tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-55541762011-04-21T21:53:47.193-04:00"One's household opera never palls or fails." -- James Merrill<br> Being the blog of a newly Ph.D.'d literature geek looking for a career outside the classroom.</p>Amandanoreply@blogger.comBlogger1051100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-10697310684840782003-11-24T22:31:00.000-05:002004-02-07T11:42:18.700-05:00

I've taken the plunge and moved to TypePad. I'm still experimenting with the layout, the link options, and the possibility of importing all the old posts from here, but come over and check out this blog's new home anyway, and tell me what you think of the three-column layout and the new color scheme. Whee! Excitement! And now I'm going to go avoid grading. Yet again.

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1069481443288326352003-11-22T01:10:00.000-05:002004-02-07T11:42:47.936-05:00

"In a book I recently read by Peter Cameron, The City of Your Final Destination, (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2002), the protagonist, an advanced doctoral student, answers a question this way: 'I don't really know. ... I can't really speak intelligently about it. It isn't my field.' The person with whom he's speaking answers, 'I have noticed this: this hesitation to speak about anything outside of

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1069438305501087852003-11-21T13:11:00.000-05:002004-02-07T11:43:21.796-05:00

I admit to having fiddled with my answers a couple of times to get Quizilla to tell me this: You are Jacques Lacan! Arguably the most important psychoanalyst since Freud, you never wrote anything down, and the only works of yours are transcriptions of your lectures. You are notoriously difficult to understand, but at least you didn't talk about the penis as much as other psychoanalysts. You died

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1069397082129446492003-11-21T01:44:00.000-05:002004-02-07T11:43:48.623-05:00

Readers who are academics — in fact, any readers who've had a college education and remember what ends of terms were like — will know what I mean when I say that it's now the point of the semester when everyone has turned into a zombie. Faculty look harried and hollow-eyed, and students can't seem to stay awake in class. Everyone has too much to do. I've got a stack of grading to get done before

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1068757250294114152003-11-13T16:00:00.000-05:002004-02-07T11:44:30.780-05:00

Thought the first: Last night I went to a dinner with a bunch of people from my department (mostly grad students), and ended up talking with one of them about Victorian poetry and the weird, seductive appeal of poets like Algernon Charles Swinburne.* "Well," I said, "I'm glad someone else likes Swinburne — although I have to admit that half the time I can't pay attention to what his poems

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1068648482612575102003-11-12T10:22:00.000-05:002004-02-07T11:45:39.826-05:00

(Disclaimer: I am not an economist or a political scientist. Metaphors, some of them mixed, ahead. You've been forewarned.) So I was at the grocery store doing my weekend grocery shopping, and as I handed the checkout guy the two cloth totebags I always bring (because if you go to the grocery store on the bus, as I do, it's easier to haul groceries in a couple of sturdy capacious bags that can

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1068398146406157972003-11-09T12:15:00.000-05:002004-02-07T11:46:22.200-05:00

Via Making Contact comes the question: which books would you grab if the stormtroopers were marching into your town? I like this question because it encourages one to think not of a specific number of books, but of however many will fit into a backpack. And of which books one not only likes best, but would want to save from ruin. Here's my list (sorry, no photo): John Ashbery, Houseboat Days and

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1068340231111362332003-11-08T20:10:00.000-05:002004-02-07T11:47:25.810-05:00

I'm watching tonight's total lunar eclipse from my bedroom window right this very moment. Almost total... almost total... last unshadowed sliver of moon hanging in there, just barely... Seas of Tranquility et al. still visible in the shadowed part... oh, there it goes! It looks sort of coppery, only not. And I'm glad I got to see that without having to go outside, because it's cold as the

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1068145830868896692003-11-06T14:10:00.000-05:002004-02-07T11:47:53.030-05:00

My big pile of grading? Is done. Done done done. I just handed back the last of the papers. Whoohoo! But while I was still grading a couple of days ago, I took a quick bookstore break, and saw that the New York Public Library has produced a kit for organizing your home library: it consists of a book with advice about classification systems, cataloguing, bookshelf-buying, preservation, and the

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1067994309199215882003-11-04T20:05:00.000-05:002004-02-07T11:48:39.733-05:00

From Apt. 11D (entry on "The Academic Life"), and from Rhubarb and Planned Obsolescence, comes the question: why don't academic bloggers post more about their personal lives? Rhubarb comments, "So much of our personal lives are eclipsed by our academic identities that we sometimes don't even know how to just act like people around our colleagues," and Laura adds "Why don't more academic bloggers

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1067898112365937452003-11-03T17:21:00.000-05:002004-02-07T11:51:12.420-05:00

I've been doing heavy grading this weekend, and therefore heavy Mozart-listening while I grade (though tonight I may be frantic and nervy enough to want to switch to Bach). So it was a pleasure to see, during a quick spin through Crooked Timber, that Chris Bertram has posted about small- and large-scale productions of Così fan Tutte and the question of why more people aren't into opera. Pity

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1067715177151033672003-11-01T14:32:00.000-05:002004-02-07T11:51:47.890-05:00

Everyone with even the slightest interest in typography must read these short-short stories featuring fonts as characters by novelist Aimee Bender. I want to read about the adventures of Garamond, Goudy, and Bembo next. Oh, and Verdana. This appealed both to my obsession with fonts and to my obsession with names and naming. One of my Fantasy Careers is "person in charge of naming new perfumes."

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1067547658411071792003-10-30T16:00:00.000-05:002004-02-07T11:53:18.856-05:00

All week I've been going around with a cloud of gloom over my head. My classes dragged and halted and never quite picked up momentum. The students looked almost as unenthused as I felt. Like several others, I found myself thinking about burnout. The weather was heavily overcast, drizzly and raw, and thanks to the changeover to Daylight Savings Time, twilight began to arrive an hour earlier, so my

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1067097197119246282003-10-25T11:53:00.000-04:002004-02-07T11:54:43.403-05:00

"What happens when an English phrase is translated (by computer) back and forth between 5 different languages?" See for yourself at Lost in Translation. I tried it with the opening line of Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway — "Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself" — and (after translations back and forth into Japanese, Chinese, Korean, French, German, and Italian) got back "The

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1066881191145475702003-10-22T23:53:00.000-04:002004-02-07T11:55:28.373-05:00

Via epicrisis: the First Lines "sort of literacy test." Read the opening line, name the novel. I didn't do too shabbily in the "English Lit." category (duh) or the "Voices of Women" category or, oddly enough given that the American novel isn't my field, the American literature category. But only 6 out of 15 in the "Translation" category? I'm slipping. I was amused to realize that the science

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1066539992624888122003-10-20T16:03:00.000-04:002004-02-07T11:56:52.513-05:00

This weekend I ran into my friend T. and we had coffee and talked about things career-related, as we've been wont to do lately. She's a year behind me in the Ph.D. program, working on her dissertation and hoping to wrap things up before too long. She's also thinking of doing something besides entering the professoriate. I told her about the postdoc opportunity I blogged about on Thursday (I'd

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1066407855578571702003-10-17T12:24:00.000-04:002004-02-07T12:00:03.403-05:00

There's a great thread at little.yellow.different about irrational childhood fears, many of which involve TV moments that weren't originally intended to be scary. I don't think I was ever freaked out by the Muppet Show or the animated Edward Gorey credits on Mystery! (actually, I loved those Gorey cartoons). What did terrify me when I was a kid was that scene from Dumbo where Dumbo gets drunk and

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1066333500239760752003-10-16T15:45:00.000-04:002004-02-07T12:01:14.920-05:00

Poppies in October Even the sun-clouds this morning cannot manage such skirts. Nor the woman in the ambulance Whose red heart blooms through her coat so astoundingly -- A gift, a love gift Utterly unasked for By a sky Palely and flamily Igniting its carbon monoxides, by eyes Dulled to a halt under bowlers. O my God, what am I That these late mouths should cry open In a forest of frost, in a

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1066331833845422962003-10-16T15:17:00.000-04:002004-02-07T12:01:59.000-05:00

This report on library career possibilities for Ph.D.s got me very excited, especially the following: While libraries will always need experts in information management, technology, and business practices, the council [i.e. the Council on Library and Information Resources] also sees a need "for a new type of librarian" who has training in an academic discipline and an understanding of digital

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1065971676368377592003-10-12T11:14:00.000-04:002004-02-07T12:02:32.763-05:00

A post about Blake's "The Ecchoing Green" at frizzyLogic got me thinking about first encounters with poetry. qB writes of the anthology in which she first read Blake's poem that The anthology was called The Dragon Book of Verse - not the edition from the OUP but an older collection, published in 1939. It's been lost, of course, in all the wanderings and dissolutions, which is sad. The smell of it

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1065839258485648352003-10-10T22:27:00.000-04:002004-02-07T12:04:04.640-05:00

This is a brilliant idea: the University of Texas at Austin has developed a program to train graduate students in what they call Intellectual Entrepreneurship or "citizen scholarship." Which means that they encourage doctoral students to apply their expertise to both academic and nonacademic realms. If I'd been able to take interdisciplinary courses on "Academic and Professional Uses of

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1065648302685635912003-10-08T17:25:00.000-04:002004-02-07T12:05:07.576-05:00

Last night's rantings sound a little ridiculous now that I've finished grading the papers and had a night's sleep (more or less; I seem to have acquired a cold, and today I encouraged my students to talk more by warning them that my feeble, croaky, octave-below-normal-range voice was about to give out). 52 down, none to go, and another couple of weeks' respite before the next batch come in. Yay.

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1065571648100046452003-10-07T20:07:00.000-04:002004-02-07T12:05:55.373-05:00

Warning: this is probably the kind of blog entry of which Ms. Mentor would disapprove (er, hi, Ms. Mentor, if you're reading this. For the record, I'm glad you ended that column by advising "Troy" to go on blogging). It consists entirely of self-absorbed whining, it probably makes me look unprofessional as all get-out, and it contains Too Much Information. That said, however... PMS and grading

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1065309063120267852003-10-04T19:11:00.000-04:002004-02-07T12:07:45.653-05:00

...because last night I was watching The Barber of Seville on DVD (Claudio Abbado, 1974) and found myself thinking, "Hey, Figaro really seems to enjoy his job. I wonder if I'll ever find work that makes me enthusiastic enough to get up at dawn and go around singing 'La ra la la ra la la ra la la, largo al factotum della città!'? I wonder what it's like to be a barber? What would it be like to put

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1065308132068753222003-10-04T18:55:00.000-04:002004-02-07T12:14:32.310-05:00

Dissertation publication fee, payable to university cashier: $70.00 Last-minute copying: $0.00 (thank you, generous office copier allocation) Printer's binding fee: $29.63 Pack of cigarettes to calm jittery nerves: $6.95 Being finally, conclusively done with your dissertation, even though you almost missed the deadline and had to beg the requisite office for a meeting so they could do the final

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1065193252048620182003-10-03T11:00:00.000-04:002004-02-07T12:15:10.106-05:00

Interesting poem from Slate: "Saloon Pantoum," by Kathy Fagan. It got me thinking about the pantoum, a form that requires that the second and fourth lines of each four-line stanza become the first and third lines of the next stanza. Wikipedia summarizes all this but adds "one is hard pressed to find good examples." I wouldn't say so; it's a rare form, to be sure, but it's been cropping up more

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1065066876033412102003-10-01T23:54:00.000-04:002004-02-07T12:17:28.796-05:00

This column on the difficulty of teaching the unwilling struck something of a chord. My writing students at Midwestern University aren't like the ones described here; for the most part, they're bright, energetic, and articulate. Some of them even like writing. But I did rather identify with the following: "I'm so fascinated by the subject matter that I can't understand why these students aren't

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1064968955723315272003-09-30T20:42:00.000-04:002004-02-07T12:18:31.686-05:00

The weather reports on the local news and the radio are confirming it: we might get a snow shower this week. It's gotten suddenly colder, and half the students in my Tuesday/Thursday composition section were coughing and hacking this morning. I went to grade at our local Starbucks this afternoon, because although it's an evil corporate chain, it does have an open "fireplace" thingy with a gas

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1064702816365330342003-09-29T16:24:00.000-04:002004-02-07T12:19:53.733-05:00

Amanda, It has come to our attention that in recent weeks, the Inside of Your Head has become a disagreeably noisy and crowded place. We believe that the appropriate course of action would be to set limits on the number of inner voices allowed on the premises at any given time. With this in mind, we submit the following suggestions for your consideration. The Inner Critic should be banned until

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1064583278595580892003-09-26T09:34:00.000-04:002004-02-07T12:21:07.186-05:00

New to the blogroll are three academic blogs I've just come across over the past couple of days: academicgame (pointed observations and commentary by academygirl), Blue (notes on academia and politics, formerly What it Should Be), and The Grey Notebook (on teaching and creative writing in Sweden).

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1064523935087693192003-09-25T17:05:00.000-04:002004-02-07T12:25:44.716-05:00

Yesterday and today I took my composition students to the campus art museum, where I had them choose a work of art and describe it in writing for someone who's never seen it -- an assignment I like because it impels them to concentrate and be specific in their language, but also because it gets us out of the classroom and looking at images for a change. At the museum I ran into a fellow lecturer,

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1064374563668821082003-09-23T23:36:00.000-04:002004-02-07T12:26:22.340-05:00

In every group of composition students I teach at Midwestern U., there invariably seem to be: One student who writes in bright pink ink. At least three students who wear baseball caps all the time, making it somewhat difficult to tell them apart during the first few weeks of the semester, especially if they're all wearing Abercrombie & Fitch sweatshirts. A vast majority in the big

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1064104400137167092003-09-20T20:33:00.000-04:002004-02-07T12:28:25.840-05:00

How could I have missed Talk Like A Pirate Day? [smacks forehead] I am a scurvy bilge rat. Or, more accurately, I'm the Cabin Boy: You are The Cabin Boy You, me lad, are an activist! You will not only change the world, you will make a dyed-in-the-wool Pirate dream of you in a sheep costume. You are the embodiment of the love that dare not hoist its sail! Ahoy thar! You could make a two-patch

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1064018240815731812003-09-19T20:37:00.000-04:002004-02-07T12:29:22.890-05:00

I was thinking of blogging the latest Chronicle first-person article, but Rana got to it first. She makes an interesting point about these articles being a kind of Disneyland "Main Street, USA" version of academic life, offering a not-quite-real appearance of reality. Having been in grad school in English for a while, I immediately thought of Jean Baudrillard, but my copy of Simulacra and

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1063940450300171132003-09-18T23:00:00.000-04:002004-02-07T12:30:57.153-05:00

Found in the commentary on Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind"* at the intriguing Wondering Minstrels poetry archive (you've got to love a poetry archive that includes both Thomas Hardy and Tom Lehrer): Byron and Shelley and Keats Were a trio of lyrical treats. The forehead of Shelley was cluttered with curls, And Keats never was a descendant of earls, And Byron walked out with a number of girls,

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1063743052880138422003-09-16T16:10:00.000-04:002004-02-07T12:32:11.250-05:00

I was at the library a little while ago looking up the list of books I've currently got checked out (the Midwestern University library's website lets you view a full list of your borrowings, complete with due dates -- handy, that). I've got just over a hundred books currently borrowed, most of them dissertation-related. And I had the sudden disquieting thought: "Hey, when I finish the last of the

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1063576893989736912003-09-14T18:01:00.000-04:002004-02-07T12:32:49.763-05:00

The Candle a Saint Green is the night, green kindled and appareled. It is she that walks among astronomers. She strides above the rabbit and the cat, Like a noble figure, out of the sky, Moving among the sleepers, the men, Those that lie chanting green is the night. Green is the night and out of madness woven, The self-same madness of the astronomers And of him that sees, beyond the

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1063551176289605032003-09-14T10:52:00.000-04:002004-02-07T12:33:26.840-05:00

Quote next to today's Doonesbury@Slate: "I think we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes and we should just support that, you know, and be faithful in what happens." -- Britney Spears No comment.

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1063496116855377022003-09-14T00:56:00.000-04:002004-02-07T12:34:26.700-05:00

Spotted in the latest American Federation of Teachers newsletter: an article about a new documentary, Teachers on Wheels, focusing on the plight of adjunct faculty at California community colleges. It doesn't look like it's going to get much exposure, though; you have to order the film over the web, so I doubt the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will notice. Maybe it should have one

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1063412462341935342003-09-12T20:21:00.000-04:002004-02-07T12:35:59.826-05:00

This morning I woke up to the sound of the radio announcers announcing that Johnny Cash died this morning. I was never a huge fan of his, but I've had a fondness for "Ring of Fire" ever since my first year in grad school, when my classmates and I used to meet at our local pub for weekly dissections of our classes, and someone would always put that song on the jukebox. I'd get it stuck in my head

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1063385410854302752003-09-12T12:50:00.000-04:002004-02-07T12:37:07.716-05:00

"I am fully aware that my work is funny and dangerously close to laughable. I make sculptures out of dryer lint. I am significantly more interested in making work that forces people to expand their preconceived boundaries for art or dismiss it than in making work that very clearly falls into an existing category. This giggle-inducing power of the project is what makes it accessible to a

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1063257676707197852003-09-12T08:55:00.000-04:002004-02-07T12:37:54.590-05:00

I want to write for Gastronomica. I really, really want to. The fact that I can't decide whether to send them poems about food, short essays, or research about obscure culinary factoids (they accept all of the above) is piquing my interest still further.

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1063256564023288072003-09-11T01:02:00.000-04:002004-02-07T12:38:33.610-05:00

It turns out that my soul is worth £18916. Well, if I need a financial cushion after this year...

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1063235712839801172003-09-10T19:15:00.000-04:002004-02-07T12:39:58.810-05:00

Today I met with my two Monday/Wednesday classes. Section 1, composition, is (so far) the quiet section, in which not many students seem willing to talk; I'm racking my brains for ways to get them to participate more. By the end of it I was thinking "This is why I'm not a very good teacher." But Section 2, the afternoon writing/literature section, was positively crackling with energy. The obvious

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1063075280473090612003-09-08T22:41:00.000-04:002004-02-07T12:42:22.216-05:00

This "knowledge maps" project from the University of Minnesota's Design Institute is utterly fascinating. I'm taken with the idea of the "smell maps" of the Twin Cities (link via Green Gabbro via Frogs and Ravens). While googling "olfactory memory," I came across this article from The Sciences,* which suggests that smell memories (e.g. Proust's endlessly cited petit madeleine) are so powerful

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1062961048780248322003-09-07T14:57:00.000-04:002004-02-07T12:43:55.360-05:00

I've changed my mind about the postacademic closet. Last night I went to a party in honor of my friend M., who's in my year in the graduate program and who just defended her dissertation this week. (There was a cake with icing roses and the words "Congratulations on your PHD, M.!" Several of us commented on the cake-decorator's incorrect usage of the capital H where a lower-case one should have

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1062650360573566232003-09-04T00:39:00.000-04:002004-02-07T12:45:23.996-05:00

Over the past couple of days, I've been encountering a constant parade of friends and colleagues I haven't talked to in months. Amazing how everyone reappears when the fall semester starts up. And it seems as if, in every "Oh, I haven't seen you in ages! How are you? How was your summer?" conversation, there's a moment when my interlocutor says "So, I guess you're going on the job market this

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1062558327592209292003-09-02T23:05:00.000-04:002004-02-07T12:46:58.436-05:00

Total number of students currently registered for my three sections of first-year writing: 54 Number I met today: 18 Number of students named Heather in today's section: 2 Total number of students named Heather in all three sections: 3 Estimated hours spent either making photocopies or waiting in line to make photocopies: around 2 Weeks before I have to start grading the first set of papers: 3

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1062481577727648692003-09-02T01:46:00.000-04:002004-02-07T12:48:10.670-05:00

I live within walking distance of a nifty Art Deco movie theater that shows art-house movies and the occasional classic film series. Tonight I went to a screening of Psycho. A free screening, in honor of Labor Day and the resumption of the school year. The theater was packed, people gasped and shrieked at key moments (though not at the shower scene; I guess it's too familiar even if you've never

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1062305903216675862003-08-31T00:58:00.000-04:002004-02-07T12:49:20.390-05:00

I'm enjoying the last couple of days' worth of summer, and I'm completely incapable of Serious Weighty Thoughts about Academe right now, so posts until Tuesday will be frivolous and silly. Fair warning. For starters: this game, called "Samorost" (or, as I'm privately calling it, "The Adventures of Snowsuit Guy on the Tree-Covered Asteroid") is bizarre, beautiful, and addictive. I can't decide

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1062172302078214432003-08-29T11:51:00.000-04:002004-02-15T01:26:00.043-05:00

This post at 2Blowhards.com, in which guest blogger Rick Darby discusses the difficulty of finding an artsy job, made me reconsider some of my current thoughts about potential nonacademic career paths. I was thinking that maybe I should consider finding a job with an arts organization that would make use of my editorial skills. (Okay, so I have this fantasy about editing Opera News. A pipe dream,

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1061991902403680972003-08-27T09:45:00.000-04:002004-02-15T01:25:07.590-05:00

If you haven't already heard about this, Mars is now closer to the earth than it's been in nearly 60,000 years. Nobody since the Neanderthals has seen it this near. I've been able to see it these last few nights, looking too big to be a planet; I keep thinking it's an airplane at first. Last night it was the only light source breaking through the haze of late summer. Looking at it, I thought of a

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1061923526350719572003-08-26T14:45:00.000-04:002004-02-15T01:23:50.296-05:00

There's been a bit of a blow-up in various places over this post of Dorothea's (and her followup to that post) on the subject of people without children interacting with other people's children. See Cindy's reply and the comments thereto, Kevin's posts on the subject, and Michelle's rant, which is really too thoughtful and balanced to warrant being called a rant. The debate has expanded beyond

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1061841682461838192003-08-25T16:01:00.000-04:002004-02-15T01:21:32.860-05:00

At the risk of sounding horribly vain: I had lunch with my dissertation committee chair today, and he read me portions of the committee's reports on my dissertation and the defense. One of the sentences he read me was the following (from the committee member whom I consider my toughest reader): "She takes leaps, but she never takes shortcuts." I think that's one of the better things anyone's said

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1061822604701049482003-08-25T10:43:00.000-04:002004-02-15T01:20:40.763-05:00

A few weeks ago, I decided that sooner or later I'll finally read all five of the Harry Potter novels. (I read the first one a while back, and I've seen the movie of the second one, but I think I'm the last person in the English-speaking world not to have read the rest of them.) Now that I no longer have the dissertation hanging over my head, this seemed like the perfect opportunity, even though

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1061785464849035132003-08-25T00:24:00.000-04:002004-02-15T01:20:00.296-05:00

I remember, from way back during my almost-classics-major days as an undergraduate, hearing a professor say that the ubiquitous ancient Greek particles "men" and "de," usually translated (when they're translated at all) as "on the one hand" and "on the other hand," might have originally indicated hand gestures signaling a speaker's shift from one thought to the next. I forget whose theory this

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1061781895038809142003-08-24T23:24:00.000-04:002004-02-15T01:18:17.233-05:00

Classes start up again in just over a week. I'm teaching three sections of freshman writing. So am I spending my weekend diligently planning assignment sequences and preparing course packs? Am I fine-tuning my syllabus and deciding what type of writing workshops to organize? Am I dreaming up fabulously innovative essay assignments and off-the-wall topics for in-class writing? Am I thinking about

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1061749195000764572003-08-24T14:19:00.000-04:002004-02-15T01:17:09.280-05:00

So I was listening to "The Next Big Thing" on NPR, and in this Saturday's episode (to which you can listen with RealPlayer) there was a segment by Meg Wolitzer about summer movies -- or rather, imagining one's life as a summer movie. She came up with a series of increasingly funny trailers for these imaginary movies, all with the generic trailer-voiceover voice narrating.* My personal favorite

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1061401470054933552003-08-20T13:44:00.000-04:002004-02-15T01:13:55.200-05:00

Has anyone every written anything connecting Frank O'Hara's "Melancholy Breakfast" with Sappho's fragment 168b? Consider: Tonight I've watchedthe moon and thenthe Pleiadesgo downThe night is nowhalf-gone; youthgoes; I amin bed alone(Sappho, translated by Mary Barnard) And: Melancholy breakfastblue overhead blue underneaththe silent egg thinksand the toaster's electrical        ear waitsthe stars

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1061318619517186262003-08-19T14:43:00.000-04:002004-02-15T01:13:18.483-05:00

I'm going to a recital by Cecilia Bartoli! Singing 18th-century Italian arias! The recital isn't till spring, but T. and I just bought tickets today and I'm very excited. I just hope she doesn't cancel at the last minute.

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1061258378052817762003-08-18T21:59:00.000-04:002004-02-15T01:12:38.436-05:00

I've just spent the evening formatting bibliographic entries for a friend who's now on the home stretch of her dissertation. Somehow it's a much less stressful job, even enjoyable in a fiddly way, when it's not one's own dissertation. I'd read portions of M.'s dissertation before, back when we were in a writing group together, and I've heard her describe other portions, but it was very

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1061182337921610932003-08-18T00:52:00.000-04:002004-02-15T01:09:39.890-05:00

I am not used to Hope—It might intrude upon—Its sweet parade—blaspheme the place—Ordained to Suffering— It might be easierTo fail—with Land in Sight—Than gain—My Blue Peninsula—To perish—of Delight— — Emily Dickinson, who knew a thing or two about the fear of success, poem 405 August is winding down. For once I can say that I haven't frittered away the summer avoiding my dissertation (ha ha,

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1061130478350443322003-08-17T10:27:00.000-04:002004-02-15T01:07:45.140-05:00

Language Hat points to the worthless word for the day archive, which has been providing me with much amusement. Among their recently spotted obscure words is "bloviate," which, as Worldwidewords.org points out, means "to speak pompously" and is closely associated with President Warren Gamaliel Harding. Reading this, I was immediately reminded of this poem: Qualm Warren G. Harding invented the

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1061056768937333342003-08-16T13:59:00.000-04:002004-02-15T01:06:20.920-05:00

Just blogrolled: The Julie/Julia Project, a blog by "renegade foodie" Julie Powell, who's on a mission to cook her way through every recipe in Julia Child's classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Very funny writing, and Julie even managed to make Riz en Couronne during the blackout. Still thinking about food, I came across these ancient Roman recipes adapted from Apicius's De Re Coquinaria

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1060983334514474092003-08-15T17:35:00.000-04:002004-02-15T01:04:24.920-05:00

No sooner was the mess with the Blaster worm over than the Great Blackout of 2003 hit Collegeville, which, while it's located in the Midwest, wasn't far enough west to be unaffected by the power outages. The power come back on around campus this morning, but my end of town was without electricity until just a little while ago. Right now, I've learned three important lessons from 24 hours with no

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1060807367662948602003-08-13T16:42:00.000-04:002004-02-15T01:02:59.670-05:00

My computer has been hit by the Blaster/Lovsan worm. Why is it that when you really want to copy something from the web on an uninfected campus machine and bring it home to fix your ailing home machine, you discover that a) you can't burn anything to CD-R in the computer labs and b) the floppies you have are defective? Does this worm also cause bad luck? What's next, Dutch elm disease? So if

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1060614441046668262003-08-11T11:07:00.000-04:002004-02-15T01:02:04.110-05:00

This is just so cool: the online Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, published by the MIT Press. The Hypnerotomachia (published in Venice in 1499), whose title can be translated as "Poliphilo's combat of love in a dream," is a strange Latin text: part dream-vision, part romance, part architectural treatise, profusely illustrated and quite beautiful. This online edition consists of facsimiles of every page

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1060472653537369732003-08-09T19:44:00.000-04:002004-02-15T01:01:03.310-05:00

My dissertation defense yesterday went well -- so well that R., who gamely attended even though she's been out of the academic world since we got our B.A.s together, said it was more like a love letter than an exam. My committee wants me to remove one chapter and turn it into an article instead of including it in the book manuscript (assuming the Magnum Opus reaches that state). But they seemed

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1060098002512407712003-08-05T11:40:00.000-04:002004-02-15T00:56:58.390-05:00

Tomorrow I pick up my committee members' reports on my dissertation. The day after that, my friend R. is flying in from out of town to spend Defense Weekend with me. And on Friday...I defend my dissertation, first thing in the morning. Wish me luck. I probably won't post much of anything here until the big day is over. Last night I dreamed that I showed up for my defense wearing cutoff shorts

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1060096488883728042003-08-05T11:14:00.000-04:002004-02-15T00:57:43.466-05:00

Henry Farrell at Crooked Timber, taking a cue from the Invisible Adjunct, posts on academic reality TV, academic fashions and the need for a "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" for fashion-challenged professors. I'm reminded of my own undergraduate days, when my fellow students and I used to critique professors' wardrobes. "Does he always wear a bowtie?" "Yes, and wait until you see the

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1060015513422959472003-08-04T12:45:00.000-04:002004-02-15T00:55:42.140-05:00

I wish this quite frequently, as a matter of fact; but I'm wishing it right now because the New York City Opera is staging my favorite Handel opera (thus far, anyway) in September. And I won't be able to get away. Damn it all.

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1060014235787569182003-08-04T12:23:00.000-04:002004-02-15T00:51:50.263-05:00

Playing devil's advocate to my previous post, or perhaps just balancing things out, I'd also like to say that I'm not belittling the love of the intellectual life, or of one's research topics. On a bookstore trip not long ago, I ran across Daniel Cottom's Why Education is Useless, which argues, inter alia, that we should try to understand arguments against education if we're to do anything to

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1059929964848154482003-08-03T12:59:00.000-04:002004-02-15T00:50:54.530-05:00

This is relatively old news, but I haven't come across much discussion of it in the blogosphere: the KC Johnson tenure case. Johnson, for those of you who haven't been following the story, is a professor of history at Brooklyn College, renowned for both his scholarship (prolific and well-received) and his teaching (students, by all accounts, adore him). Nevertheless, he was denied tenure on the

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1059835298112090392003-08-02T10:41:00.000-04:002004-02-15T00:48:10.593-05:00

Via languagehat: the Forum Romanum. I'm in awe. Also, via Burningbird via making contact: a post from Alas, a blog on "What to do with those "I'm not a feminist, but..." women. (See also this Guardian article that inspired some of these posts.) There always seems to be at least one of those women in every first-year writing class I teach, and there's always a moment when she says, "Well, I was

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1059780902099603962003-08-01T19:35:00.000-04:002004-02-15T00:47:03.576-05:00

I think I've got a mild case of post-dissertation depression. I've been at loose ends since I handed in the Magnum Opus a week ago, and I don't know quite what to do with myself now that I've done so, even though I have a whole list of things I should be doing. The thrill of being done and seeing the 230-page stack of paper in front of me hasn't quite driven away either the familiar sources of

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1059602916676341502003-07-30T18:08:00.000-04:002004-02-15T00:44:12.686-05:00

Insomnia The moon in the bureau mirrorlooks out a million miles(and perhaps with pride, at herself,but she never, never smiles)far and away beyond sleep, orperhaps she's a daytime sleeper. By the Universe deserted,she'd tell it to go to hell,and she'd find a body of water,or a mirror, on which to dwell.So wrap up care in a cobweband drop it down the well into that world invertedwhere left is

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1059601166848571462003-07-30T17:39:00.000-04:002004-02-15T00:43:39.450-05:00

Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2003From: [name removed to protect the guilty -- ed.]Subject: don't throw away your living at a dead end profession! Get A Degree In Any Experienced Field [what exactly constitutes an "experienced" field, we're not entirely sure.] Call Now For More Information! It is a well known fact that people who posses a degree are looked upon as the elite. If you have a degree, you are

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1059489970668494532003-07-29T10:46:00.000-04:002004-02-15T00:42:46.920-05:00

Via Pointdexter: social software for those looking for friends as well as for those seeking friends of friends. An idea whose time has come. This gregarious introvert thinks so, anyway. Speaking of social software, I still want to put comments up on this blog, but I don't want to use enetation after Rana's and Cindy's recent woes with it, and I couldn't get to any of Blogger's suggested

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1059458478723896222003-07-29T02:01:00.000-04:002004-02-15T00:41:10.140-05:00

Today I ran into a fellow graduate student from my department who's been away in California for part of the summer. I asked her how her trip was and she said it was wonderful to be around palm trees and sunlight (not that it's not warm here), and she thinks she's really a Left Coaster at heart, and she spotted a celebrity on the beach and generally had a lovely time being away from Collegeville.

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1059427034984672792003-07-28T17:17:00.000-04:002004-02-15T00:40:24.546-05:00

I make a habit of carrying around a blank notebook in which to write down random thoughts, overheard conversations, quotations from my reading, and favorite poems. When I started blogging, I imagined doing something similar with this space from time to time. So here is an old favorite: "What is Poetry" by John Ashbery, via Alan Filreis's Modern & Contemporary American Poetry course at UPenn. (

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1059325900920524502003-07-27T13:11:00.000-04:002004-02-15T00:39:47.796-05:00

I finally got around to blogrolling a bunch of sites I'd been meaning to add for a while. And since I'm a bit webbed out at the moment, here are a couple of visual highlights: pictures of London here and here, courtesy of Frizzy Logic; and hauntingly beautiful ivory carvings from Giornale Nuovo.

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1059239294285172442003-07-26T13:08:00.000-04:002004-02-15T00:26:37.090-05:00

Lesbia, you ask how many kisses of yourswould be enough and more to satisfy me.As many as the grains of Libyan sandthat lie between hot Jupiter's oracle,at Ammon, in resin-producing Cyrene,and old Battiades sacred tomb:or as many as the stars, when night is still,gazing down on secret human desires: -- Catullus, Carmina, poem 7 Or, in other words, seventy sextillion, according to the latest

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1059192889096123042003-07-26T00:14:00.000-04:002004-02-15T00:37:29.420-05:00

Via Arts & Letters Daily: Virginia Postrel suggests that in the current economy, "Competition has pushed quality so high and prices so low that few manufacturers can survive on performance and price alone. To produce value, they must give customers something to please their sensory side. Aesthetics is the killer app." The new jobs, according to Postrel, are in the "aesthetic part of the market."

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1059099972373904002003-07-24T22:26:00.000-04:002004-02-15T00:36:26.606-05:00

I forget what I was trying to do in this chapter. What was the point? Whoa! This is what I've been preparing to say for my whole life! Is "sequentiality" even a word? My brain hurts. Why is this paragraph suddenly single-spaced? Why can't I change the line spacing without highlighting the entire chapter? Spellcheck keeps trying to replace "Petrarch" with "Patriarch." That's got to mean

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1059020049489760332003-07-24T00:14:00.000-04:002004-02-15T00:35:02.280-05:00

I've got a backlog of things that I've been wanting to write about here, but at the moment, all I have to say is this: I think I just finished the dissertation. Or at least finished it as much as it's going to get before my committee members suggest revisions at my defense, which is in a couple of weeks. Tomorrow, the formatting and printing and copying madness begins. And I have to cook up an

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1058900380697768212003-07-22T14:59:00.000-04:002004-02-15T00:29:11.686-05:00

Peering into the blogosphere from the midst of last-minute dissertation madness, I note that both Rana of Frogs and Ravens and Harrison Brace of All Day Permanent Red have been writing about having radio dreams similar to mine -- only funnier. I would also like to state for the record that, were it not for the fact that the tomato is a New World plant, I'd be ready to swear that Capri salad (

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1058763449241331312003-07-21T00:57:00.000-04:002004-02-15T00:25:33.170-05:00

Sometimes when I'm less than willing to heed the call of the clock-radio and get up first thing in the morning, I start dreaming about whatever the NPR announcers are saying. (Once I dreamed I was a BBC foreign correspondent in East Timor.) This morning, dozing through Anthony Bourdain's recommendations for cooking-themed summer reading (and if you haven't read Kitchen Confidential, I highly

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1058761444193741722003-07-21T00:24:00.000-04:002004-02-15T00:24:07.140-05:00

Pesky introduction that I couldn't finish: DONE. Bwahahaha! Somewhat less pesky conclusion: getting there. Will be done within a day or so. All four actual chapters: Done but for some tinkering. (Am firmly resisting impulse to second-guess myself and rewrite substantial sections.) Locations where I wrote today: three (living room, coffee shop with handy outlets, library carrel). How I love

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1058632600834367292003-07-19T12:36:00.000-04:002004-02-15T00:22:27.686-05:00

I'm not going to be updating very much over the next week, because Friday is my official hand-in-the-dissertation date. (The defense is a couple of weeks later.) I can't tell whether my lack of panic at the moment is a good thing or a disastrous thing. In the meantime, check out the Bad Poetry Index, the work of Seamus Cooney at Western Michigan University. Don't miss the entries from great

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1058545968436959732003-07-18T12:32:00.000-04:002004-02-15T00:21:18.200-05:00

\Somewhere or other, in some collection of advice to poets -- and I would look up where, but I'm swamped with other, more serious research -- I read that one way to jump-start one's imagination is to read through first-line indexes of poetry anthologies. The juxtaposition of completely unrelated lines, especially if they're all from different poets, produces wonderfully surreal passages of

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1058462468690447372003-07-17T13:21:00.000-04:002004-02-15T00:19:36.716-05:00

1. Blogging is indeed addictive, especially when one is doing it as procrastination. And, at the same time, it's both a relief and an incentive to be able to write in such a different format. 2. Constant micro-editing (footnote formatting, spacing in bibliography, tinkering with margins, etc.) does not quite stave off the feeling of panic at still having to write the Big Important Thesis

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1058401397073685372003-07-16T20:23:00.000-04:002003-07-16T20:30:31.570-04:00

Ack! Why has my sidebar migrated to the bottom of the page? Why have my older posts replaced it? Ack! [Edit: Never mind, it seems to have gone back to normal now. I can't figure why, because I didn't change anything in the template that would have accounted for the rearrangement of sidebar and main column. Blogger hiccup?]

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1058400575948739132003-07-16T20:09:00.000-04:002004-02-07T13:09:17.733-05:00

Cindy's blog, making contact, featuring "random musings on teaching, academia, and life in general"--with an interesting post today about how the blogosphere can be what academia should be. (Okay, I'm also a bit biased because she called my blog "stunning" and now I'm madly chuffed, as the British would say.) Also, Beyond Brilliance, Beyond Stupidity, a two-in-one blog tracking "developments in

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1058374492617813912003-07-16T12:54:00.000-04:002004-02-07T13:08:41.950-05:00

The new Chronicle of Higher Education has a short essay by Margaret Marquis and Brent Shannon, an academic couple both searching for jobs in English. They describe their parents' and stepparents' various concerns, and misconceptions, about the job market they face, and eventually acknowledge that "our parents, we must confess, have raised a crucial issue: In such a tight job market, why do we

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1058288233423910052003-07-15T12:57:00.000-04:002004-02-07T13:07:07.560-05:00

An analogy I came up with in conversation with my friend T. last night (we were at our local wine bar eating mussels and getting ready to read Book 2 of Paradise Lost out loud, because we are geeky like that): Writing a dissertation is like undertaking a really long sea voyage. After a while, there's no land in sight; there's just you and the open sea. You can tell where you are, more or less,

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1058284867519396342003-07-15T12:01:00.000-04:002004-02-07T13:05:35.936-05:00

In the midst of thinking about switching careers, it's occurred to me that one measure of where one's interests lie, along the lines of "What accomplishments are you most proud of?" or "What sections do you most gravitate to in bookstores?" (from Susan Basalla and Maggie Debelius's book So What Are You Going to Do with That?), could be "What are you most compelled to fix?" In other words, what

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1058115142105829382003-07-13T12:52:00.000-04:002004-02-07T13:03:35.576-05:00

Canadians have become cooler than Americans. Emigration is looking like a better and better idea all the time.

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1058112717272172992003-07-13T12:11:00.000-04:002004-02-07T13:04:20.216-05:00

Speaking of electronic texts (e. g. the online Anatomy of Melancholy), I've been doing distributed proofreading for Project Gutenberg. There's no pay, but it appeals to the side of me that enjoys editorial tinkering, and one can sample all kinds of forgotten old books. Renascence Editions publishes free e-texts of important early modern English books. It makes me very happy that one can find Sir

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1057982732758845692003-07-12T00:05:00.000-04:002004-02-07T12:57:49.123-05:00

Continuing a train of thought about the academic lifestyle, I remembered the section on "Miseries of Scholars" in Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, and, flipping through it almost at random, came across the following: Now because they are commonly subject to such hazards and inconveniences as dotage, madness, simplicity, etc. Jo. Voschius would have good scholars to be highly rewarded,

Amandanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5554176.post-1057890868868935662003-07-10T22:34:00.000-04:002003-07-10T22:34:28.823-04:00

The article I posted about yesterday has started up a discussion at the Invisible Adjunct's site, to which I may have more to add when I'm not in a post-dinner stupor. In the meantime, I'm highly amused by this poem, "Inertia" by Judith Cordary, courtesy of Poetry Daily. And now I'm going to spend an unproductive rest of the evening laying burnt offerings on Inertia's altar.

Amandanoreply@blogger.com