Friday, January 30, 2004
spoiled for options
I am in a quandary..but it’s the kinda quandary that one wants to be in…I guess. The Tuesday class that I taught at the school in VA went off really, really well. It was one of those teaching dayw when you walk away narcissistically thinking: “I am Robin Williams in ‘Dead Poet’s Society.’ I just rocked their world and mine. Had Augustine and Lope de Vega been watching they would have shed copious amounts of tears because of how well I taught their writings.” They called me on Friday, three days later, and offered me the job. They gave me a week, instead of the customary 2 weeks.
That weekend, a turbulent emotional weekend, in which I got nothing done. I cancelled a visit to an NC school and turned down an offer to visit a Catholic school in Worcester, MA.
I let the VA school know that I had done this but that I still was going to visit the other 2 schools. I just got back from the small Baptist school in KY. I met with the Provost and the President and many other individuals. The Provost told me that I was his and the President’s clear number one choice. Also, I am also the Chair’s choice…however, she is in French. However, I am the first of three visits...and I understand how #1’s can quickly fall to #3’s.
My class at KY sucked an old crusty sock from a dead man’s coffin. I hadn’t put as much preparation into it as I did the other…but I couldn’t because of the visit that I have this Monday. Plus, it was an intermediate conversation class…not a literature class…so, I couldn’t repeat what I had done for the VA school. Still, the Chair told me not to accept the other offer until this coming Friday, because that date was the earliest they could get back to me. The two Spanish teachers tried to encourage by telling me that the students obviously felt connected to me and comfortable because they talked.
There are so many decisions to make. I will write a little more a little later.
I liked your piece greg. It was funny, it was parsimonious, in the words of the Pope “it is as it was.”
Daily affirmations
North, the sky is clearing. It has been a dreary week with snow and temperatures not even trying to be close to freezing. I read yesterday that a new form of matter was made The forecast still promises some snow, so the blue, which is nevertheless enough to make a Dutch man's britches with, will probably blow away within the hour.
There is the boom arm of a crane raised high on the hospital ridge, and it erects almost directly opposite me. It's too cold these days to be using such machines, so the construction crew instead has raised it high above the town and, on its topmost point, placed a flag. It flaps iconically in the wind, like the flag in a television signoff or at a car dealership. What does the flag signify, up there? Does its height give it loftier goals than if it were down below? It's not the first time I've seen a flag on a crane. Workers are doing it a lot these days.
It doesn't mean very much to me. It's a sight. Today I tell myself I am rededicating my work, returning to the study of American literature. I wonder how dedicated I've been in the past? I've enjoyed it, to an extent, but dedicated? Determined? Ambitioned?
Every morning I've been in my office by 9.00a, often earlier, and every morning, about now, there is a bald eagle that flies overhead, going upstream toward City Park. Flannery O'Connor used to fly to City Park, too, because there was a small menagerie there, and she would go to marvel at the unexpectedness of finding safari animals in a midwestern college town. That menagerie was one of the few things she remembered about Iowa City. It's the first year I've seen eagles in Iowa, and it's no wonder, because according to the local papers, there's more this year than ever. Birds of prey are always here, though. Drive anywhere, and by the road you'll see a red-tailed hawk, or if you're attuned to it, the sleeker, compact kestrel. Some are after rats and rabbits and mice; others are birders. I watched eagles from a ferry outside Juneau, Alaska, where they would dive at the water almost recklessly. Eagles, they fish.
Tuesday, January 27, 2004
good luck 2
good luck, Jeremy, on interview #2! where are you off to this time?
in the time since i have last written, i have been invited across the atlantic twice more. (once to a small school in north carolina, and once to an absolutely tiny school in toronto.) the toronto school looks like a possibility, b/c mb has a still-alive application there. the north carolina school (which i liked pretty well) i declined b/c they had already rejected her application.
speaking of mb, she finished chapter 6 of 6 of her dissertation, which now lacks only the general introduction (along with revisions). also, yesterday she was invited (completely unsolicited and out of the blue by someone she doesn't know but has only read) to contribute a chapter to a fancy new volume in her research area. it sucks that her research gets good attention and is well respected but thatjudging by her job searchshe is seemingly unemployable.
Monday, January 19, 2004
Good luck to Jeremy!
Good luck to Jeremy as he goes on an interview todayif i read one of his comments correctly!
Thursday, January 15, 2004
for the curious and the inquisitive
as it stands, i have 3 campus interviews. whoda thunk it!
the first one is the monday/tuesday. as an extra measure of torture, they asked me not to give a job talk...but to prepare a 50 minute junior-level class on an aspect of my dissertation. which, unfortunately for me, is rather pedantic, as all dissertations are, and deals with poetry.
how do you get people to read poetry in another language....when so few read it in their own?
Thursday, January 08, 2004
on the anonymous phenomenon amoung us: a festivus miracle
our lack of readership has become a rather thrice squeezed turnip. in fact, if this were the movies, the scene would be a very campy rendition of us playing our sorrow with one on an untuned violin, another on an accordion, and the third on a grind-box and all singing in barber-shop tercet while wearing raggedy clothes.
yet, anonymous keeps reminding us that she or he, he or she is here reading right along, stomaching such delectables as regurgitated elephants (depending on the whale it might not be so bad...i mean if it were a big blue and baleen was all it had that would be one thing, if it were an orca that would be another ball of pachyderm all together!)
but we do have a reader, an anonymous reader, a phenomynous anonymous among us, mena menous, ma ma mena menous...mena menous, ma ma mena menous (to be sung by a muppet head)...which means we might have other readers...which means that my old alma mater might be reading along with us...it has a network of readers you know...one of the many reasons why i never get fingerprinted or picture takened, etc. in airports...homeland security already has all my information.
so my hopes of ever getting hired at the old school are gone forever.
at the moment, not that it has happened, my dilemma (ma ma, my dee le ma, mena mena ma ma my dee le ma) is whether tis nobler in the mind to take a 4/4 load, much like the lexington jobwhere i can afford a house, and even leave the door unlocked on extended vacationsor, if i were offered a 3/2 at a more research oriented place if i should take that...but these are all decisions in the future.
Wednesday, January 07, 2004
When I survey,
How ill-adjusted I feel these days. It is cold, with temperatures at a grand high of 18 deg. F. And that's just what's outside. Just imagine how warm these cows are!
Monday, January 05, 2004
posting and publishing? the difference
apparently, for some lucky bloggers, the difference between posting and publishing is even more stark than us. for those who don't know, publishing in blogger is making the text available to the public, posting would be storing it in the blogger database. however, there are those, there are those who have moved from the backwoods, indie sites, anti-commercialist, rather banal blather of blogging into hard-cover book deals.
oh that that would happen to us and we could leave the grind of not knowing if one will be called back, the "learned helplessness," the electricuted rat syndrome, or is it dog?, the utter passivity and dispair of having to wait to be called, the analyzing one's interviews and kicking oneslf for not having said this or that, the feeling, though possibly erroneous, that if they don't call me it's because i'm a dolt.
here are the requierments for the wheaton essay that i still haven't written:
describe your prof expertise with in your discipline (easy, pretty much the cover letter)
explain your concept of liberal arts education, with attention to how christian faith relates to such education.
describe your understanding of the relationship between the christian faith and your discipline. Where appropriate, briefly discuss the relationship of some contemporary issue in your discipline to biblical themes and teachings.
describe your commitment to christ, including your initial commitment, subsequent spiritual growth, and the expression of your faith in the life of the church.
well, what do i say to that? in colonial latin american literature we see the use and abuse of christianity and evanglization in order to subordinate, exploit and debase the native population...and that's bad. or, vallejo, is one of my favorite modern latin american poets, he routinely wrote "black mass" poems and was rather quite blasphemous in a lot of his poetry...and that's bad. the biblical theme that ties these two together is fallenness.
i could go on, but that would be pointless...
my dad keeps asking me why i'm not applying to h...why would i go to a baptist school, like g, instead of harding. why would i want to help baptists become educated, eventhough it is now very much of an ecumenical school. (no offense meant to those with baptist heritage, what can i say, it's my pa)
Friday, January 02, 2004
MLA Mucking-up Literary Advances
For those of you wondering, the MLA is a strange place. I don’t hate it like some people hate it. In fact, a raging liberal Police officer, who believes in the abolition of all drug laws even though he makes his life arresting undergraduates who attend my U, and also teaches as an adjunct in the Violence Studies program (he is specifically interested in sexual violence), told me in no uncertain terms how much he hated the MLA…two-faced, back-stabbing, insincere place that it is. His brilliant, groundbreaking dissertation (his words) only got him a job at GA State. In protest over some injustice or another in hiring, he quit and continued to pursue his Policing full-time. Anyway, I didn’t think it all that bad. Yes, we all told each other the lies we thought the other person wanted to hear. Though, in some instances I don’t know how well I did.
I was surprised some of the smaller schools were the most combative. Once school kept insisting that the students were very demanding and could I handle that? Another, which began the conversation informing me how elite and selective they were, and who were looking for a generalist insisted that I define myself…do I do modern or colonial Latin America?
I don’t anticipate being called back by the schools with Masters programs. I don’t anticipate being called back by the school that wanted me to define myself. I hope I get called back by at least one of the small liberal arts schools with a 3/3 teaching load. As far as one of them, I don’t know if they will because when they asked me what my opinion on the Teaching/Research opposition was I said that I think that Research should be subordinated to Teaching. That is, a heavy amount of Research should go into every course that one teaches (especially in regards to the advanced 3rd and 4th year courses where you teach literature), enough Research, in fact, that an article or an idea for an article should come out of each of those courses. I acknowledged the fact that that might be rather pie in the sky, but that, in the end, Teaching is what is top on my list. One of the interviewers smiled…and I don’t know which kind of smile it was.
Despite, the apparent moaning, I did get a campus interview rather immediately, which is unusual. Georgetown College, 15 miles outside of Lexington, has asked me back for a campus interview. I like it, except that it will be a 4/4 teaching load…which will mean, I don’t know that I would ever leave the place should things not go well. I like it because they are an ecumenical school, that does not require a statement of faith and that hire from all over the Christian spectrum…in fact, they are trying to make a Jewish and an Muslim hire for the religion department.
Probably if I fulfill all the requirements, Wheaton would call me back. But, I have to be an Evangelical…and I don’t know that I am any more. The two tenants that they quoted me were evangelism and the “inerrancy of scripture.” That last one I find rather thorny...though, I'll leave that for another entry. Plus, the whole moral approach to reading literature, turning literature into a method of Christian devotional improvement is rather off-putting to me.
Such as this article: writing Christianly...grace voice vs. cynical tone...the whole idea of world-view, as developed by American evangelicalism
Toward a Christian Pedagogy for Teaching Literature
