Back in the blogosphere
So I kind of dropped off the face of the internet for a while... I've been busy dealing with the start of classes, which has been particularly challenging as I am teaching an intro course on American literature. The course has taught me many things:
1) Walt Whitman is boring. There, I said it. 80+ pages of free verse isn't poetry, it's masturbation.
2) America has been weird about race longer than we can possibly understand. I think Columbus brought it with him, like small pox.
3) Herman Melville is a bad ass.
4) I'm not qualified to be teaching an American literature course that covers anything before 1910.
5) I'm not interested in teaching an American literature course that covers anything before 1910.
6) I may not have a choice.
It's been weird teaching literature courses again. Even before leaving academia for Sony, I was teaching mostly film and cultural studies, which is really what interests me. But I agreed to teach this course, and while I'm enjoying it and learning a lot, I also realize it isn't something I want to make a career out of. I'm just really out of touch with the field.
Otherwise, I've been busy preparing a presentation for this conference in Lansing, MI, which takes place next week. It should be interesting. I'm presenting the first of my research that will eventually result in a book, and it's a completely new way of working for me. Much more empirical and pragmatically-oriented. I'm also the first paper of the conference, which adds a little pressure. The original paper that I'm delivering is about 30 pages long, so the challenge has been to cut it down to about 12 pages to fit under 30 minutes. I'm also doing my first PowerPoint slideshow. Normally, I'm pretty skeptical about PowerPoint presentations, as I've sat through enough of them that don't really go anywhere, but do it with a lot of style, to realize it's usually a crutch. But in this case, I need to present a lot of additional information that I can't really talk through, so hopefully it will work as a visual complement.
It's going to be strange to be back in the US. I'll let you all know how it goes.
1) Walt Whitman is boring. There, I said it. 80+ pages of free verse isn't poetry, it's masturbation.
2) America has been weird about race longer than we can possibly understand. I think Columbus brought it with him, like small pox.
3) Herman Melville is a bad ass.
4) I'm not qualified to be teaching an American literature course that covers anything before 1910.
5) I'm not interested in teaching an American literature course that covers anything before 1910.
6) I may not have a choice.
It's been weird teaching literature courses again. Even before leaving academia for Sony, I was teaching mostly film and cultural studies, which is really what interests me. But I agreed to teach this course, and while I'm enjoying it and learning a lot, I also realize it isn't something I want to make a career out of. I'm just really out of touch with the field.
Otherwise, I've been busy preparing a presentation for this conference in Lansing, MI, which takes place next week. It should be interesting. I'm presenting the first of my research that will eventually result in a book, and it's a completely new way of working for me. Much more empirical and pragmatically-oriented. I'm also the first paper of the conference, which adds a little pressure. The original paper that I'm delivering is about 30 pages long, so the challenge has been to cut it down to about 12 pages to fit under 30 minutes. I'm also doing my first PowerPoint slideshow. Normally, I'm pretty skeptical about PowerPoint presentations, as I've sat through enough of them that don't really go anywhere, but do it with a lot of style, to realize it's usually a crutch. But in this case, I need to present a lot of additional information that I can't really talk through, so hopefully it will work as a visual complement.
It's going to be strange to be back in the US. I'll let you all know how it goes.
posted by L&D at
10:19 PM
2 Comments:
Welcome back to the blogo-thingy!
By
Tin Foil Hat, at 3:59 PM
Good luck surviving the Americana of it all. And fear not, .ppt is quite handy for the listener in most cases. Enjoy it!
By
cij, at 5:04 AM
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