What are all of your plans?

I certainly have other things I should be doing. I have 22 exams and essays that I need to grade, and more assignments will be coming in Monday. For class, I’ve got to write an abstract for a paper that I’ve done absolutely no thinking for. I just feel like I’m losing it and and that I really [*REALLY*] need a break. Have ya’ll reached that point? Am I just complaining into the eternal abyss of the Internet for the sake of complaining?

Anyway. Maybe after writing this post I’ll do some work. Well, probably not. I hope everyone’s semesters are wrapping up nicely.

I acquired a fair bit of presentation experience while at BYU, so I should have known better, but I still over-prepared for the question and answer session. My paper was about Piers Plowman and Inception (dreams within dreams, uncertainty about dreams’ significance, the dreamer’s potential for madness, etc.), so I was expecting all sorts of queries about medieval dream books, literary dreams, dream theory, and so forth. Most medievalists have something to say about dreams. Perhaps the problem was the dearth of literary scholars, but I only got one banal question about the reliability of the narrator. I guess I shouldn’t complain; it’s better than being thrown a question I have no idea how to answer, and the extra research I did won’t go to waste.

Does anyone else ever feel like what they’re doing is of no real significance?

A couple of notable eats: Moochie’s (perfect Philly cheese steaks), Lamb’s (good ambiance), and, of course, the “Utah” In-N-Out (I dare you to click on this and watch/listen to the entire advertisement). Granted, I have had two friends from Taiwan with me for the past two and a half weeks, so I shouldn’t feel guilty for not reading anything for the last little while. But, I still do.

How do you all feel? What do you do during these breaks? I feel like I need to work in some way, but all I want to do is sleep or watch movies (I saw _True Grit_ today and quite enjoyed the Coen brothers’ sweetness). Anyway, am I alone in feeling like an unproductive lump of whatnot?

But first let me set the stage a little bit. I distinctly recall loathing my situation when I first arrived to grad school. I hated the place and I felt like it wasn’t “right” for me. I had all sorts of romanticized assumptions of graduate work and I thought that I had pretty much been dropped in a wasteland. Considering my forthcoming “materialist intervention” of my surroundings one would suppose that I’m either walking around with a bag over my head, or that I’ve grown up (a little). Here’s what rocks:
*I have a sweet office space. It’s quiet, I’m surrounded by books, and I have a window. Perfection itself.
*I (sometimes) teach students who are really committed to learning and growth.
*I’m not starving. That’s pretty material.

OK, I’m clearly out of the habit of writing blog posts. But, to end, how about you do a “materialist intervention” into your grad school career. I’m sure we all got some great and not so great (and freaking awesome, if your name is Dallin) things to share.

Hope all is well.

Today, I read an article by Cary Nelson (at Urbana-Champaign) called “No Wine Before Its Time.” Are you familiar with it? It was such a relief to hear his opinion about “preprofessionalization.” He says don’t be afraid to publish early and present at conferences, as long as you have something intelligent to say. On the other hand, he offers an idea of what’s realistic: two to three conference presentations at specialized conferences in your field. That’s it. And the best thing to publish is a chapter of your dissertation–not half-baked seminar papers. He says, “Diverting yourself from your dissertation by revising seminar papers is not preprofessionalization; it is misguided professionalization…Much the same can be said of the frenetic effort to add more and more conference presentations to your vita” (159-60).

A week or so ago, as I was attempting to plan the next several years, I felt a little at sea. I wasn’t sure what my goal should be in terms of publications, etc. Now I think I do. This year, I’m hoping both to submit something from my undergrad thesis for publication and to prepare a paper to present at a notable conference (like Kalamazoo–the “big one” for medievalists) next year.  My third and fourth years, I’d like to be presenting papers that are coming from my dissertation. My fourth or fifth year, I’ll aim to submit a chapter-article for publication. I really want my dissertation to be my focus so that I can have something that’s ready to be made into a book when I go on the job market. And I don’t want to feel overwhelmed by conferences–like I did last week.

That’s the plan for now. What are your plans for/ thoughts about preprofessionalizing?

http://chronicle.com/blogPost/An-Open-Letter-to-New-Graduate/26326/

(Premium only; try on campus)

I went through this long introduction because it indicates some of the fundamental questions I think Mormon scholars have to grapple with: how will my faith influence my profession, and vice versa? I guess one escape would be to say that these two never intersect, but I don’t think this is very fair to either side: Sunday-only religions are too superficial to even waste one day a week on them, and post-modernism has already indicated how impossible it can be to strip ourselves of our biases. But I think the much more challenging, rewarding, and honest approach would be to try and negotiate these two camps successfully, such that both our faith and our profession enrich one another.

So my question: is there such a thing as Mormon literary criticism? Again, this isn’t “literary criticism of Mormon authors/works,” but a type of literary studies that is inflected by the tenets of our faith? And more broadly, in what ways do your autobiographical experiences shape the type of research you do?

Personally, I’m still not sure exactly what “faithful literary criticism” would be: I wrote a paper recently on Kant’s idea of free will in relation to a couple of novels, partly because I had become really interested in the Mormon idea of agency at that time. This might be one way of negotiating these two camps. I also find myself more wary and critical of professional trends that seem to constantly ebb and flow–I feel my faith suggests that what is more worthwhile and enriching in life does not always come in what’s fashionable but primarily in steady, proven ideals. These might not be your experiences–or it might not describe how you see your faith–but this is what I notice going on for me.

I’ve also noticed how my personal experiences and anxieties have shaped the type of papers I write or the ideas I find interesting–though I might notice these tendencies until later. In my first semester, I was feeling a bit anxious about being an “outsider” in my academic community. Not only was I married with children–a rarity even for Notre Dame–I was Mormon and came from a regular, white-collar background with no ties (and perhaps even a little animosity) towards academia. Around grad students from the East Coast or the children of professors, now savvy in the wine-and-cheese world of post-lecture receptions, I felt like something of a simpleton. Plus, I felt a little resentment towards obtuse, “high-culture” literature that seemed to take pride in being incomprehensible to people like my parents. One of my papers touched on Elizabeth Bowen and Virginia Woolf, and how I felt Bowen (a much more straight-forward writer) crafted fuller, richer characters by being more sympathetic to bourgeois-type figures. Another was on Mary Barber, an 18C female writer who struggled (and failed) mightly to escape her hard-knock life by entering the salon high-life of Swift, Pope, and others. Looking back, I can really see how my defensiveness towards my personal background and my anxieties about “fitting in” in grad school shaped the type of questions I ask.

This is just my perspective: do you guys find something similar happening? I’d love to hear your thoughts on these questions.

I say longingly (with a hint of *strong* jealousy) because next semester I have slim pickings: a seminar on material culture and nation building in the early U.S. (actually, a class I’m looking forward to for aim to theorize archives and archival research); a seminar called “new directions in ecocriticism” (I double hate any thing with the word “new” after my class on ‘new formalism’); and then a possible class on “romantic negativity,” British civil war literature (theorizing violence and the nation-state) or on how to suck on egg. The last one sounds the best.

OK, so if I were at Minnesota (oh, lucky, lucky Katie!)–in addition to probably bugging the heck out of Paula Rabinowitz with silly, puerile questions designed to make me look smart but only expose my academic insecurities–I’d take “Old Age in Film and Literature” with David Luke and “Readings in Narrative” co-taught by Nurrudin Farah and Charles Sugnet. But it appears that there are some really cool medieval classes. The “Gods and Monsters” class looks great.

At Colorado, I’d take Paul Youngquist’s “Black Romanticism,” Adam Bradley’s “Ralph Ellison” seminar, Nan Goodman’s “The Rhetoric of Law,” and then I’d finish myself off with a poetry fix in Julie Carr’s “Politics and Poetry” (the title is much, MUCH longer). Speaking of Colorado, how’s the town, Jeremy? You haven’t started disappearing from the world at 4:20 each afternoon, have you? (Oh!)

Kaila, the course descriptions for Duke aren’t available for my perusal, but I’d take Wald’s, Aers’s, and Baucom’s class (not just because our last names are nearly identical, but that certainly helps; I may have applied to Wisconsin last year because they have a building called “Bascom Hall”).