Creative Project - Christabel

I finally took my own advice and used my weekends well. I finished off some work, worked a little on my fellowship applications, and even got some overdue teaching stuff squared away. I am feeling great. I think I did not join the new year with everyone else. It took me a month of adjustment (January), but I finally feel like a relatively normal human being. Amazing how Graduate school changes your perception.
You may remember that I had my students do two different creative projects last term, and they were so interesting that I decided to do at least one of them again. Today I spent a couple hours reading their Christabel projects. The basic requirements of the assignment is to finish the unfinished poem by Samuel Coleridge "Christabel." We had a great discussion of the poem itself the other day, and my students surprised me by going to the text to support their opinions. I feel like every time I read this poem, I learn something new, and yet it remains so mysterious. We had a great debate on what exactly Christabel is supposed to be - witch, vampire, succubus?
So I gave them homework to finish the poem using details from the original parts, and showing a clear connection to the themes we discussed. I also offered extra credit if they put more effort in and used rhyme and/or Coleridge's meter. Since I only have 9 student (yes, now it is 9), it did not take me long to read all of their work. All of them did fairly well, and met the basic requirements of the assignment, but two of them did outstanding jobs. In some cases, a student would get the rhyme and meter down, but fail to actually "tell" the story or connect it clearly to the other parts. In these two cases, however, they have compelling stories that make you want to keep reading, and they each mimicked Coleridge in interesting ways. One mimicked they rhyme (but the meter was off) and the format - the "part" and the "conclusion." The other mimicked the rhyme and meter almost perfectly, but did not add a "conclusion." I am going to embarrass them a little in class because I want everyone to see how creatively they addressed the assignment.
I am thinking that I might actually do something with these creative assignments, but I am not telling yet. I want to see if my idea pans out with people who know about this sort of thing. In the meantime, I have finally begun reading A Suitable Boy, but I interrupted it with some Salman Rushdie re-reading (all in the name of the game I am afraid). Looking over Manfred by Lord Byron tonight in preparation for class tomorrow - very fun stuff.

Best Day of 2012

If you have been following this blog, you know about some of the problems I have had in the last year with my PhD program. I have had some unique circumstances (teaching four classes at a time), but also some less-than-helpful advisers along the way. After an emotional fall semester, I was finally back on track making progress. Yesterday I brought in an almost-complete draft of my proposal, and sat there sweating bullets while they read it in front of me. I was just hoping against hope that this was "it." Finally one of my advisers looked up and said "you did it." I was in shock for a little while, feeling too happy for words. With a few little tweaks (which I will send off today), I am officially ABD (for those of you not in academia, this is "all-but-dissertation"). It doesn't sound like much, but it means the world to me. Part of it is the change of status will enable me to find funding in other places (and not teach so much!). In fact, one of my goals for today is applying to summer research fellowships which will help support me over summer while I do research on my dissertation. Now my advisers (who will provide me with recommendations) can say that I am ABD which will help my chances of getting the fellowship. I am so ecstatic to get here, and looking forward to having time to do my work.
What surprised me even more is that both my advisers were asking me "so you are still passionate about this?" I guess they picked up on my previous doubt more than I expected. It felt pretty good to hear that they knew last year was hard and that they care whether or not my passion is still there for this work. I still do not have an ideal relationship with them, but it is so drastically different now - so much better. I am communicating more, and I know that is a big part of it. I also found something that I do feel passionate about - in fact, it is the very thing that drew me to the English department in the first place: Rushdie. I still remember the first time I read any of his work (Satanic Verses) - I was completely drawn in. Even then I felt like I would never get tired of reading, thinking, and writing about his work. We will see if I still feel that way after this year :)
I have to get back to it, but I will say that I am going to celebrate at a happy hour this afternoon (woot!).

My First Week of 2012

I have been wanting to post for some time now, but every time I am at my computer, I think I should be working. And really, I should because I have a draft due tomorrow and my article which is getting published at the end of the month - *stressed* However today being what it is, I thought I would get the ball rolling with a post about the new term. Last week was the first week of classes, and boy did I have a few surprises in store for me this term. As I mentioned before, I am only teaching one class because I need to have time to work on my own work for a change. So imagine my surprise when I find out that my class has been capped at 8 students! 8 students for a survey literature class? What? Come to find out that the campus I am teaching at has too many students on it at any one time, so they capped the classes. Now most teachers would love this because of course it means fewer papers to grade, etc. And for that reason, I do love it. But it does change the dynamics of  a class. I am used to lecturing to a room full of people, not just the front row. So far, though, I am adapting to it well. My students seem eager to learn, interested, and willing to participate. Admittedly, I have been distracted with my own work this month, so I am relying almost entirely on my materials from last semester. Not to worry, I have a plan to work all weekend with the aim of evaluating my lesson plans. The other surprise I had on the first day was the the publisher who bundled my course books this term bundled the wrong anthology! My students said "professor, it says American Literature on it" - what? This is the first time I have gone through the publisher directly and I am more than a little disappointed. So off to the university bookstore to sort it all out. Of course they have to return the bundles, order new items, and our first novel - Frankenstein - is on back order! I am hoping it gets shipped this week or I may have to do some reshuffling on the syllabus. In other news I am still trying to figure out a schedule that works for me - taking into account a new campus, new parking situation, and new office (but I still have my old one too). In spite of all this, the past two classes have gone quite well, and I was surprised to learn that many of them are either English majors or contemplating an English major (this is often not the case with a survey class).

In addition to the above-mentioned deadlines and work, I have been slowly preparing to apply to a couple fellowships that would allow me to conduct some summer research. I do not have time to go into it right now, but if all turns out well - I could spend up to a month in the Rushdie archives! That would be so cool - in a nerdy kind of way.

I admit that I could have used my winter break much more productively than I did. I am not sure why, but I was in a kind of slump. Things are much better now - I think I am affected by the whole winter dark/cold thing more than I realize. Anyway, I just finished a new book on my nightstand - Arranged Marriage by Chitra Divakaruni. I also wrote about her novel Palace of Illusions here. Arranged Marriage is a short story collection, and a very well-written one. It does kind of remind me of Jhumpa Lahiri (although I think Lahiri has slightly superior prose). Basically each story traces an arranged marriage (mostly between Bengali Indians). Unlike Lahiri, however, it includes Indians from many socio-economic classes. Most of them involve diaspora characters (living abroad in the "west"), but some stories reach across the world to India or Pakistan as well. They are very beautifully written, and I feel they capture the nuances and complexity of relationships - showing a range of realities and probing the cultural parameters of arranged marriages. I would highly recommend this collection (be warned - some of these stories are quite sad).

And now I think I am ready to move on to the monster waiting on my nightstand - A Suitable Boy. 1488 pages long and written by Vikram Seth, it poses a unique reading challenge to me. I will keep you updated on my progress through this tome of literary genius. Now, back to work!

Ipads for Teachers?

It is a slow morning, but I think writing about this topic will help me focus. I have been slowly shifting things off my desk, but I am determined to try and accelerate progress. In the meantime, I found two articles that are particularly relevant to a problem I've been having. Recently I was given an ipad because the new ipad 2 came out. It sat on my desk for a few months because I really did not have time last semester to reformat the whole thing, personalize all the apps, etc. Over the break I have become acquainted with it finally. Many who know me know that I have specific gripes with certain Apple products. This is possibly rooted in the fact that we had to produce our literary magazine in high school on ancient apple computers (which I mostly wanted to destroy with a hammer). However, I have some "real" issues with the practicality of certain Apple products for doing what I do. What is the main app that someone like me would love to use frequently? Blackboard, of course, since much of my computer-related teaching work involves blackboard. The latest version of this app is better than the first version I ever saw, but it is still limiting mostly because of the interface (blackboard is made for PCs) and the whole flash player nonsense. I do like that I can have dropbox on the ipad, but opening, editing, and saving documents still proves a challenge for me. I would love to be able to grade on an ipad, but so far I cannot see how it would be more efficient than my mini laptop (except perhaps the battery life?) because my laptop has a mouse and keyboard. Setting these gripes aside, I have made an effort to research what the most useful apps for teachers are, and to download them. I have yet to try them all out, but I will update you when I have had time to check them out.
I probably see at least one article a day on the usefulness of ipads as a teaching tool. Would I like to incorporate more technology into my teaching? Of course - I have found technology to be immensely helpful in my teaching so far. Some challenges and issues, however, include: 1) the classroom - yes, I know you can specially request a technology classroom, but even the "technology" ones can sometimes fall short of what I actually want - a computer attached to a digital projector. I realize now that ipads can project (but do not ask me how - I have absolutely no idea); 2) students - believe it or not students are not always ahead of teachers in their understanding of technology. Also, not all of them have the same technology - smartphones and ipads aside, some students still do not have access to any kind of computer in their homes. 3) pedagogy - we recently had this conversation with other teachers: is it really more effective than not? As much as I embrace technology in my teaching, I am always asking myself whether this form of technology is really helping teaching/learning or whether it is more like a gimmick.
Two articles sort of explore these two points (and also sparked this post). The first one explores the results of an experiment with ipads in a graduate class. The second explores a new teaching app and one professor's approach to incorporating ipads in the classroom. I admit, the thought of students quietly staring at their screens and communicating via this app is unnerving to me - I am used to an environment where students are looking at each other and me. Anyway, take a look at the articles and let me know what you think. Also, if you have any advice for teachers using ipads, please share!

Scholarly Look at Celebrities and YouTube

Taking a quick break to post on the blog. I am not getting nearly as much done with my own work, but the good news is that my emails are all cleaned out and the work blog is updated. I also found out that my class is full and some are even on a wait list. I admit I have not been in teacher head-space for almost a month. But this is good - all part of the two-jobs balancing act. Now I am getting excited for my new class. The location is off the main campus in a very beautiful mini-campus.

So I know that some of my friends and family wonder why I have not read certain books (especially popular books) because clearly I love reading. Setting aside the assumption that everyone has that I should have read every book on the face of the planet by now, there is the big factor that I read all the time. All. The. Time. Yesterday, for example, I read a 200 page PDF called The YouTube Reader. I also read half of the MLA on Celebrity (a very interesting edition for those of you who haven't gotten to it yet). The point being that even I can get tired of reading. That being said, I do have a nice little stack of books waiting to read by my bed - and I am slowly making my way through them (although even these are not keeping me current with Oprah's hot list). Most of us in graduate school are encouraged to be MLA members because MLA offers a lot of professional and academic development opportunities. One of these is the MLA books that come out with new scholarship on different issues. In a typical semester (where I am teaching four classes), these tend to stack up. I then usually go through them all at once to pull out articles I might read. Well lucky me, I have a whole edition that is somewhat relevant to part of my work on Rushdie. It is all about celebrity. I know, some of you must be thinking "jeez, you can study anything in graduate school." Well that is true, but think about how significant celebrities are to so many things - the popularity of certain products, the way we imagine ourselves and our ideal lives, the way they help us navigate our cultural values, etc. They are also just fun to write about. This edition covers a very broad range of topics including celebrity, fame, and notoriety (believe it or not there are very significant differences between these concepts).
The other text I was reading is called The YouTube Reader and you can find it for free here. It was recently suggested to me by a professor who knows of my interest in digital humanities. Since DH is still in a sort of infancy, there are few texts about it - this is one of them. Yes, it is primarily about YouTube, but the information can be extended to other uses of DH. You would be surprised at how these scholars look at what we consider to be the simple website YouTube. I am still making my way through parts of it, but it is quite interesting. Have you ever considered how youtube has altered our society?
Okay, I am going to try and squeeze a couple more hours of productivity out of myself. Anyone reading anything good right now?

Celebrity Works v. Celebrity Authors

Robert Louis Stevenson

My mother actually pointed out an interesting literary perspective the other day. Recently, she took a trip to Easter Island (cool, right!?) and on to Samoa where she visited a Robert Louis Stevenson museum. She was surprised to learn that this man authored two famous stories - Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Stevenson had spent many years in the Pacific, and he remains a popular guy in Samoa. My mom was just struck by the fact that she even though she was very familiar with these two stories, she had no idea who their author was. I pointed out that many people are familiar with stories, but have no idea who authored them - Dracula (Bram Stoker) and Frankenstein (Mary Shelley) being prime examples of this. It got me thinking, though, why we would know some authors of famous stories and not others. What is the cultural factors behind knowing an author or not? Are there any examples of knowing an author, but not his/her stories?

Bram Stoker, author of Dracula

I am especially interested in these questions because recently I have been contemplating the nature of author-celebrity status. The latest MLA focuses on fame and authorship - two concepts that I am finding are more and more relevant to my work. Take Rushdie, for example. He might qualify as an example where many people know his name, but few have ever read his books (and fewer would be able to recall the titles if prompted). This is in large part because of his "fame" with the death threat for Satanic Verses, but also because he does take time to cultivate a public persona.

Mary Shelley,
 author of Frankenstein

So going back to the authors of Dracula or Treasure Island - why are they little known while their stories continue to be famous? Did they not cultivate a striking author persona during life? (Part of my current research is to think about how authors have done just this - cultivated a public persona. It is popular to think first of Mark Twain with his three-piece suits, or even Hemingway with his uber-masculine persona. Some authors that we study in this theme show purposeful cultivation - to sell books, to provoke interest, etc. Some were just unique personalities that drew extraordinary attention).

Mark Twain in his three piece suit

Is it because they have a small body of popular work in comparison to, say, Charles Dickens? Or is it because these particular stories (Dracula, Frankenstein, Treasure Island, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) have been adapted so many times in film and other media that they have eclipsed their authors? It is perhaps not enough to say that there have been many film adaptations of these works (Dickens' work, after all, has also been adapted to many films), but these particular texts have also taken on cultural lives of their own - deviating not only from the author's particular vision, but from the text itself. I am not prepared to offer any hard and fast answers to these questions, but rather I wanted to throw them out to my readers to see if you have any theories. What stories do you know well, but are unsure about the author? Or celebrity authors whose works you have never heard of? Why do some stories stick with us and, on the other hand, just some authors?

Reappearing Act

This might be the longest hiatus that I've had in a while, so I apologize for the disappearing act. Let's just say that December kicked my ass, and that I needed an extended recovery period. Is it a bad sign that the first thing to happen to me in 2012 is a nose-throat cold? I am trying not to see it that way, or to stress myself out, but I did have a few things I wanted to have done by now. Luckily I do not have four classes to prepare for like I normally would, so I can just worry about the conference paper due and my proposal work which I wanted to have done by now. That is it for the whining portion of this program. Now, on to the good stuff.

I received word a few weeks ago that the conference in Turkey is going to publish our papers! It is a small victory, but a line on the resume is extremely satisfying. The semester ended on a really good note, actually, despite the frantic behavior I had when I returned from Europe. Most of it was finishing up classes, grading, and preparing for the holidays (and a great party that my roommate and I pulled together). It was a lot all at once, but I am proud to say that I turned my grades in early, and was completely done with work by Dec. 17. I also received some great comments from students about the course, and my teaching. I was very flattered, and now I wait nervously for the evaluations to come back. In other good news, I am making some progress on my own work (despite the above mentioned cold), however still feeling a little gun-shy after the last year. I will update you as that develops.

Unfortunately I have not made much progress in reading, mostly because I spent the first half of December reading student papers until my eyes wanted to burst, but my night-stand go-to was Ladies of Liberty by Cokie Roberts which I had started a while ago, but only just finished last night. I highly recommend this book to anyone remotely interested in history. I am actually not drawn to American history, but this book is so interesting and well-written. It tells the story of early America through the letters and diaries of prominent ladies - a unique perspective to be sure. This is herstory at its finest. I recently received a few books about the world from my world-traveling parents, so they are now on the night-stand waiting to be read. I also took up Arranged Marriage by Chitra Divikaruni last night - it is a collection of short stories about Indian and Indian-American women who negotiate their positions in arranged marriages. So far, I have read about four of the stories, and they are very well-written. They remind me a little of Jhumpa Lahiri's work, but they often have a little more intensity and focus. Did you pick up any great books over the holidays?

It is one of my mini-goals to keep up with this blog again because it really does help me maintain focus and a little accountability. It is also just fun, though I imagine that it is more fun for me than for you my dear readers. In the meantime, I will be fighting this cold and trying my hand at being productive. Hope you all had happy holidays, and wishing you and yours well in 2012.