Today, Tuesday, I polished 560 words and wrote 59. This took three hours. According to Trollope, it should have taken 33 minutes: 30 for revision and 3 for writing 59 words. According to Thomas, the 59 words should have taken 27 minutes. If I were to consider all the time allotted me by both Thomas … More Word count
Some people are learning not to speak up and in academia, this is typically how one is coached: do not say anything, all you will do is ruin your credibility as a reasonable person. I disagree and I think people should learn that to speak up, you do not have to be outraged or impassioned. … More On speaking up
1. A colleague who is currently chair of his department remarked [on the current structure of meetings for department chairs] 2. This interested me because I would say the same about the current structure of meetings for [my committee] 3. Both this colleague’s observation and mine bespeak the situation described in [JL’s piece], on the … More Outline for an opinion piece
One does, in fact, need large blocks of time for work. Not for the work itself — that can be done in little pieces. One needs big blocks of time because the work has to be couched in rest and recreation, in which one is not working at breakneck speed on other things, but is … More One more brilliant, contrarian post
Here are some things to think about. 1. Mireille’s article on appropriations of Aimé Césaire. I read it and thought of Vallejo appropriations, and I did not yet know about Jonathan’s book on Lorca appropriations. Now I find Mireille’s prose irritatingly unclear but I want to bring the piece up again since it is about … More Research never ends
Today I had a leisurely breakfast with my guest and took her to the station, after which I did some errands. I came home and started laundry, looked at e-mail and did some financial things, and then it was noon. I had lunch and sat down to write, taking short breaks to wrap packages, make … More Le lundi
Ahora bien. Tomorrow I will start writing it in English and it will, as we have said, begin with Bolívar and then go on to Doris Sommer. Next it will talk about Goldberg and da Silva (and mention Sanjinés and Lund). The point is that mestizaje and the nation are old topics but race, modernity … More Race and the state…
What Danny said about Doris’ book: In terms of its announced project, Doris Sommer’s Foundational Fictions turns to the canonical novels of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth. Through a synthesis of writings about sexuality, nationalism, family history, and allegory, Sommer develops a theory of a nineteenth-century “erotic code” in order to explain … More So twentieth century
My students learned nothing from my Peninsular survey, I discern, but I learned. I should give this course as a course on the leyenda negra and the alleged problem of Spain. The final essay could request discussion of the terms in which Phillips and Phillips, in their book on Spain, seem to suggest that the … More Saldo: a peninsular post
If I have 75 students and I spend 25 hours a week grading, that is 20 minutes per student. A grader would net me 20 hours a week for research and writing. You see why people have things machine graded. You see also why the instructors, who teach up to 7 courses which means over … More Arithmetic
coldhearted scientist وداد 