Meetings lately are mostly like this:
-we don’t know much
-what we do know we can’t really tell you
-everything is going to change
-given the above, please make a plan
I should probably know this as a professor of Victorian literature, but is there a term for when the plot pauses so that the narrator can comment generally on human nature for a few sentences? (This is a tweet about George Eliot)
The best “question that is actually a comment” I have ever witnessed was at a Victorian studies conference when an old man stood up and recounted having met Oscar Wilde’s lover Lord Alfred Douglas—and sitting on his lap—as the prize for winning a poetry contest
the boring truth is that good pedagogy depends much less on being charismatic and brilliant, and much more on being organized and transparent--sticking to your syllabus, giving assignments far in advance, returning stuff on time, etc etc etc
Guillory: the university is set up to make us think that we are being rewarded for our astute criticism of society, when in fact the most useful thing an English professor can do is teach someone to read well
Picked up Lukacs's Theory of the Novel to try to get some work done and he is immediately like this book "was written in a mood of permanent despair over the state of the world" and I originally intended it to be written as a series of dialogues taking place during a plague.
the email from a former student who apologizes for bothering you with a question about something you said in class years ago--when in fact they are making your day
My new area of specialization is The Return to Campus; my course offerings next year will be "Introduction to the Return to Campus," "Intermediate Return to Campus," and a special topics seminar, "Returning to the Return To Campus"
The MLA should give book awards in Oscar-style categories:
Best original neologism
Best supporting argument
Best copyediting
Best documentary evidence
Best adapted idea
Best discursive footnote
Best cover design
Best concept mixing
Syllabus time! Super excited to teach our first-year PhD Colloquium this year. The idea is to figure out how and why we do the stuff we do in English departments, balancing theory and history with dabbling and exploration
(bits of this are borrowed from generous colleagues!)
(this is not a criticism of Students These Days; the bigger context is that capitalism now extracts value from having a reaction and it’s a hard situation to escape)
if they are looking for someone who can manage an unruly and strong-willed caucus with deeply conflicting beliefs, they should recruit the chair of an English department
moral quandary:
on the one hand William Morris was a socialist who devoted his entire life to envisioning a postcapitalist world in which factory labor was obsolete, so an H&M/Morris&Co collaboration is the very definition of perversity.
on the other hand i want this shirt.
This is my dad, Joe. I love him!
Joe is a 67-year-old doctor with a heart condition.
Joe’s hospital ignored CDC guidelines to postpone elective surgeries and told him to come to work.
Joe stayed home today, but he needs some support. Let’s tell Joe we need him to stay healthy!
@dannybwright
@sarahdallison
oh, cool! My favorite example of the one-sentence shift is from Jude the Obscure: "But nobody did come, because nobody does"
When I started teaching climate change literature five years ago the driving question was "how can literature make something abstract and distant feel present and real?" That framing ("abstract/distant") now seems outdated, I think mainly due to fires in CA, Brazil, Australia.
it's interesting that using biography to interpret scholarly work is normal practice, but using biography to interpret literary work is seen as reductive
doing taxes as an unmarried childless person who doesn't own a home is very easy because you have fulfilled none of the state's desires, and therefore none of the benefits apply to you
This is my dad, Joe. I love him!
Joe is a 67-year-old doctor with a heart condition.
Joe’s hospital ignored CDC guidelines to postpone elective surgeries and told him to come to work.
Joe stayed home today, but he needs some support. Let’s tell Joe we need him to stay healthy!
the high point of my academic career may have been when I took two “Intro to Literary Theory” courses in the same semester, one taught by John Guillory and the other by Barbara Johnson
One of the stranger aspects of buying a house is that it involves begging someone to accept a massive amount of money from you, which you don’t even actually have
When I was a kid growing up (in a conservative place), high school English was a rare space where teachers were honest with you, and you talked about serous adult things, and your discussions were allowed to be subversive—and I wonder if that’s still at all the case?