Persistence

I just spent some time helping a student find some early modern texts. S/he'd "looked" but hadn't found many on the list s/he'd put together from another resource of texts that might be useful. And so I helped.

There are tricks to finding early modern texts. You have to be willing to play fast and loose with spelling, and switching "v" and "u" typographically (along with "i" and "J" and "w" and "vv"; the name "doubleyou" makes a lot more sense when I think about "u" and "v" being different back then.)

But the most important trick is that you have to be willing to try this and that in different ways; you have to be willing to bang your head about the search engine (and praise be for search engines, because it's softer than banging my head against a card catalog!) for a while.

I know my students have to learn to be persistent about research. But these are the same students who probably parse their dps in WoW or tell me the exact ERA for their favorite pitcher or tell me exactly which shade of nail polish J.Lo wears. The information they care about, they'll put in the time to find or figure out.

The good thing is that I get to feel a little useful.

Those Stepping Stone Assignments

I think a lot of us who teach writing in various forms have developed stepping stone assignments along the path for bigger essays. For example, we might require a research question(s), bibliography, annotated bibliography, response to an essay, abstract, draft(s), and so on.

In theory, these are a great idea. They do help students avoid procrastination at least somewhat.

But when they all pile on my desk, even if I just need to take a quick look and put a checkmark, they really add up.

Eep.

Moving

I taught the first day of Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun today, which means I reread it just before teaching to prep. I've liked the play pretty well since the first time I read it, and I've found it wonderful to teach, but it was even better this time. I was pondering my response, since I was almost in tears in my office (you should see me when I merely pick up a copy of Cyrano). I think the thing that's changed for me is that my father has died, and I've seen my mother's loss, and I've thought long and hard about what it means to get and/or spend money left through someone else's death. (My Great Aunt also died and our family friend Hillis.)

There's a scene in the play when a white man (Karl Lindner) from the neighborhood "welcoming committee" comes to the Younger apartment to convince them to sell the house they've just gotten a mortgage on rather than moving into the all white neighborhood. When Lindner comes to the door, the husband and wife, Walter Lee and Ruth, are dancing to some music, and Walter Lee's sister, Beneatha, answers the door. She turns to mouth to the couple dancing that there's a white man at the door, and they turn off the music and recompose themselves before Walter Lee introduces himself as the man of the house.

I think there's something absolutely brilliant in that little moment. There's an African American family, just relaxing and being a family happy for having bought a house, and then a white man comes, and the family immediately stages itself anew for this white audience, this white interloper. They suddenly play at being "respectable for a white audience" and drop the sense of homeness.and relaxation.

And Lindner is coming to tell them that it's not a racial prejudice issue, but the whites in the new neighborhood really don't want a Black family moving in. His insistence that it's not a "racial prejudice" issue brings out the racial prejudice point, of course.

And then we step back. Here we are in the audience, probably, in 1959, and maybe even today on Broadway, a mostly white audience, watching an African American cast stage itself for us in a play by an African American woman (and originally directed by an African American director, I think). We're watching the staging of blackness, the performance of blackness, and it redoubles the experience because the play stages blackness for a mostly white audience, and that blackness is about respectability and what it means to be Black in a white dominated society.

I love metadrama, where a play talks about itself as drama, or talks about all our experience as being dramatic. But this moment goes beyond that pleasure and really asks the audience to think about the staging of blackness and what it means to play blackness in a white theater tradition. We get to see what seems on one level to be a "real" African American home, but it's a staged African American home; we can't get the real in the theater, but we're reminded again of how much staging is often involved in our relations, especially between members of dominant and non-dominant groups. We're asked to identify with Lindner for this passage, and to think about our own racism, too.

And yet, of course, on another level, it's not really about me at all, right? If I imagine an audience made primarily of people of color, then I can't put my white dominant self at the center.

I love when a moment in art can totally make me feel and think at the same time, when it moves me to sadness and anger and hope and thoughtfulness.

Late Adopter

In the senior seminar, the students are (I hope) hard at work on their papers. At any rate, they have a stepping-stone assignment due tomorrow, so yesterday we were talking about paper writing strategies.

One of the strategies I picked up during grad school, when I began word processing on a computer that could actually open two files at the same time (Go Amiga!) was to have a second file open while I was writing, and every time I'd use a reference in the essay or chapter, I'd tab to the second file and add it in to the work cited list in the proper alphabetical order. That meant that I wasn't trying to figure out the works cited at 7:50 am to turn in at 8am.

So, I was telling my students about this and suggesting they could also use something such as Endnote, and one of my students raised his hand and asked why I don't use the function in Word that handles works cited.

I'd never even noticed that, but it seems to be new with the new Word program! And it's cool! We played with it for a few minutes in class (I can project my computer screen in the classroom) so that everyone knew the basics of where to find it and how to get started. Other than that one student, none of them seemed to know about this function.

They were laughing at me because I was so excited. Indeed, there was no hiding my excitement. (They all should have been equally excited.) I'm just a nerd. Except I'm a late adopter nerd, which is really unimpressive.

How did I miss this? Laziness is part of it; I just use what I've used as long as I can get away with it. I still do control keys mostly, because I type a LOT faster if I don't have to move my hand to the side to use a mouse. But I also looked, and my old Word program on my laptop has nothing like this, and I do a lot of word processing at home. (My computer at home is from 2002, so it's got whatever program was available then.) Is it worth trying to upgrade a 7 year old laptop? Could it even run the newer program? (A new laptop is not in the budget.)

Naive at the Theater?

Some of my students recently went to a play we'd read for class and then wrote a response to it. Some of them are acting majors; others have never been to the theater before, so there's an interesting range of responses.

A couple of the responses talked about how helpful it was to go to the play after they'd read it, because they got so much more out of it. And that response got me to thinking.

Pretty much all plays are written for an original naive audience, that is, and audience that hasn't read the play. It's unlikely that folks in Shakespeare's audience had read a play before seeing it. And today, the first audience for a play probably hasn't read it.

So there's a sort of very special occasion when the audience hasn't read the play. Yes, the audience likely knew the story of Henry V well before they saw it; and the opening of Romeo and Juliet pretty much gives the plot away anyway, but seeing it would still offer surprises. But it's still a very special occasion; no one knows the jokes ahead of time or is waiting for their favorite line. No one is dreading the Macduff household slaughter or waiting for Hermione's statue to come to life.

I've never been part of an audience at a play opening like that; I can't even imagine the excitement.

I have been to plays I hadn't read and didn't know. I remember going to Cyrano, the first play I saw (as part of a junior high school, take the kids to the big city for a matinee program), expecting that Cyrano would "get the girl" (because that's how TV always worked), and then... well, I won't tell you what happens.

When you haven't read the play, you get certain pleasures in the surprises, in the turns, in the language and staging, and I don't know that you can get quite those pleasures if you've read the play before.

On the other hand, if you've read the play, you get the pleasures of anticipation, of thinking about how the production reinterprets the play for you, how embodying the characters changes everything from your imagination.

I have a vague sense that the difference is bigger for students who haven't seen many plays before than for those who've had more experience seeing plays. What do you folks think?

Marginal Comments

First Paper: Interesting idea; will your readers agree? Develop this point to greater depth. Cite your sources, please. Do you have evidence?

Second Paper: Cite your sources, please. Gram: dangling modifier; come ask and I'll explain. Number your pages, please. Develop this example further? Good point!

Third Paper: Is this your thesis? Evidence? Good example. Cite your sources.

Fourth Paper: Interesting, develop? Number your pages, please. Indent new paragraphs.

Fifth Paper: Thesis? Gram: run on sentence; use a semi-colon or a connecting word. Cite your sources. Can you develop this point further?

Sixth Paper: Develop example to bring out your point. Gram: fragment; use a comma to avoid the fragment. Number pages. Gram: dangling modifier; come ask and I'll explain.

Seventh Paper: Confusing sentence. Number pages. Cite sources. Gram: run on sentence; use a semi-colon or connecting word.

Eighth Paper: Thesis! Cite sources. Gram: fragment; use a comma. Number pages.

Ninth Paper: Gram: run on. Number pages. Evidence? Gram: dangling modifier. Really? Indent Para.

Tenth Paper: Example? Gram: fragment. Can you develop this example to make the point stronger?

Eleventh Paper: Cite sources. Evidence? Dev. point. # pages. Dangling modifier.

Twelfth Paper: Gram: frag. Cite. Dev. Example? Indent.

Thirteenth Paper: Cite. Ev? Run on. # pages.

Fourteenth Paper: Cite! Frag. Dev? Ex?

Fifteenth Paper: Thesis? Frag! # pgs. Really? Cite! Indent!

And, now I'm half-way done with the stack.

More Lit

(Does it help if I acknowledge that this isn't early modern?)

(Maybe if I redid the speech thing to say, "Meine begriffsstutzig Kindern!"?)

Stick Figure Game!

I have a feeling his arms wouldn't fit within the Da Vinci circle figure thing. He's got what climbers call a positive ape index (or something like that).

Nonetheless, this is the lit of the day! Enjoy!

Missing Notes

As part of my ancilliary duties for being stupid enough to offer to be secretary to a rotating committee I got put on because someone else refused to do his/her job, I get to be chair of another committee. I seriously would not have offered to be secretary of the other committee if I'd known, because it's a change, but oh well.

This is the "Oh Hell the Future is Upon Us, Crap!" committee, which is responsible for worrying about the future of the department. The Oh committee, as I'll call it as part of my rebellion against the ever-increasing acronyms around here, is actually supposed to do some important stuff, stuff like making decisions (or recommendations to the chair and dean) about tenure-line hiring.

I waited to get this committee going this fall until we'd had our meeting with the new Assistant Headmaster about where things are going; we had that meeting, and now we need to get started deciding where we want to go, strategically and tactically.

So, I made up the agenda this morning; if you've done committee work, you know that the first thing on the agenda of most committees is approving the notes of the last meeting of the committee. At NWU, we keep our notes on an alphabet drive, so I went to the alphabet drive, and found the committee folder (I love the idea of a computer folder, by the way).

The last thing put in the folder was an agenda from spring 2008. Yes, spring 2008.

There are no other minutes or agendas (ae?) for the whole of that academic year. None. Nada. That means there's no record of the decision to do our last round of searches, no record of a decision not to search this fall, nothing. Did the committee meet last year? Got me.

This lack of committee records is pretty common around here. It's like people think that they were at the meeting and that's all that matters. But every so often, it really helps to be able to look back and see what was done, what issues came up, even in the most sparse and undetailed way.

I don't think this is about hiding things, but about being lazy and careless, but it irritates me nonetheless. The longer I'm around, and the more I need to lead committees, the more irritating it is. (I'm sure I've been guilty of not getting notes posted, too.)

Professor Fail

I'm reading along, and I get to this:

X: What hast been -- of what profession?

Y: A bone setter.

X: A bone setter!

Y: A bawd, my lord. One that sets bones together.


I'm not getting it. I get the idea that a bawd puts bodies together, and that bodies have bones, and Y has been carrying around his dead fiance's skull and all.

Is there more to the joke?

(The OED shows "boner" in the sense of an erection first in 1962. Bone-ache as a sign of STD is recorded in the 14th century, but that seems to be about whole-body bone aching, rather than sexual.)

Recommendations Rant

I'm writing recommendations today.

Back when I started, I could pretty much do a set of recommendations in an hour or two. I'd start by writing a letter, and then I'd fine tune the letter for each of the schools by changing the address and the name of the program as I'd print out copies. Even so, to get the first page on letterhead and the others not (if more than one page, which most aren't) means I have to print each document twice, making sure to change which tray the paper comes out of on the printer, then go to the printer in the department office, collate and make sure the right pages were together, then type an envelop (because feeding an envelop from another room doesn't seem to work well), and go back to my office to do the next one.

Now, half the programs want a standard letter and half want me to fill in something special via the web. I CAN cut and paste, but the specificity of the questions means that the basic letter I've written won't necessarily cut and paste well. Yes, the paragraph about how long and in what capacity I've known the student basically does, but the others, not so much.

Each grad school has it's own web thing (if they have it), and the web thing sends me an automatic email about how to get in.

And every automatic email gets read by our system as spam, so I have to check our spam box to make sure I don't have vital emails dumped in there. (I still get a variety of male-oriented medication and enhancement ads in the regular in-box, though, and also a really enticing financing offer from Nigeria.)

One of my students has complicated things a bit by not deciding what sort of grad program s/he wants to go into yet. Imagine, for example, a biology undergrad who can't decide if s/he wants to go into a PhD program in crop-plant genetics, or one in large mammal wildlife management, or maybe med school. How much do I tweak the letter for each? Do I talk about my experience teaching this student's microbiology lab? Do I talk about their project in deer population control through culling? It's like that.

Part of me enjoys this student's limitless enthusiasm, but part of me worries that s/he doesn't really have a sense of the commitment it takes to do graduate work and keep plugging on at a dissertation through all the funding hassles and hoop-jumping. But then, I sure didn't know how much commitment and just plain stubborness it would take for me to get through, and here I am.

It does feel awkward to be doing two separate recommendation forms to different programs in the same department at the same grad school, though.

I guess I should get started and quit complaining.

Dangeral Studies

Like many colleges and universities, we have some fields of studies that aren't actual departments, but field offices. Unlike departments here, field offices don't necessarily have a separate budget, staff support, an office (yeah, the irony), representation in governance, etc.

There's an idea over in the administrative fort that we should combine all the field offices into a single department.

Historically, our field offices got started whenever someone would recognize that there's an interdisciplinary field and we're not doing it but we should, but we don't want to put any money in, and besides, faculty from all different areas across campus can teach in the field studies, because "we" don't actually recognize this as a real academic area worthy of funding and tenure lines.

Typical field studies offices have names such as: Black Studies, Women's Studies, Asian Studies, and so forth. You get the idea. They represent marginalized groups that suddenly got recognized by white administrations in response to some state or federal funding opportunity or mandate.

So, now the fort wants to combine them all into one department. It would, so to speak, give the fields a "chair at the table" for governance and funding decisions, and that would be good. On the other hand, it makes little sense to combine these disparate fields into one department. That difficulty is easy to see when you try to think of a name for the department.

Here are some we've come up with: Department of the Othered; Department of Not-White Men.

My favorite plays with Michael Berube's Dangeral Studies; imagine, a department of Dangeral Studies! The white male Marxists would clamour to get in! Heck, maybe someone from chemistry who likes explosives could teach a team teach a special course in activism!

Think of the reaction over in criminality studies! And over in business!

A Poem for Grading

Nor the wit nor the wile
But the size of the pile
Most engenders despair.

Historicity

My campus is having a "15th century" dinner in "the spirit of Elizabethan times," including potatoes and coffee.

Claude Levi-Strauss

One of my students told me today that Levi-Strauss had died.

I feel so far out of all loops; a student told me because we were talking about theories of desire. I hadn't heard about it in the department or anything.

Ranting about Profs

I occasionally check a discussion board from an on-line community I used to be part of, mostly to see the old names and what folks are up to. Most of these folks are younger than I, and right now there's quite a rant up from one member about a horrid college prof s/he has. Of course, a couple people then responded by adding their own horror stories.

Some of these stories sound really bad; others sound like a prof said something a bit uninformed, and the student knows better, and now thinks the prof is an idiot. I know I've done that. (What the heck was the 30 years war really about? How did it start?) (And, to be honest, don't a fair number of 18 year olds think older women are idiots anyway, just for existing and not doing their laundry?)

But when I think back, I can think of maybe two or three profs I had who were sort of bad, but no horror stories. I had a prof for Fortran who basically read off overheads for every lecture; our text was a photocopy set of all the overhead slides. Not great, but I did manage to learn some Fortran. Then I had a genetics class for which the profs (one of whom is very famous) basically lectured from their textbook, complete with slides taken from their textbook, in a large, darkened lecture hall at 1pm. It wasn't that they were awful or uninteresting, but everything combined to make it hard to stay awake. (You know these folks are all doing the same thing in powerpoint now, right?)

I had a couple others who were boring, or worse, got off topic and went on for a bit about other stuff. (I avoided enrolling in a class where the prof was reputed to spend 45 minutes trying to take roll.)

But true horror stories? Nothing I can think of that would qualify. But maybe time has whitewashed my memory?

I feel sorry for the folks on that board if their profs really are that bad. And I know one poor prof can stand out even though most are pretty good.