Some account keeping:
In the next two days I need to:
Pay rent.
Write up my case study, after I observed two classes and interviewed the teacher, and reflect on their pedagogical methodologies.
Reread another 140 pages of “Our Mutual Friend”, and if I have time, write a response paper on it.
Write a proposal for my final paper for the Dickens class, and an annotated bibliography. After I meet with a research librarian for assistance.
Reread Johnson’s “The Vanity of Human Wishes”. Read another 50 pages of Johnson criticism. And write something erudite on Dr Johnson.
Sleep.
Friday, October 26, 2007
Since the semester started, Fridays have always been reserved for English department happy hours, but tonight I decided to stay in and do some reading, some homework, some cleaning. I’ve just managed to post some work on a subject blog for my Approaches to Teaching Writing class, and will spend some time this evening reading “Rasselas” by Samuel Johnson. (I admit, I’m becoming a huge fan of his…)
Things are afoot. I’ve started to plan my two major essays for the semester: for Dickens I’m going to look at “Bleak House” and for 18th Century I’ll be focussing on Samuel Johnson’s “A Tour of the Western Isles”. I’ve got a research consultation with a librarian lined up for Wednesday this week, so I’ll have a month or so to really work my way through those pieces. In the mean time, there’s the rest of classes and class reading to think about. So: I’m diving in.
We had a “Town Meeting” for the graduate students in the department last week. It was a chance for graduate students to come together as a group outside of class time with Professor Temple, and ask questions. The main focus last week was on PhD application processes—a large pile of paperwork that I am NOT looking forward to, I have to say. It was quite motivating, however, and made me think through my research interests. Since I’ve never been able to settle into a specific author or period that I want to focus all my energies on (Henry James aside… and in spite of my love affair with him, I don’t want to spend my whole life simply as a Jamesian who occasionally branches out into Edith Wharton) I started thinking about themes and research frames that interest me. I keep coming back to aspects of space, exile and melancholy. Perhaps over the next six months or so this will coalesce into something.
One of the girls here, Olga, has been very proactive in starting a graduate poetry group. A few of us had been talking about the idea of getting one under way, and then it’s suddenly sprouted. We met last night for the first time. I think we were initially under the impression that it was going to be a sorting-it-all-out meeting, but David Gewanter, the faculty member who’s helping us out with it, asked if anyone had poems, and we ended up jumping straight into a poem I wrote a couple of weeks ago, “October.” I think that group will be a source of sanity for me. And I’m keen to get us discussing some contemporary poets and poetics too.
I’m also getting together a reading group for next semester. They don’t really have reading groups here in the same way they do in Melbourne, but when I’ve floated the idea of getting a critical theory reading group together, a lot of people have responded very positively—including members of staff. As well as giving suggestions for a list of books we might want to consider reading in such a group, a couple have expressed an interest in being kept up to date on it—I don’t know if that means we could potentially end up having faculty in the group, but if we do, that would be wonderful. In general I’m impressed with how much staff and students come together here.
A few weeks ago in Dickens, Leona Fisher had told us about a former student of hers who has twice made a spectacle of himself in the library when reading Dickens—the first time dissolving into laughter, the second time into tears. I’m afraid I joined the spectacle-in-the-library society yesterday. Rereading the end of “Great Expectations” I just broke down when Joe left Pip a letter, after nursing him through his illness. “Ever the best of friends.” Some days I think I’m too much of a literature student for my own good.
It’s been raining most gloriously in the past few days. I have to waterproof my boots and think soon about getting a real winter coat. I have no concept of what temperature it is, because I just can’t come to terms with Fahrenheit. I just know that summer is over, and the pre-rain smells like home.
Things are afoot. I’ve started to plan my two major essays for the semester: for Dickens I’m going to look at “Bleak House” and for 18th Century I’ll be focussing on Samuel Johnson’s “A Tour of the Western Isles”. I’ve got a research consultation with a librarian lined up for Wednesday this week, so I’ll have a month or so to really work my way through those pieces. In the mean time, there’s the rest of classes and class reading to think about. So: I’m diving in.
We had a “Town Meeting” for the graduate students in the department last week. It was a chance for graduate students to come together as a group outside of class time with Professor Temple, and ask questions. The main focus last week was on PhD application processes—a large pile of paperwork that I am NOT looking forward to, I have to say. It was quite motivating, however, and made me think through my research interests. Since I’ve never been able to settle into a specific author or period that I want to focus all my energies on (Henry James aside… and in spite of my love affair with him, I don’t want to spend my whole life simply as a Jamesian who occasionally branches out into Edith Wharton) I started thinking about themes and research frames that interest me. I keep coming back to aspects of space, exile and melancholy. Perhaps over the next six months or so this will coalesce into something.
One of the girls here, Olga, has been very proactive in starting a graduate poetry group. A few of us had been talking about the idea of getting one under way, and then it’s suddenly sprouted. We met last night for the first time. I think we were initially under the impression that it was going to be a sorting-it-all-out meeting, but David Gewanter, the faculty member who’s helping us out with it, asked if anyone had poems, and we ended up jumping straight into a poem I wrote a couple of weeks ago, “October.” I think that group will be a source of sanity for me. And I’m keen to get us discussing some contemporary poets and poetics too.
I’m also getting together a reading group for next semester. They don’t really have reading groups here in the same way they do in Melbourne, but when I’ve floated the idea of getting a critical theory reading group together, a lot of people have responded very positively—including members of staff. As well as giving suggestions for a list of books we might want to consider reading in such a group, a couple have expressed an interest in being kept up to date on it—I don’t know if that means we could potentially end up having faculty in the group, but if we do, that would be wonderful. In general I’m impressed with how much staff and students come together here.
A few weeks ago in Dickens, Leona Fisher had told us about a former student of hers who has twice made a spectacle of himself in the library when reading Dickens—the first time dissolving into laughter, the second time into tears. I’m afraid I joined the spectacle-in-the-library society yesterday. Rereading the end of “Great Expectations” I just broke down when Joe left Pip a letter, after nursing him through his illness. “Ever the best of friends.” Some days I think I’m too much of a literature student for my own good.
It’s been raining most gloriously in the past few days. I have to waterproof my boots and think soon about getting a real winter coat. I have no concept of what temperature it is, because I just can’t come to terms with Fahrenheit. I just know that summer is over, and the pre-rain smells like home.
Monday, October 15, 2007
I’ve just had a response from one of the Calls for Papers I answered, and am writing my first encyclopaedia entry over the next month—I suppose I’m starting to get into this whole graduate student world well and truly now. But I’m balancing it out by convincing people to go see films and go to the zoo with me. Well, I hope I am!
Sunday, October 14, 2007
I’ve been looking at Calls for Papers, for conferences and journals, and hope to write a couple of abstracts up this week. I’m also on a campaign to get others to join me in this endeavour, so we can all submit work and get into the swing of graduate student life. I’m glad I gave a paper at the Antithesis “Piracy” Symposium earlier this year: it feels, now, like it was a good hurdle to get out of the way, and now that it’s done, I can approach the next batch in a less nervous manner.
Somehow lately I have the creative energy I’ve been lacking for a while—sat down to write a poem a few days ago, and the words arrived. It’s not the right moment to sit down and write more yet, but that will come. It’s such a relief!
The last few weeks have been a bit emotional for me—I’ve been pretty homesick, which has been something of an ordeal. But too, I feel like I’ve started to make real friends too. Moments have arrived where I’ve been able to tell people that I’m not at 100%, and people have responded with real warmth. And so there’s a flipside to it all. In a way I feel that this grieving for Australia is what will help me make a real home here, for the time that I stay in America.
I gave my first (real) class paper this week, on Tom Jones. I did a kind of practice run two weeks before that when I gave a (voluntary) paper on some features of Gothic literature of the Gothic period. I found it inspiring that, without notes from the course I took way back in 2000, I could still remember so many of Peter Otto’s lectures with such clarity. That paper went well, but because it was voluntary, it wasn’t really a pressure situation. This week we’re finishing off Mr Jones, and talking about current trends in literary studies. I’m looking forward to that.
I’ve got my thanksgiving plans sorted out—my “muse” Lisa is taking me to Tennessee, where she has an aunt and uncle. My first road trip! We’ll give it a nerdy spin, as I’m trying to put together some kind of reading list for us to get through. Judith Butler and perhaps Elaine Scarry. In other news, filling in a medical form this week I had to list someone local for an emergency contact, and Lisa became my “person”. We’ve spent a lot of time in the last week sitting silently together in cafes, on benches, on the Healy Lawn, reading books and taking notes. It’s certainly nice to have a person here!
Somehow lately I have the creative energy I’ve been lacking for a while—sat down to write a poem a few days ago, and the words arrived. It’s not the right moment to sit down and write more yet, but that will come. It’s such a relief!
The last few weeks have been a bit emotional for me—I’ve been pretty homesick, which has been something of an ordeal. But too, I feel like I’ve started to make real friends too. Moments have arrived where I’ve been able to tell people that I’m not at 100%, and people have responded with real warmth. And so there’s a flipside to it all. In a way I feel that this grieving for Australia is what will help me make a real home here, for the time that I stay in America.
I gave my first (real) class paper this week, on Tom Jones. I did a kind of practice run two weeks before that when I gave a (voluntary) paper on some features of Gothic literature of the Gothic period. I found it inspiring that, without notes from the course I took way back in 2000, I could still remember so many of Peter Otto’s lectures with such clarity. That paper went well, but because it was voluntary, it wasn’t really a pressure situation. This week we’re finishing off Mr Jones, and talking about current trends in literary studies. I’m looking forward to that.
I’ve got my thanksgiving plans sorted out—my “muse” Lisa is taking me to Tennessee, where she has an aunt and uncle. My first road trip! We’ll give it a nerdy spin, as I’m trying to put together some kind of reading list for us to get through. Judith Butler and perhaps Elaine Scarry. In other news, filling in a medical form this week I had to list someone local for an emergency contact, and Lisa became my “person”. We’ve spent a lot of time in the last week sitting silently together in cafes, on benches, on the Healy Lawn, reading books and taking notes. It’s certainly nice to have a person here!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)