touring company production was pretty good, but I’m not a fair critic — I’m as irrational in my love for Don Quixote de la Mancha, Aldonza, and Sancho Panza as I am in my love for Luke, Leia, and Darth Vader. Like Star Wars, La Mancha was one of my childhood obsessions.
I chose him as my first hottie of the month for three reasons. First, just look at him in his portrait (by 
To help me with an article I’m writing, I spent part of yesterday reading two articles about John Dryden’s 1681 poem, Absalom and Achitophel, a satire written during the so-called exclusion crisis, an effort to exclude Catholics from the throne of England. In this poem, Dryden (pictured here) uses Biblical history — the story of David and his rebellious son Absalom — as a metaphor for the current English situation of Charles II and his rebellious son, James Scot, duke of Monmouth. While the particulars of this research probably aren’t of much interest to anyone but me, I soon became fascinated by the gender politics of the scholars themselves and what this politics means about the state of literary criticism.
Fun Home is, on one level, Bechdel’s effort to come to terms with her father, a high school English teacher/funeral home director in small town Pennsylvania who also restores old homes to museum-like quality on the side. Already strained, their relationship is made more complicated by the fact that Alison’s father is hiding a substantial secret, one that she only discovers after leaving home for college. Part homage to her father, part indictment of him, Fun Home is both the particular story of these two characters’ relationship and a universal story of the constant renegotiation of the parent-child relationship as the child grows into adulthood.
The movie is about a kid named Nick, played by Ruben Bansie-Snellman (pictured here), who is a homeless graffiti artist in Portland, Oregon. In the larger sense, the movie traces the effects of the city’s efforts to cut down on such graffiti by arresting the artists and charging them with a felony. Nick is arrested early in the film and decides to skip town in order to avoid the fine and community service. He goes to Seattle, where he runs into Jesse, played by Pepper Fajans, another artist who’s from a middle class family. Where Nick has made a life for himself by stealing food and sleeping in alleys, Jesse pays for everything he wants and has his own small apartment. Nick believes in graffiti art for graffiti art’s sake; Jesse sells pictures of his art to magazines.
![IMG_8341[1]](https://live.staticflickr.com/8644/27753735444_2ca20d29d0_s.jpg "IMG_8341[1]")
This Gaudy Gilded Stage 