The Care of the Self

Sorry, Foucauldians:  you’ll learn nothing powerful/knowledgeable from me.  Go buy the book.
Today I find myself possessed of that rarest of professorial commodities:  free time in mid-November.  As I’ve mentioned in the past few posts, obligations rain down hot and heavy past the mid-semester mark.  In addition to all the usual work of reading, grading, and [...]

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Zombies!

Today, brevity, as anything that smacks of non-essential recreation must be knocked out before 7:45am.  It’s going to be that kind of weekend.
Zombies, seriocomically enough, occur in my dream life as an exceedingly versatile, recurrent symbol.  Once upon a time they figured primarily in terms of insatiable predation:  they would descend upon me in the [...]

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That Which We Are, We Are

At the moment I should be fleshing out a book order for my Spring 2010 session of Popular Culture in America, but instead I am blogging.  This is because I have my priorities straight.
The past few weeks have been unduly frustrating, and I think I have identified the primary reason why:  other people, as it [...]

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Polymaths and Aftermaths

One of the worst things a teacher can do at October’s end, in my learned opinion, is look at the calendar.  Nothing good can ever come of it.
The past week was an odd one.  In defiance of science I’ve been harboring a nice, steady fever of about 101, yet without any pesky symptoms to tell [...]

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Reading Readings

The academic life is fraught with horrors–fraught I say!–and none more unnerving than the Monday night class.
I kid, I kid; everyone knows that Wednesday night class is where we keep the horror.  Monday night classes are, in contrast, the bomb-diggity.  You heard me:  the bomb-diggity, with a hyphen.  The batch of students I’ve got this [...]

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Chronicle of a Faceplant Foretold

It started on Friday.
I woke, as I always do, around 4:30am.  I cannot explain this particular habit, so let’s just let it slide.  By 4:45 I had my protein shake in hand and was answering student e-mails; by 5:15 I had dipped into the batch of exams that I had to grade.  My process for [...]

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The Perils of PowerPoint

I’ve been a delinquent blogger of late, as you’ve probably noticed.  This semester is filthy with commitments, most of them time-consuming, and as a result the odd hours I might devote to these jottings have become a little more elusive.  I’m also trying to weed out some of the more narcissistic navel-gazery (avid and/or obsessive [...]

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The Synergy Twist

Looking at the calendar once the fall is well and truly underway tends to disorient me:  here we are, more than a month in to the semester’s proceedings and I feel as though we’ve barely scratched the surface.  Students may feel a bit differently, I reckon–once the autumn starts to gobble up their time like [...]

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Dial “M” for Monday

Last night when I went to bed there was mischief afoot in the neighborhood.  Someone somehow summoned the thunder, and I fell asleep to the sound of rumbling not unlike the genuine article.  I don’t think that any fireworks were scheduled or any fusillades of cannon fire were meant to accompany local sporting events (our [...]

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Meanderings

As is so often the case once the semester is underway, I am posting out of a sense of obligation, not as the result of inspiration.  Kindly temper your expectations accordingly.
This semester, alas, is filthy with meetings.  While some are a pleasure–I get to meet with an Honors student every Friday to discuss an ongoing [...]

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