This is Professor Zero, from parish prison (for those of you who live in states, districts, and colonies other than Louisiana, that means county jail). I am allowed to go to class and so on. I am not allowed to comment on blogs because I have far too much to do and it is only … More On Time to Tenure
It is the weekend, and I am in New Orleans singing with WWOZ. I have been hanging out at an excellent conference wherein smart professors and graduate students spoke. It has been very refreshing. I feel as though I am beginning to right my sails. While driving back and forth I considered everyone’s posts on … More A Modest Proposal
This is the first of seven memoranda to seven groups, ranging loosely from the least irritating to the most. To all “non-denominational” “Christian” students: I understand very well that your home-schooling mother and your pastor may have given you to understand that you, like them, are members of a superior species, and that in this … More Memorandum 1
I I had always heard that being on the tenure track was a terrible thing, but I liked it. This is largely because before I got the idea of going to graduate school and discovered I was doing well there, I thought my destiny was to become a Receptionist or a Homemaker. I considered the … More On the Tenure Track
I There have been so many posts about the destructiveness of the tenure system that I would like to say something more about this. I, as people paying close attention to this blog may already know, did not get tenure. It was not at all traumatic, as I had seen it coming. After my mid … More On Not Getting Tenure
I wrote the post below some time ago. I thought – and think – the student was being manipulative and out of line in general. I still do but I also wonder sometimes in these situations: who is behaving towards her as she is behaving towards me? * WM: I missed my oral presentation last … More E-mail from da Whiteman
I had this conversation with a woman who publishes well in feminist theory. WM: What does it cost to have a house professionally cleaned? PZ: A house the size of yours? About $90-120, I would think. The going rate seems to be $15-20 per person per hour, and I estimate it would take three people … More A Feminist Whiteman
I I had not read Alejo Carpentier’s The Lost Steps in a long time, but now I am reading it to teach it and it is a brilliant riot. All doubting professors should read it, I decree, because its first section is about getting lost in a profession and a marriage. The character, a composer, … More Reading for Pleasure Wednesday: Alejo Carpentier and MORE
I have now been identified as a conservative defender of a conservative canon because I said that: 1) being actively engaged in a field via research was different, and deeper, than being able to pinch-hit in it by covering an undergraduate couse in it; 2) researchers and specialists were resources for the university, not just … More In Which I Am A Conservative Canon-Defender
Once upon a time there existed the Ladies Against Women, a satirical group. Now, as I sweat out tonight’s election results (in which I am not rooting for either a Woman or a Lady, unless Barack Obama is indeed a woman), I am creating the Women Against Ladies. This is because there are far too … More Women Against Ladies
coldhearted scientist وداد 