I’m so far behind Sunday, Feb 18 2007 

academia and movies thisgaudygildedstage 8:05 pm

I haven’t been able to blog all week, despite the fact that I’ve had several posts I’d like to have written. I spent the first part of the week participating in another seven-year review, this time for the School of Telecommunications. Like the Math review, it’s really interesting to meet people from other departments and see how they do some parts of our jobs differently than my department does. All of the people in T-Comm seem really cool.

Richard CumberlandAfter that, I had to start writing my paper for a conference I’m attending this coming week. I’ll be going to the Group for Early Modern Cultural Studies in Chicago. It really sucks that my panel isn’t until Sunday. I’m leaving on Wednesday, though, so I can do a little research at the Newberry Library and see some of the sights while I’m in Chicago. I’m now almost finished writing my paper, which is on Richard Cumberland’s The Jew, a 1794 sentimental comedy. (This is Cumberland’s portrait on the left.) I’ve really enjoyed working on it. This is one of two texts that got me interested in my current book project in the first place, so it’s fun to return to the play and write about it finally.

On Friday, I attended a friend’s colloquium, and several of us went out afterwards. Unfortunately, I was also getting sick, so I didn’t really feel like taking part in too much of the conversation at either event. But the colloquium went well and having drinks and dinner afterwards was a lot of fun. The best part was when, in response to my bringing up John Cameron Mitchell’s Shortbus, two of our friends started talking about the words “fellatio” and “cunnilingus.” This past weekend was parents’ weekend here at OU, and two parents were having dinner with their son at a table nearby. Let’s just say that they didn’t appreciate hearing about fellatio over dinner, but no one at our table besides PJ and I seemed to notice. As one friend kept saying “fellatio” over and over again, the mother behind us kept trying to get our attention by loudly saying, “We’re eating … we’re eating dinner here … Some of us are trying to eat dinner …..” It was hilarious! We rteally thought that our tallest friend was about to get accosted by an angry mother.

But all that “fun” has kept me from blogging. Last weekend, PJ and I saw Pan’s Labyrinth, which was really good — not great, in my opinion, but really good. It’s about a little girl who “escapes into an eerie but captivating fantasy world” in 1944 fascist Spain. It’s not one of my favorite films of the year, but it’s definitely worth seeing. Here’s the trailer:

Hopefully, I’ll get the chance to catch up on a couple of other posts before I leave on Wednesday.

 

Discourse Communities & Department Strife Sunday, Feb 4 2007 

academia thisgaudygildedstage 2:07 pm

According to Wikipedia, the term discourse community

was first used by sociolinguist Martin Nystrand in 1982, and further developed by American linguist John Swales. Writing about the acquisition of academic writing styles of those who are learning English as an additional language, Swales presents six defining characteristics:

A discourse community:
  1. has a broadly agreed set of common public goals.
  2. has mechanisms of intercommunication among its members.
  3. uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback.
  4. utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance of its aims.
  5. in addition to owning genres, it has acquired some specific lexis.
  6. has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content and discoursal expertise.

James Porter defined the discourse community as: “a local and temporary constraining system, defined by a body of texts (or more generally, practices) that are unified by a common focus. A discourse community is a textual system with stated and unstated conventions, a vital history, mechanisms for wielding power, institutional hierarchies, vested interests, and so on.”

In effect, a discourse community is a group of people who not only share a particular form of communication but are also shaped as a group by that particular form of communication. The students in a class form a discourse community, as do the members of a group on facebook.

Consequently, discourse communities are everywhere. One such community that I’m a part of is my department, hereafter referred to as the “departmental community.” For many of us, our belonging to the departmental community is the primary structuring force in our relationship — I don’t see them or communicate with them outside of this community. But there are also smaller discourse communities within larger ones. There is, for example, a network of “younger” faculty within my department (subsequently referred to as the “new community,” one that includes many (most?) of the people hired within the past decade or so, that also forms a discourse community.

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Working Hard for the Money Wednesday, Jan 31 2007 

academia thisgaudygildedstage 3:20 pm

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!

 

Feminists, Conservatives, and Old Farts Sunday, Jan 21 2007 

academia and research thisgaudygildedstage 3:19 pm

John DrydenTo 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.

I started reading an article by Jerome Donnelly, a retired professor at the University of Central Florida. His article, entitled “‘A Greater Gust’: Generating the Body in Absalom and Achitophel,” was published in Papers on Language and Literature Vol. 40 in 2004. The article quickly turns into a diatribe against another essay written by Susan Greenfield and published in ELH in 1995 and reprinted as part of a collection of essays entitled Inventing Maternity: Politics, Science, and Literature, 1650-1865 (University Press of Kentucky, 1999). Her essay is “Aborting the ‘Mother Plot’: Politics and Generation in Absalom and Achitophel.”

After reading the first couple of paragraphs of Donnelly’s article, I had to run to the library and check out Greenfield’s essay — his dismissal of her work was so vehement that I knew I had to read her essay first and then come back to his. (My first thought, in fact, was, “This is going to be good!”) In her work, Greenfield examines Dryden’s construction of the maternal in his poem. She concludes that “the poem’s emphasis on David’s promiscuity is gradually replaced by references to a feminine sexual desire and productivity so dangerous that the king appears politically reliable by contrast” (86). In effect, Greenfield argues that Dryden attempts to absolve Charles II’s promiscuous activities, which have, in effect, led to the exclusion crisis, by associating his rebellious son with the feminine and the feminized. She supports her reading with evidence from the period’s political theory (Filmer and Locke, especially) and from a close reading of the poem.

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Can You Be a Voyeur If You’re Narcissistic? Wednesday, Jan 17 2007 

academia and queer culture thisgaudygildedstage 11:46 pm

Note: Parts of this post have been substantially altered since it’s original publication — my continued thinking on this topic ultimately led to a different conclusion and an epiphany.

As the faculty advisor for Open Doors, OU’s undergraduate GLBTAQQT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, ally, queer, questioning, and two-spirited) student union, I attend a couple of the group’s weekly meetings each quarter. Let me say up front that it’s always kind of weird being there: Here I am a 36-year-old professor sitting in a room of mostly 19- and 20-year-old undergraduates — we don’t have a lot in common. Add to that my general shyness and social awkwardness, and we have a generally weird situation. Just to put things in the proper perspective: at least technically, I’m old enough to be most of these undergrads’ father.

So, as I was saying, it’s always a little weird for me to be sitting there mostly listening to their conversations. My weirdest experience was last quarter. Each meeting is divided into announcements and then a discussion; one particular discussion involved a somewhat humorous conversation among the undergraduates about “relationships,” which quickly devolved into a series of sexual revelations: one student talked all about only being a top, another talked about only being a bottom, etc. The more explicit their conversation became, the less comfortable I felt being there, especially since I think the ones saying these things seem so naive and inexperienced. Like most people in their early twenties, they talk as if they’re adults, but I’m increasingly convinced that true adulthood doesn’t start until you’re in your forties (or maybe even later — I’ll let you know when I get there).

Partly, my sense of the weirdness comes from my fear that they’re all wondering who I am sitting there listening to them. While I certainly enjoy the gossipy qualities of the meetings — and I do cyberstalk my favorite former students on facebook (generally with their knowledge and permission) — I worry that in the Open Doors meetings I will come across as some sort of voyeur, which is not at all how I feel while I’m there. Mostly, I’m thankful for my age, experience, and (just to sound completely old) wisdom. I really don’t see how older men can find twinks sustainably attractive. (Not that there’s anything wrong with twinks — we were all twinks before we got old and married!)

The meetings begin with an ice breaker question. Tonight’s question was, what would your superhero name be and what superhero power would you have if you could have one? As usual, I had no idea what to say. If I say anything that could even remotely be turned into a sexual thing, I’ll end up embarrassed and full of all the fears mentioned above. If I say something totally boring, I look like an old professor and therefore evoke all of the fears mentioned above. It’s a can’t win situation in my mind. So, imagine my horror when the most precocious of the undergrads (who’s never had a class with me, btw) turns to me and says that he knows what my superpower would be: the ability to be invisible and walk through walls so that I could spy on my students; my name, he declares, would be “The Voyeur!”

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The Party’s Over Monday, Jan 8 2007 

academia thisgaudygildedstage 1:20 pm

My sabbatical/leave is now officially over. The winter quarter began last week, but today was the first day that I actually had to admit that I’m not on leave any more. It’s sooooo depressing! Getting paid to read, think, and write without actually having to interact with anyone else has been wonderful. Now it’s back to the grind. Oh well.

First, I had to finish up several letters of recommendation. I am finally done with all of the letters that I’ve agreed to write so far. So, I’m glad that I have accomplished that.

Second, I distributed a memo to the members of a committee that I’m chairing. We’ll be reviewing our department’s policies and procedures and creating a set of by-laws, though I want to call the final document our “Policies and Procedures” rather than by-laws. I’ll have to schedule a committee meeting at some point soon, but that can wait a while.

Next, I participated in my department’s seven-year review. Since I’m on the review committees for two departments later this term, I was glad to see how it’s supposed (or not supposed) to work. And my involvement was really limited: all I did was attend an open meeting with the outside reviewer.

And then I went to my first faculty senate meeting since June. When I left the June meeting, I told a couple of my colleagues that I would see them in six months. Now those six months have passed. The meeting was as tedious as usual. Several speakers kept telling us that, since there wasn’t much on the agenda, they would go ahead and tell us about x, y, or z, which meant that each speaker actually spoke longer than usual. So, for a meeting with a short agenda, we had a longer than usual meeting. On the one hand, I love being involved and knowing what’s going on. And I do really feel obliged to participate in faculty governance and service. On the other hand, these meetings are tedious and I can’t help but wonder why we spend so much of the time discussing minutia. But ultimately all I have to do is sit and listen, so there’s not that much to complain about.

Now that I’m back at work, the important question is: what did I accomplish?

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What Do I Want to Be When I Grow Up? Tuesday, Nov 21 2006 

academia and books and queer culture and teaching thisgaudygildedstage 11:05 pm

Recently, I started reading Wayne Hoffman’s novel, Hard. Since I haven’t finished it yet, I don’t want to review it or even write too much about it now. But it’s raised a couple of issues for me that I thought I’d record and reflect on here.

The novel is (partly) about Moe Pearlman, a New Yorker who is on a crusade to preserve his right/opportunity to engage in promiscuous sex in various venues as a conservative mayor (in league with another crusading gay man) works to shut down all of the bathhouses, sex clubs, and adult theaters where Moe indulges his desires. So, in sum, it’s a book about the ethics of gay sexual freedom in an age where AIDS still exists but in which its power to frighten gay men and restrict their sexual activities seems to have waned.

My first thought about the book is how it obviously responds to Larry Kramer’s Faggots, a 1978 novel that criticizes 1970s gay male promiscuity. Even a cursory search demonstrates that Kramer has a vexed reputation in the gay community. He is often dimissed as simply anti-sex. In reviewing Hard, Christopher Bram explicitly compares these two novels and repeats the usual criticism of Kramer and his novel. I have to admit that I love Faggots and now teach it annually in my GLBT Lit course. It’s definitely not a simple novel, nor is it simply anti-sex, in my opinion.

Thinking about the relationship between these two novels made me think about teaching Hoffman’s novel as a response to Kramer’s. I think these two books would work well together, with Angels in America spliced in between. Teaching these three works together would raise interesting issues about sexual freedom, responsibility, relationships, and AIDS, just to name a few. The biggest drawback might be that each of these works is a little long, so it might become difficult to schedule them without taking time away from the lesbian authors I’d also want to teach in the class. (But that’s not an issue I have to think about now.)

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Writing Recommendation Letters Friday, Nov 17 2006 

academia and teaching thisgaudygildedstage 2:28 pm

It’s recommendation season, and I’m swamped with letters to write. In general, I like writing these letters about as much as I like grading (ugh!). It’s not a genre of writing that we’re really trained in. Plus, sometimes I end up writing letters for students that I’m not totally behind, which is difficult, since I don’t want to lie and say a student is wonderful if I really think that s/he is only mediocre. But I’m a sucker that way; I find it difficult to say no, especially if I feel that I’m someone’s last resort.

But this year is different. All of the people I’m writing for — 3 MA or former MA students and 5 or 6 undergraduates — are all students I believe in, which perhaps makes it all the more difficult. I want to write them each the best letter I can, because I really think they deserve to go on to a graduate program. I certainly don’t want to be the reason one of them doesn’t get to do what s/he wants to do.

As I write these particular letters, however, I find myself getting into a funk, especially as I write some of the undergraduates’ recommendations. There’s a group of them that I’m really quite fond of, and now they’re all graduating. For the first time, I feel the cyclical nature of being a professor: every few years, a new crop of undergraduates show up, stick around for a while, and then graduate.

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“We Other Victorians” Thursday, Nov 2 2006 

academia thisgaudygildedstage 11:07 pm

Tonight was the first meeting of my department’s new 19th-century reading group. My current project will extend into the 19th century, so I’ve decided to use this group as an opportunity to reconnect with the period. I am reminded that, as an undergraduate, I specialized in 19th-century European history in my course work, and I took a few 19th-century lit courses as a graduate student. Last year, I chaired a search committee to hire a Victorianist. So, I look forward to this reconnection.

The meeting went very well. We read an essay about periodization and whether there really was a “Victorian period.” The conversation was a lot of fun, and I think we all look forward to our next meeting in January.

One of the things that struck me about the article was that many of the phenomena the writer discusses actually “began” (if debates about or issues of class, gender, empire, sexuality, science, state power, etc. can ever really be said to “begin” in any particular period) in the 18th century.

During the search last year, I frequently joked with my colleagues about the idea of the long 18th century, the idea that the 18th century extends from about 1649 or 1660 to about 1820 or 1832, depending on who’s making the argument. Now I wonder if the 18th century shouldn’t be even longer — perhaps to the 1850s!

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Passion, Teaching, and Gerald Graff Saturday, Oct 28 2006 

academia and teaching thisgaudygildedstage 2:54 pm

As I mentioned in my first post, one of my goals during my sabbatical has been to begin reconnecting with my passion for teaching. I’m now in the second phase of my career, that huge void between being a beginning professor and nearing the end of one’s career. I don’t want my teaching to become stale. As a student, I saw many professors in this second stage lose interest in teaching. I want to imbue this next part of my career with passion. I love teaching and I love most of what I teach; I want my students to see that love, even if they don’t always share it.

Until recently this process of reconnecting has focused on specific teaching methods and assignments that I would like to integrate into my classes. For example, when I teach Restoration and 18thC classes in the future, I would like to assign my students to keep commonplace books; I then want to connect their commonplacing with reflection on processes of self-fashioning and self-discovery in the period and in their own writing. I also plan to have these students use Johnson’s Dictionary to keep track of key words from the period on a weekly basis. (These words may also lead us to potential topics for their commonplace books.) In other words, I want to synthesize the kinds of assignments I require my students to complete with the kinds of texts and issues generated in the period we’re studying.

Now I’m moving into a second phase of my thinking about my teaching: reading and reflecting on published pedagogical work by other scholars. So, this will be the first of perhaps many posts about teaching. (Of course, once I return to the classroom in late March these posts will probably be less theoretical and more about the day-to-day aspects of my teaching experience, but we’ll see.)

I’ve just finished reading Gerald Graff’s “Toward a New Consensus: The Ph.D. in English,” which is included in a collection of essays entitled Envisioning the Future of Doctoral Education: Preparing Stewards of the Discipline, Carnegie Essays on the Doctorate. This collection is the outgrowth of The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. My attention was brought to this particular essay because I am looking for potential articles to propose for my department’s new colloquium on teaching series, which will commence in January. I also know two faculty members at Texas A&M University who have been participating in the Carnegie Foundation’s initiative on the doctorate.

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