This is another hip course I could give, at an advanced level, with a baby-level that would be a freshman seminar. SPANISH language writing would be the topic, we wouldn’t work on English language writing, or read a lot of Spanglish. Algunos nombres: Elizabeth Acevedo (“The Poet X” se ha traducido al español), Gloria Anzaldúa, … More US Latinos writing in Spanish
If I were to do a freshman seminar like that, we’d read plays we aren’t reading in other classes, and do dramatic readings. We’d learn to write abstracts, summaries, and annotated bibliographies; we’d learn how to seriously look things up in the library. I’ll have to keep working on this. The classic play to read, … More Freshman seminar in the Lorca lab
Another old journal I am going to clear out is the 1986 Social Text that has in it Jameson’s article “Third World Literature and the West.” Here he uses the term national allegory – not quite for the first time, but it is still new here. He reveals how much he likes Balzac. And he … More Third World Literature; Our America and the West
It seemed like pleasant work, getting the house ready for the cleaner and rearranging books so I could finish my paper, but I got to a more total rearrangement, recycled a lot of journal issues, and got other books and papers corralled for recycling and reduction. There was a review essay on Freyre in LARR … More Gilberto Freyre
There is The Borders of Dominicanism, useful to me in that it invokes another borderland with the U.S. There is At the edges of states: Dynamics of state formation in the Indonesian borderlands (Michael Eilenberg) The book rests on the premise that remote border regions offer an exciting study arena that can tell us important … More Books and things on nations and borders
And in fact I did little, but I did: Decide I have done enough research for this paper, even if there are blind spots in my work, and I will just write it up and that is it, the heck with everything. Definitively decide about my hedge: all I need for now are three Green … More Today I thought I did nothing
Inviting a consul can go beyond a reception. It can be a community event with the Consul and her or his staff speaking to students and faculty, the local business community, immigrant organizations, and so on. A Consul can explain international trade, education abroad opportunities, food, and cultural exchanges … give a great deal of … More That consular visit
I thought I was just puttering around, rereading Adrienne Rich because someone sent me that essay, and reading about Oswaldo Costa because this article popped up, but actually: they are for my paper. Anzaldúa is a lesbian writer and following Rich, that is more important than her just being a defender of all supposedly “marginal” … More Compulsory heterosexuality and alternative anthropophagy
Here’s a good list of things people undertaking research, need and should do: 1. have knowledge of what a research question is; 2. have basic subject knowledge in a chosen topic area, e.g., its major research questions; 3. develop a capacity for being interested in questions where the answer is nonobvious; 4. have the ability to … More Undergraduate and other research
This book is open access and I am in love with that. And I’ve got a co-translator now for that project, a powerful one, and a press says they’ll take the book. We have not yet seen the contract, but I suppose we will get one. I got really mad at the university and envious … More World literature, cosmopolitanism, globality
