the beach and a break

Well, I’m off to Florida today and then to Jamaica on Tuesday–a nice break before summer school starts the following Monday.
While I’m away though, I have to finish putting together my syllabus for my summer class. Composition & Visual Rhetoric. I’m excited to teach it — it will be the rehearsal for the same class [...]

leather bound dissertations

is there an alternative to the leather? fabric maybe? or vinyl?
just curious….
surely others have sought an alternative but i can’t find any discussions on the matter.

good news in spite of absence

I know that the only people that still check to see if I post anything here are related to me but…
Finally! I’m ABD.
When you’ve been out of coursework for so long and the only accountability is to yourself….hearing that you’ve officially made it to the land of ABD is worth tons!
And this semester certainly ended [...]

exams

Well, now that CCCC is over, it’s time to tackle the exams…which officially start tomorrow. Our department’s procedure is pretty different as I think I’ve written before. After reading for about 3 semesters or so for 3 different reading lists on 3 different fields or subfields, you receive 3 different questions and write 3 papers. [...]

identity crisis

Although one should probably just resist labelling altogether, in academia I find that branding is very important. For instance, in our English department the “not literature” and “not creative writing” degree track at the undergraduate level is called “writing and culture.” If you were a PhD student on the “not lit” and “not creative writing” [...]

thoughts on the job market

I’m always amazed when friends and colleagues in academia tell me about their experiences on the job market. This year’s stories include typical things like

being called for an interview with 5 days notice (it seems to be commonly expected now that a person on the job market will book a flight and hotel for MLA [...]

Question of the Week

How do you read political/social theory and stay calm and sane?
Maybe it’s because it’s *all* I’ve been reading for 2-3 months for my political education / social thought prelim exam list…

luncheon on women and pregnancy in academia

Tomorrow is the luncheon on having children and/in academia. Inspired by my dear friend and colleague Jennifer, I started organizing this at the beginning of the semester and am a little nervous about it. At first, I really didn’t anticipate it being more than 20 people at most and now, we’re expecting at least 65 [...]

reclaiming the productive schedule!

after a quite a bit of time slacking off on my reading schedule, i am back, roaring and ready to go. now with new and improved tagging and note-taking (which by the way was inspired by earth wide moth and his musings on notes specifically).
in other news, i have cancelled not one but two conferences [...]

(When) Will I Catch Up?

This semester is kicking my ass. Plain and simple. Reading for exams is just exhausting and I don’t like this new iWeb enough to keep it so I’ll probably have to transfer back to WordPress though I don’t know when I’ll get a breath to do it!
I’ve been reading a lot of social movement theory–foundations [...]