This is what it is

…terror about extreme violence which my doing serious research and writing did at one time provoke. My irrational feeling is that I will keep life and limb together if I am not seen in process and if it doesn’t take time from other things. Coming up with offprints is fine, but one must not be … More This is what it is

Teaching

Finding all sorts of documents, putting them on websites, pairing them, creating activities on them with detailed instructions. Forming student teams to undertake projects. Discovering ways to introduce short theoretical texts. Judging the difficulty level of the same. Annotating and marking up. It is a science and it involves a great deal of code-hacking and … More Teaching

El writing group

Goal: find files, put things in order, really start to write. Actually: I put in the time but the way I used it is, I found one file so rich I just read it and am rereading book it is based on, which is kind of a motherlode book as I now understand. In the … More El writing group

Cuba y la noche

This is the sign of progress: I am reading and enjoying the Goldberg book. As I have said before: people keep insisting reading is a way to avoid writing; you cannot, however, write without it. It is a sign of progress because in my worst period I could not read. I would think: this resembles … More Cuba y la noche

On Spain

I must also post to the reading class website, instructions for their assignment. They know the assignment but they will need very specific instructions. For Valentine’s Day they are each presenting on a love song, and identifying rhetorical situations and techniques in love songs. But they must have step by step instructions or they will … More On Spain

On modernism

Questions of space and time were issues in all the texts I taught today, in three different classes on three different things. I feel behind on work, and the students feel behind on Spanish and on general knowledge. At the same time the authors of the texts we are reading, and the characters in them … More On modernism

Arcipreste de Hita

Acercándose viene un tiempo de Dios, santo; fuime para mi tierra a descansar un cuanto, de entonces a ocho días era Cuaresma, tanto que puso por él mundo gran miedo y gran espanto. I will say that again in Old Spanish soon. I will post messages to two classes this very night. One was thrown … More Arcipreste de Hita

On interpretation

“She has an uncanny ability to filter my ideas through her own and make me see what I am really doing.” –Jonathan (most recently). Discuss. This is actually a comment I have gotten several times on student evaluations. It is also the reason people in other disciplines sometimes name me in acknowledgements on the basis … More On interpretation