I am unpacking my library. I have given away a good photocopy of Robert Young’s White Mythologies, a book I would like to have available, because it is a photocopy. I am about to give away good paperback copies of Bakhtin’s Rabelais and Beverley and Zimmerman’s Literature and Politics in the Central American Revolutions, because I … More Unpacking my library
…so I went to school and went to class and everything is fine. It is just: I am so scarred by teaching recalcitrant freshmen and having old-fashioned supervisors on my case about THEIR ideas of how freshmen should be served. I am so tired of being so far away from everything. I am so seriously … More Hmm…
“Don’t spend too much time on teaching or you will end up as an adjunct” is code for: “The kinds of courses [women and] adjuncts teach, take up inordinate amounts of time and if you engage in that, you will never get ahead.” I was always willing to conduct literary research and teach so as … More On spending too much time on teaching
It is that one is not required to be one’s own enemy. In Reeducation this was required, and a great deal of academic advice is structured in the same way: one is to suspect and mistrust oneself. One could even harbor friendly feelings toward oneself. I have done this sometimes — especially, as I remember, … More I see
I might need a present. One of the beds, which I bought in late graduate school and was wonderful, is having some trouble with the slats and has no headboard. I could repair the slats if I got the right burlap and staples but it would still have no headboard. I am shopping. I have … More A light post
February 16th is the eighth anniversary of this blog; February 17th is the anniversary of my feeling it had actually started. February 17th also marks six months that I have been un-depressed. That was the pre-written post I had planned to have come up now. It is ironic because really I am coming off a … More febrero
I really am not cut out to teach in a foreign language department, and perhaps not in a foreign literature department, either. I did not have these problems in graduate school but they surfaced as soon as I left that institution and they have not left me. 1. Bad foreign language teacher. Too much speaking … More Postscript on teaching
Historiann says this and I am glad to hear not only I have this problem. My unhappiness inadequacy as a professor would be greatly mitigated by a lower teaching load. Here is that journal on syllabi, and we should all publish in it, for many reasons including that it will get us research credit for teaching … More On teaching, the upshot
Jacques Lacan proposed as the axiom of the ethics of psychoanalysis: “Do not compromise your desire.” I am using this quotation for other purposes but you should follow the link and read the article, which has turned me into a Žižekite. It now being the 17th, I am six months un-depressed and I think I will … More Lacan, Žižek
“She opens the world of words and makes you think you have created it yourself.” That is what a good student said about me but these characteristics are not appreciated by all. In any case, I think I should write an essay about the last two days I have spent thinking about the introduction to … More I will write another meta-academic essay, or two
coldhearted scientist وداد 