Posts Tagged ‘Education Issues’
On Monday I found out I will be teaching two courses at Burlington County College this fall. I’m very excited to begin working and having a classroom of my own for the first time. So for the fall, I will be teaching two composition courses plus subbing in two districts. I began working on my syllabus today and hope to have an outline of what I will do in my classes by the end of the weekend.
I am happy to announce my participation in this semester’s graduate symposium for our English program at Monmouth. This semester I will be taking part in a round table discussion about academic writing and publishing. It is a great privilege that Dr. Kristin Bluemel will be moderating and my thesis adviser, Dr. David Tietge (no link: ahem), will also be participating.
I will be sure to arrive early to check out Meghan Kutz’s presentation on orientalism in British travel writing. I have had the pleasure of speaking to her about her research and it is quite impressive.
Here is the complete schedule:
LITERATURE MATTERS
Graduate Student Symposium
Monmouth University Department of English
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Wilson Hall, Room 106
PROGRAM
10:00 to 11:30 Session 1: Colonial and Post-Colonial Readings
Moderator: Dr. Sejal Sutaria
Veronica Guevara “Cultural Conflict–or Synthesis? Revised Double Consciousness, Engaged Resistance, and Man’s Relationship with Nature, Time, and Humanity in Vahni Capildeo’s ‘No Traveller Returns’”
Meghan Kutz, “Orientalism in 1930s British Travel Writing on China”
Shanna Williams, “Feminism in Indian Literature”
11:30 to 12:30 Roundtable: Writing and Publishing
Moderator: Dr. Kristin Bluemel
Participants: Dr. Sue Starke, Dr. David Tietge, Sara Van Ness, William P. Wend, Kim Rogers
12:30 to 1:30 Lunch
1:30 to 3:00 Session 2: Literature and Composition Today
Moderator: Dr. Elizabeth Gilmartin
Lisa Pikaard, “Moral Ambiguity in a World in Turmoil: Harry Potter’s Global Implications”
Jenn Ernst, “The Hunter and the Hunted: Drug Use/Abuse and the Failings of the 60s in H. S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”
Jana Phelps, “Amending Writing Composition Instruction to Fulfill the Needs of the Contemporary Student”
This is the kind of thing I think the digital humanities should be doing more of. Nick Montfort’s graduate course last semester created Des Imagistes, a hypertext version of Ezra Pound’s 1912 imagist anthology. There are some big highbrow Canonical authors included: William Carlos Williams, James Joyce, Amy Lowell.
User can click around between poems and authors to investigate the anthology. What I like the best about it is the straight forward nature of the Web Site, making traveling through the works very easy. This is the kind of Web Site that can be useful both in a New Media or English classroom and for showing the layman the basics of electronic literature. I am definitely going to bookmark this one for future reference.
Grand Text Auto has more information from Montfort himself.
His death is, in a sense, another nail in the coffin of a kind of literary vanguard. I can understand why this blog’s readership might relish, openly or in private, the extinction of these writers, particularly given the old school’s knee-jerk aversion to new methodologies and shifting boundaries. By 2006, as the sensationally-titled “The End of Authorship” attests, it seemed that Updike opposed progress in the humanities more than he furthered it. The voguish sentiment, for better or worse, was disdain for his belletristic ways.
This week’s video is Black Flag from the same show the Saccharine Trust footage was taken from. You’ll want to especially pay attention to Greg Ginn’s ridiculous guitar playing.
Is there ever a time when a leader shouldn’t sit down and talk with an enemy?
If you want peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies. The apartheid government in South Africa used to say they didn’t talk to terrorists, and they said Madiba [Nelson Mandela] was one of those. But of course, there’s no point in talking to someone else—someone who is not a leader, who has really no constituency—when that “terrorist,” so-called, is almost certainly the person that the oppressed regard as their leader. If you choose to talk with somebody else, the people will say, “That’s a stooge.” Any agreements you have with that one will have no credence.
How does peace come? Peace doesn’t come because allies agree. Allies are allies—they already agree! Peace comes when you talk to the guy you most hate. And that’s where the courage of a leader comes, because when you sit down with your enemy, you as a leader must already have very considerable confidence from your own constituency. Then, when you do things that are risky, your people know that you are not likely to do something reckless. If you are doing something that is a bit dodgy, they will give you the benefit of the doubt.
This week’s video is from Black Flag’s very hard (as in, I can’t even find a full copy on the Internet hard to find) “Live 86″ video. Here they are playing the song In My Head:
There is another big reason for not wanting to continue in academia after my MA.
I don’t feel like I have anything to prove anymore.
The few people I have strongly confided in over the years will understand this. I have had a lot of ups and downs over the years. I struggled coming out of high school and even when I first got to Stockton. I was able to get my life in order, become a strong student, and thrive in both the English and Philosophy departments. I went back and retook classes I struggled in and made up for my mistakes. I became, hell yeah I did, one of the best students in both departments at the time.
I got into graduate school next. Which was a huge deal for me. While there have been some pretty awful parts of my experience, I have also thrived here and proven to myself I can do this. I know I am a good writer, I do solid research, and I am a strong academic.
Nevertheless, I don’t think going on for another degree is that fruitful. Economically, with our economy in the tank thanks to the swine who run things in Washington, it is not sound. On an intellectual level, I would need to find the exact right program that would accentuate my interests and abilities, not hinder them. I am still open to such a program, but my active engagement with such a search is minimal.
What would that prove anyway? I feel like I have redeemed myself for past grievances and failures. It is time to move on.
I might have slipped this one out earlier on , but now is a good time I guess to announce that after my MA I will not be continuing in academia. There are many reasons for this. I have accumulated numerous issues with how academia works over the past few years. I do not want to single out my experience at Monmouth but, while there have been many lovely and positive things, there have also been many very negative and, honestly, extremely insulting and, at times, humiliating aspects to my graduate school experience. A lot of the more generally problematic concerns I had while I was working towards my secondary school teaching degree have also popped up as well.
After talking to friends and mentors from other schools, many of these problems are issues which academia in general are dealing with which one scholar or campus cannot be singled out for. That said, I think it is time for me to move on. All of that is someone else’s fight.
So, what is next? Over the summer I am going to be meeting with those same friends and mentors to decide on a course of action. Stay tuned.
Zotero Library
