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I’m back from the BLCFH (you know the one) with a few reflections:
* What’s up with those male academics who insist on being seen in the hotel lobby early in the morning in their running gear, showing off their stork legs and wearing wispy, revealing shorts? Is this some demonstration of masculine prowess — that it’s not enough to prove themselves as scholars, they also have to show off their athleticism too?
* To the Famous Scholar who had published Important Book on my subject: Why, oh why did you have to write Another Book on the subject? And, did you have to address the same authors that I do? Are you trying to make my life more difficult?
* STOP LOOKING AT MY NAMETAG! I’m not an Important Scholar. You don’t know me or my work. Seriously, just stop checking out my tag while I’m washing my hands in the bathroom, standing in line for coffee, riding the elevator, and trying to ignore you.
* To the worst interviewee I’ve ever encountered: The way to get make sure you don’t get the job is 1) treat the interviewers with condescension by telling them obvious facts as if they were children and 2) close the interview with a rambling and completely random story about your youth. Really, you made my job easier.
* No matter what Big Shot Scholar says, Powerpoint is the death of public speaking. Please, please, please don’t make the presentations at BLCFH more insufferable by making Powerpoint standard. I beg of you.
It’s good to be home.
I am not a big fan of Christmas. I’m not a Christian so I can’t get into the whole Jesus birthday hoopla. Actually, to say “I’m not a Christian” does not capture the extent and vibrance of my anti-Christian feelings. On top of that, I hate consumerism for the sake of consumerism. I don’t enjoy shopping and I resent the expectations that holiday gift-giving creates. A few years ago I tried to get my extended family — of tree-hugging, lefty liberals — to fore-go gifts as a stance against the environmental impact and soul-crushing, anti-community aspects of the holidays. Suffice to say, they were horrified and offended and that was the end of that.
So, Christmas Eve morning found me in my yearly holiday funk, having spent too much money on unnecessary gifts and too many hours with family members who provoke murderous rage in my heart — and with several days of Christmas fun still ahead. I was hung over from the excesses of the previous night and I curled up with a cup of tea to watch some TV before the holiday roller-coaster started again.
What I watched should be immortalized in the pantheon of great holiday television: a re-run of the Very Special Christmas Episode of Roseanne (circa 1990s). I’m not a Roseanne fan but it was on and, for once, the gritty and sarcastic humor really appealed to me. The Conners are one family that are never going to be swaddled in the sweet sentimentality of the season. I can’t remember the last time I enjoyed a sitcom so much.
There are some great jokes in the episode, but one particular one-liner really captured my feelings aptly.
Delivered in Roseanne Barr’s distinctive nasal intonation: “It’s beginning to look a lot like CRAP.”
Happy Holidays, y’all.
***
UPDATE: Ain’t the internet grand? At this site, I found the specs of my new favorite holiday television show: “No Place Like Home for the Holidays” originally aired 12/15/1992.
For essentially my entire academic career, teaching has taken a second place to research/writing/publishing. Originally this was due to my immaturity, back in the days when I idolized my famous professors and dreamt of joining their ranks as an international celebrity academic. They seemed to treat teaching as a minor distraction to the truly important work of their minds, and I followed their lead.
More recently, my focus on R/W/P has been driven by necessity and abject fear. Tenure hangs over my head like a knife and, despite some pretty words about the importance of teaching, everyone knows that tenure at MidState U. is determined by one’s publishing record. (Here, at my second tier state university, we are expected to publish a book, despite our high teaching load, low pay, minimal support for travel or research, and no sabbaticals. It’s a familiar story, filed under “mission creep”.)
This isn’t to say that I have completely neglected my teaching: my classes are generally successful, I get positive teaching evaluations (despite this recent incident), and I think I do a pretty good job overall. I teach dialogically, use group work, integrate multi-media, and other minor “tricks of the trade.” But I am aware of the fact that I get by on my enthusiasm in the classroom, with very little planning or thoughtfulness or “craft” to my teaching.
I have recently turned a corner in my academic career, with the completion of Major Academic Project and numerous smaller publications, that has made me feel like I have a handle on the R/W/P part of my job. I’m no celebrity academic but I’m doing okay. So, for the first time, I feel like I can begin to think about my teaching in a critical way. It is a shocking fact that someone could teach for as long as I have (well over a decade) without any pedagogical training, but that’s the reality of the profession for most of us. I think about the fact that, if I get tenure, I get to decide for myself whether to pursue R/W/P (rather than being driven by whips and chains) but I will always have to teach. So, I’d like to do it well — or, better.
All this by way of a long introduction to a planned series here at The Bitter and the Sweet: reviews of writing about pedagogy. Like any good scholar, I have assigned myself some reading on the practice of teaching, books and articles of strategies, experiences, and advice that may be useful to me and others. (I’m also looking for recommendations for what texts have benefited you as teachers — please leave them in the Comments!)
My first foray into pedagogical writing is Jay Parini’s The Art of Teaching. Parini is a 30 year veteran of academia, a poet and novelist, and sometimes writer for The Chronicle. I tried not to allow the fact that many of the essays in the book were originally published in The Chronicle to color my opinion too drastically (and negatively).
Almost from the beginning, I had a sense that Parini’s advice was not going to be applicable to the realities of my life as an academic. This isn’t his fault, just a fact of the vast gulf between his experiences and mine, shaped by time, gender, and character.
Here’s the point at which said to myself, I cannot relate to this guy at all: In an autobiographical essay on how he came to be a scholar, Parini writes about going to Scotland for a junior year abroad: “I knew precious little about either Scotland or this particular university when I set sail, on a small ocean liner from Genoa, in the autumn of 1968 … the transatlantic crossing … took six or seven days.” A transatlantic ocean liner to Scotland? He spent the days aboard the ship reading Camus and Marx, and writing poems in a spiral notebook, and, once in Scotland, was ushered into a culture of erudition and tea drinking. Who wouldn’t want to be an academic after that?
Here’s another chestnut: Parini remained in Scotland to get his PhD, where he was befriended by a seemingly endless parade of charming, brilliant male academics, all of whom were eager to mentor him. He writes of one of these men, “I often cycled out to his cottage by the North Sea, bearing a rough draft of a poem in my rucksack.” Really? A rucksack? Could it get any more quaint and picturesque?
It’s very easy to dissect Parini’s entrance into academia as an overly romanticized “portrait of the life of the young man as scholar” — although I don’t doubt that it is an accurate portrayal of his experience. What was frustrating to me was how this attitude carried over into his writing about his later life as a teacher in America, facing the same tenure pressures and professional challenges that many of us experience. Even here, there was a tenor of bonhomie that was alienating to this jaded reader.
One of Parini’s main themes is that it is possible to balance teaching and writing if one is very organized and sets time aside every day to devote to one’s writing/research. It is a persuasive argument, especially when one considers Parini’s impressive publishing record; he seems to have made this balance work for him. But, then I arrived at this: “I have gone to a village diner in Middlebury for breakfast at roughly 8:10 almost every morning for several decades. During that hour or so, over coffee and English muffins (with peanut butter), I write poems … I’ve made it known in these parts that I write poetry at this diner in the morning, and my friends (and acquaintances) respect that fact.”
Good grief. I only wish that there was a “village diner” in my industrial city, that I could arrange my life to be there at 8:10 every morning, that I could afford to pay for coffee and English muffins for breakfast every morning, that my “friends” would respect my privacy and leave me to write. Again, I don’t think Parini is being disingenuous — I think this really is his routine and that it’s worked out well for him — but it’s completely alien to me.
I also couldn’t help wonder about his wife and three sons: where are they every morning when he’s at the diner? Parini barely mentions his family and doesn’t acknowledge that the balance between teaching and writing must, for many and especially for women, also be balanced against family obligations. I picture his wife feeding and dressing the sons while Parini drinks his coffee and drafts poems. Maybe that’s unfair but Parini doesn’t do anything to dispel the image.
I could go on and on: his withering description of a female academic that ends with “I was not surprised to hear that she died unmarried”; his cavalier account of how he sometimes teases students about their “clothing or hairstyle or whatever,” a practice which “make[s] them feel closer to you”; or how “My family never bats an eyelash when a student turns up for dinner … Students borrow my car, come fishing with me, pick up my children at school when I can’t do it. I treat them as part of my extended family.” The first comment is conspicuously sexist but the others seem equally characterized an oblivious maleness. I cannot imagine a female academic allowing a student to pick up her children — although she may be more in need of such a service than a man.
There are many admirable things about Parini’s version of the teaching life: his commitment to politics in the classroom, the value his places on collegiality, his honesty about tenure, the emphasis he places on the performativity of teaching, and his palpable enthusiasm for literature and his students. Yet, overall I found Parini’s “art of teaching” heavy on the “art” — a kind of fuzzy watercolor painting in which all the hard edges of academia are blurred.
It’s so hard not to be sucked into the vortex of consumption that is the Christmas holidays. Every year I vow: minimal gifts, handmade or locally produced, organic/earth-friendly products, things useful or beautiful to the soul. And every year I get tired, busy, and desperate and I buy whatever crap that I can find. Usually it’s purchased from a big-box, corporate store, made out of mysterious and likely toxic materials, packaged in unnecessary layers of plastic, and costs far too much. This year I’m travelling down the familiar road of excess so it’s a good time to revisit the evils of consumer culture.
The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonord is an invaluable reminder this time of year of why it’s important to get off the consumption train, and should be required reading before anyone goes to the mall. Try not to scream when you hear about the philosophy of “perceived obsolescence.” (Thanks to Redneck Mother for the reference.)
No Impact Man is a testament to the fact that is possible to mindfully cease to be a consumer. If you haven’t read about the dramatic year-long experiment in living low impact (which just ended), start at the beginning because it’s very inspirational.
And, if you need a less guilt-inducing reason to consume less, how about motivation of the cute and fuzzy variety? Daily Coyote is a breathtakingly beautiful blog and if you don’t feel moved to protect the earth and all its creatures after reading it, check to make sure your soul’s intact. (Again, I recommend scrolling to the beginning and following the story straight through.)
How do you keep your green vows during the holidays?
This week I was hunting for books in the stacks of MidState U.’s library. It’s the kind of library where the shelves are on giant rollers that allow them to be expanded and contracted: “mobile shelving systems” like these. It’s a space-saving but headache-inducing mechanism: why is it that the shelves always expand in such a way that the overhead light shines right on top of the bookshelf but never down into the canyon where you stand, peering at the titles in the dark?
Anyhow, I’m in the stacks, carrying my computer bag on one shoulder, juggling a stack of books with the other arm, and peering at the titles on the shelf when suddenly I realize that the walls are closing in on me. Someone is ruthlessly cranking the handle and squishing me in the middle of two bookshelves. I let out an alarmed “hey!”, thinking it would be sufficient, but the shelves kept coming. Quickly I became jammed, my heavy bag and armful of books making it difficult for me to make a rush towards the end of the shelf. I was also closer to the other end of the shelf, so that it was more efficient for me to run away rather than towards the end with the crank handle. I made a few more alarmed but incoherent cries — something along the line of “hey! I’m in here!”, which was not perhaps the most specific way to signal my impending fate. Finally, the shelf stopped moving and I was able to squeeze out — feeling embarrassed for making a fuss.
Here’s what I realized, as I stood there breathing a little too heavily: that in a split-second during my clumsy and absurd shuffle down the corridor, just as the shelf stopped moving, I had glimpsed the backs of two students scurrying away from the scene.
I ask you: intentional death threat or accidental professor mangling?
This is just a reminder to all of you who have been ooohhing and awwwwing over the luscious bookporn at A Historian’s Craft that not all libraries are inviting spaces bathed in a warm and golden light. Some are downright dangerous.
Caroline Levine has a wonderful essay at Inside Higher Ed on the relationship between reviewers and authors. All I have to say is: I hope the reviewers of Major Academic Project have read this essay or share Levine’s values.
I have been the recipient of some truly nasty reviews: mean-hearted and cruelly intentioned. The reviewers’ contempt positively dripped from the pages. Their words are still imprinted on my brain and, were it not so painful, I could likely quote them here.
I’ve also received perplexing reviews. Once I was sent a 3 page, single-spaced set of comments about an article that concluded, “Of course, it would be impossible for the author to comply with these suggestions in the space of an article.” Huh?
When I was recently been given the opportunity to be a reviewer, rather than remain forever a review-ee, I tried to bear in mind my own suffering and confusion. I stove to be clear and concise in my criticism but most of all, to not use the space of the review as an opportunity to score points for my own brilliance at the expense of the author. Instead of jealously guarding my tiny scrap of expertise, I attempted to be generous and encouraging even though the material was clearly the product of a novice writer — particularly because the author was a novice.
Levine articulates this ethic very well: “If these two characters [the writer and the reviewer] compete within my professional life, I’ve sometimes needed to remind myself that the writer’s struggles came first, and hardest. In fact, it’s started to seem crucial to recognize that these two perspectives are not ethically equal. I believe deeply that the sheer acts of crafting, finishing, and circulating one’s work are immense and brave achievements. I believe, too, that most writers labor under tough circumstances, institutional, intellectual, and emotional. Meanwhile, peer readers wield a serious institutional power in the moment that they report on manuscripts. And most peer readers, protected by anonymity and typically tenured, look at the world from a position of security and authority. There’s always something ethically amiss, then, in a relationship that takes place between valiant, laboring writers and crabby, powerful readers.”
A modest proposal to academic journals and publishing houses: make Levine’s article required reading for all reviewers and editors.
I just have to add that one of the funniest things I’ve read in a long time is in Dr. Crazy’s response to Perlmutter:
“Because apparently one needs a Ph.D. in scrap-booking as well as in one’s field of specialty in order to get tenure where I work.”
Oh my god, I laughed so hard because it’s absurdly true. While the creaky old professors in my department still make the secretaries make their photocopies for them, the tenure-track folks are, every year, finding themselves armed with computer software, scanners, label-makers, colored paper, binders of every dimension, hole punchers, staplers, and endless amounts of artfully formatted paperwork. Good grief. No wonder we don’t have time to be joyful.
Jumping on the blogging bandwagon, I share with Dr. Crazy and Not of General Interest a strong reaction to Perlmutter’s The Joyless Quest for Tenure essay in the Chronicle. Like most, I think the Chronicle’s First Person series is characterized by an absolute disconnect from the realities of academia as I have experienced them — and think just about any academic blogger offers a more honest and accurate account than the FP writers. (Seriously, does the Chronicle solicit perky and oblivious writers?)
So, I approached Perlmutter’s take on tenure with skepticism, which proved appropriate. I completely agree with his assessment of the state-of-mind of most tenure-seeking faculty, that there is a “a common culture of the joyless quest for promotion and tenure.” Where I disagree is with Perlmutter’s argument that it shouldn’t be joyless, which really translates to: it isn’t joyless, it’s full of joy and happiness and kittens and little bunnies hopping in fields of green clover.
Give me a big fucking break.
Being on the tenure track is misery incarnate. It means being in a constant state of being judged, usually by people who were not held to the same standards or who derive joy from being the arbiters of “quality” or “potential” in others. It means being severely underpaid and overworked. It means being rejected, ignored, marginalized, made to feel inadequate and worthless.
And the worst part? During the years that you are clawing your way to some semblance of academic legitimacy, you have the sneaking suspicion that the thing you are fighting so hard for — the golden mantle of tenure — is really not all that worthwhile. Maybe it’s not everything that it’s made out to be. Maybe there’s a vast conspiracy at the heart of the academy to keep telling ourselves that “tenure is the best!” despite all evidence to the contrary. See: increased administrative work, laughable salary increase, years wasted.
There are so many things in Perlmutter’s article to take issue with but here’s one thing that really got my goat: He actually argues that one of the aspects of being a professor that should keep the untenured in a state of unbridled joy is the respect and admiration they will receive from others.
Quoth Perlmutter: “Furthermore, beyond the obvious benefits, like autonomy and intellectual freedom, is one very important spirit-lifting attribute of our job: public respect. In my first days as an assistant professor, I recall being at a party at my apartment building. As I met my neighbors, I saw them react with visible nods of appreciation when I told them I was teaching at the local university. Many of them either were graduates or had relatives there. It did not matter to them that I was an ‘assistant.’”
I’m sorry but did this apartment party take place in 1957? I don’t think academics get much “public respect” these days. Maybe if you’re teaching at an Ivy but here at MidState U. it is almost impossible to get students to give their professors any respect, let alone the general public. When I tell people I teach at MidState U., they think, “gee, she must not be very smart or she’d be working at Big Ivy.” So much for the idea that my public caché is going to keep me warm at night.
You can count me one of the joyless.
There is a vacuum in my life that used to be filled by the inestimable musings of Twisty Faster at I Blame the Patriarchy. IBTP has been inactive for a while now and, when I’m not worrying about Twisty’s health and wellbeing, I’m feeling bereft.
These are difficult times for feminists — peril besiges us on all sides. Popular culture continues to churn forth demeaning images of and ideas about women. American politics is characterized a prolonged episode of hand-wringing about the capabilities of a woman (a woman!) to lead the country. The Supreme Court continues to tip perilously to the right, putting women’s right to choose in danger. And the ongoing, heartwrenching, and corrupt war in Iraq … what can even be said about the implications for women here and in the Middle East?
In times like these, we need a voice of wisdom to sort through the bullshit, pinpoint the perpetrators, identify solutions — and do it all with a smirk. In short, we need Twisty.
Here are just a few topics that would benefit from being Twistified:
- Hillary (nuff said)
- Oprah endorses Obama — and apparently (according to every major new outlet) creates a crisis for black feminists. Um, really?
- Oprah coins “va-jay-jay”. Feminism is set back decades — or is it centuries?
- Fans go wild for the upcoming Sex in the City movie and the prospect that Carrie gets married! Or, gets pregnant! Seriously.
- The MySpace scandal — impersonation, harrassment, suicide, and one fucked up case of mother love.
For Twisty’s silence, naturally, I blame the patriarchy.
I recently got to see Ruthie Foster in concert and confirmed my impression that she is an amazingly talented artist. The title of her new CD, The Phenomenal Ruthie Foster, does not exaggerate. Here’s a taste of her music, Ruthie covering a Sister Rosetta Tharpe song — unbelievable combination.
