Scattered Musings

• The fellowship game.  I'm trying to figure out how best to allocate my resources for this article I've suggested on sermons.  This will be one of those projects that requires travel--ideally to England, but also to Georgia and probably New Haven.  On the one hand, if I use one of my college's grants to go to Georgia over spring break, then I may not have enough money to go to England in the summer; on the other hand, if I don't do anything over spring break, then I may not get enough reading done this year.  The Huntington has an exchange fellowship that looks quite interesting, but that requires me to find (in very short order) three people in my immediate circle who can discuss a grant proposal on sermons. 
• Justice isn't blind.  Incidentally, I wonder to what extent academic blogging will destroy double-blind peer review.  If someone googles "Anne Boleyn," after all, they get to this blog fairly quickly (right now, it pops up at #20 on the list).  Double-blind peer review has always been a fiction when it comes to certain topics; if everyone knows that X is working on book Y, then peer reviewer Z will no doubt figure out the author of said book quickly enough.   But what about smaller projects? Obviously, the only way to avoid being "seen" is to stop talking about one's research, or to do so only under the safe cover of anonymity; but just as obviously, that approach negates part of academic blogging's actual use value.
• Cantankerous.  I really cannot abide prose like this.   Not that my own prose deserves to be ranked with Macaulay's, let alone Augustine Birrell's, but what on earth is the point?  (And am I too young to be truly cantankerous?)
• Workshops.  My creative writing colleagues might get a kick out of this thread.   I'm finding the imagery a little difficult to work out, but it takes all sorts...
• Epiphany.  At about 1:00 AM on Thursday, I finally figured out what to do with my seminar, thereby banishing my post of a few days ago to the irrelevancy bin.  No, I did not jump out of bed and yell, "Eureka!" For starters, it was quite cold.  And the cats would have disapproved.  Also, "Eureka" seems a trifle over-dramatic for a syllabus.  In any event, my solution works around most of the local problems that rendered the original course difficult to plan: the relatively low likelihood that my students will have any prior knowledge of anything published in England, Scotland, or Wales after 1900; the unpredictable skill levels of students in this particular seminar; our students' lack of anything resembling a shared body of literary knowledge.

Comments

[Brett]

And am I too young to be truly cantankerous?

Perhaps, but you are clearly old enough to be complicit!

[Jason]

Don't know if the timing fits with your workflow, but the Georgia school offers short-term library fellowships: http://marbl.library.emory.edu/Visiting/Fellowships/fellowships-marbl.html

They're offered through the main library's special collections program, but the theology library's only about fifty yards away.

[Rebecca]

I hope a reader who is really committed to the double-blind peer review concept will refrain from using google to try to identify the scholars whose work he is evaluating.

I think there's a larger question here about the ethics of using google to try to get more information about a person when you aren't really entitled to know more...

[Jonathan]

Someone should employ a research assistant to go through all of the journals listed in the MLA's database and determine what percentage use double-blind review, what percentage allow the reviewer to know who you are but not you to know the reviewer, and what percentage dispense with anonymity of any form. If this has already been done, please tell me about it. Also, you love prose like that and secretly write it in your journal.

[chris]

You're never too young to be cantankerous. Cantankerousness is a great gift. Use it wisely.