The Little Professor

The Incredible Disappearing Lecture Notes

My lecture notes have disappeared.

By which I mean: my older notes (from, say, a decade or so ago and more) tend to be extremely full.  They lay out all my projected comments, often in complete sentences--in other words, the notes are intended to be read.  As I've stuck around, though, I have stopped reading notes; instead, the notes are clusters of page numbers, with brief comments on what I want to highlight, arranged according to projected discussion topic.  I know what I want to say and where I want to go, but I've found that I prefer to lecture in collaborative mode--working through the text with the students--and writing out notes in full tends to preclude the flexibility that requires.  For poetry, I have extensive marginal notes and move through the text that way.  

This is not a prescriptive strategy ("what you must do to engage with students").  It's not something I would have been comfortable with at all at the beginning of my career, but rather something I arrived at over the course of two decades.  Other colleagues prefer to outline, or prepare more extensive notes, or rely on more elaborate discussion protocols.  Every approach has its uses and pitfalls (try doing discussion on a day when no student has completed the reading...); there's nothing to do but experiment and, perhaps, change over time.  Which I suppose is another way of saying that the overuse of imperatives in pedagogical discussion is not much help.  

Yawn

A colleague recently remarked that boredom is part of the educational process: not all learning can be made "entertaining," and there are times when mastering a subject means doing a lot of dull work (repetition, dealing with "dry" texts, reviewing previous lessons, etc.).  The "discipline" in discipline, in other words.  I was thinking the other day, though, of the kinds of boredom inherent in teaching that the instructor, too, has to overcome.  At the most basic level, most of us eventually develop a stable repertoire of courses that we are expected to offer on a regular basis--the lower-division survey course, for example--that, because of our other professional obligations, cannot be revised extensively on any regular basis.  (For those of us with heavier teaching loads, having courses that eventually don't need extensive prep time is essential, especially when you hit that phase of your career when you are also expected to do a lot of service work.)  That's particularly the case if the works on the syllabus were designed to "talk" to each other, in which case removing one can cause aggravating domino effects down the line.  Similarly, it often becomes clear that some works consistently resonate with the local student population and others consistently don't, which means that the former tend to appear more often on one's syllabus and the latter less (or not at all); this leads to situations like teaching Jane Eyre in four classes out of six, as I once did many years ago.  (I'm a big fan of Jane Eyre! Great novel! But there are limits!)   And some of the repetitive drills that bore students also bore the instructors.  

I suppose some might argue that you should be upfront with the students about this, in the interests of authenticity, or the production of empathy, or the demonstrated of a shared (lack of) affect, etc.  A professor from my undergraduate days was, in fact, rather notorious for "being himself" in that manner, and had a habit of telling students things like "wow, I just don't feel like teaching today"; while I gather the students may have made sympathetic noises in class, the noises they made outside of class sure as heck weren't.  ("Great," one of his students said to me one day, "I guess we can leave now?") Putting aside the useful reminder that the student responses to personal revelations that you see may not be the student responses that you don't, the "discipline" in discipline pertains here too.  While the reasons for boredom may be different ("I've taught this poem so many times I can recite it backwards while balancing on one foot on top of a hardboiled egg"), the necessity of modeling how to do the work remains.  There is always something that can reanimate an overfamiliar text--a discussion session, a question, a serendipitous article or monograph (on a totally different subject, even), a new pedagogical technique...

 

Close to year twenty

I arrived in Fall '99, which makes this my nineteenth year here, I do believe.  (Or twentieth, depending on how you look at it.  If I get an invitation to the annual twenty-year landmark dinner, we'll know which one the college thinks it is.)    Instead of being one of the youngsters, I'm now one of the senior faculty, which feels rather alarming; my youthful starry-eyed visions (well, the stars were always rather blurred) have given way to the realities of everyday life, like assessment and periodic program review.  (Guess what we're doing this year?)  In any event, after nearly two decades of telling students that they must read The Pilgrim's Progress, probably to no avail,  I decided to put the proverbial money where the proverbial mouth is and teach a course on TPP and some responses thereto--Bronte, Dickens, Hawthorne, Alcott, DuBois, Plaatje, and Vonnegut.  (There will be some additional reading options for the papers, some of which I may swap in if I teach the course again.)   Meanwhile, I went through my British Literature II syllabus and...shortened it.  We've now had several years to acclimatize to fifty-minute classroom sessions, as opposed to one hour, and it's taken me this long to resign myself to the fact that losing those ten minutes really does affect what you can do in the space of one meeting. 

I've probably done my fill of conferences for this year, as while I'm not so overcommitted to writing projects as I was in '16-'17, I still have enough deadlines that I don't think I can fit in yet another paper.  It doesn't help that the new tax code has made the prospect of spending another $1K or more out of pocket on conference travel somewhat, shall we say, unappealing, given that we can no longer write off unreimbursed business expenses.  (I do think that there will have to be a reckoning somewhere about what the changed fiscal realities mean for expectations about conference participation, especially for graduate students, adjuncts, and junior faculty.  Perhaps this will help stimulate a turn to virtual conferencing or other alternatives?)

Meanwhile, yet another installment of what a full professor at a regional comprehensive does with her semester:

Teaching:

• Two courses, Rewriting the Pilgrim's Progress and British Literature II.  I have a course release for administrative work (see below).  TPP is a new prep.  Right now, my Brit Lit II is overloaded, so it currently has 46 students; the other course is much smaller, but will probably get some more students next week during final registration. 

Service:

• I'm now officially Associate Chair.  In the Fall, this means helping to coordinate PPR, along with the more usual duties (being in charge of undergraduate registration, assisting transfer students, wrangling faculty for events, and helping the chair with whatever the chair needs to be helped with).
• Curriculum Committee.  The department has acquired two new major tracks (long story) and a new minor (for which I'm partly responsible), so there will be a fair amount of work involved in getting them off the ground.
• Professional service-wise, I have an article to referee.

Research:

• I'm finishing the first "r" in an r-and-r that I got over the summer; this has to be done within the next couple of weeks. I'm mostly finished with it, but the article is in the "let me cut out all this material/wait, now I need to put in this other material/arrrgh, now it's too long" phase. 
• I'm writing a short article about Mrs. Humphry Ward's Eleanor, which is due at the end of October.
• Another short article for a Cambridge Companion, this time on early 19th-c. religious fiction.  This is due at the end of the school year.
• Two book reviews.
• A book proposal, of which more anon if it's successful.  (It's not Book 3 1/2, which is, yes, still ongoing--the r-and-r above is part of it.)  Most likely to be finished towards the end of this semester. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Adventures in Academic Life: The Spring Semester Edition

With the new semester comes a new installment in my chronicles of what a full professor at a regional comprehensive does to earn her keep.

Teaching

• I have a course release this semester (for the reason, see "service," below), so I'm offering only two courses: an undergraduate seminar on Victorian Poetry, which I've taught before, and a new graduate seminar on neo-Victorian fiction called (perhaps not altogether imaginatively) "After the Victorians."   
• I also need to develop a course proposal for the fall for a new undergraduate religion and literature course, although I'm not yet sure of the precise parameters.  Part of me is thinking of The Pilgrim's Progress and the nineteenth-century novel, if only because I keep telling my students that they really ought to read TPP, and yet, I don't think anyone ever assigns it.  However, the other part of me has doubts.  I'll keep thinking. 

Scholarship

• Since last I wrote, a book chapter and two book reviews have appeared.
• I keep saying I'm going to finish this article, and I keep adding footnotes to it.  This is a problem, because the article is really long and as it stands, there are almost certainly only two journals to which I can send it.  The main text, mind you, is finished--it's just the footnotes that keep multiplying. (All together now: just finish it and put it in the mail online submission system.)  The article will also be a book chapter (eventually).
• Now that I've figured out (again) what I'm doing with Book 3 1/2, I can sit down and draft the first chapter this semester.   Incidentally, I wish the first edition of The Fairchild Family was available online somewhere.  (Sherwood made some significant changes to it, in case you're wondering.  You probably aren't.)
• I have two book reviews to write.
• In another window on my computer, I'm writing a conference paper proposal.

Service

• I'm Associate Chair this semester.  This primarily involves dealing with undergraduate advising issues, but also such things as updating the department website, helping the chair with the schedule, making Open House arrangements, attending whatever meetings the chair can't attend, etc., etc., etc.
• I'm one of the external examiners on a doctoral committee, and so I'm currently reading a dissertation.

 

 

 

 

 

End of Semester Wrap-Up

It's time for another edition of "what does a full professor at a small regional comprehensive do with her semester?"

Research and writing:

• Currently finishing up the footnotes on an article that I'd like to send out by the end of the year.  The article will also be two book chapters (with one chapter a slightly expanded version of the text's main body, and one chapter built up from a section that currently occupies about three pages of text).
• I think I have a book chapter appearing on...Monday?
• A book review appeared.
• Updated the footnotes to an article in an edited collection.  The collection has been circulating for a while, so I keep updating the footnotes...
• Started working on queries regarding a manuscript currently in press.
• Refereed an article.
• Agreed to write a book review.
• Agreed to be the external examiner on a doctoral dissertation.
• Wrote an external promotion review letter.
• Working on a conference paper proposal related to bullet point #1 (the "three pages of text" section), as I'd like to make sure that I get going with that chapter.

Teaching:

• Taught three sections: British Literature II (40 students), Introduction to Literary Analysis (15), Capstone Seminar (18).    Grading now in process (one class finished). 
• A colleague and I developed a new minor (co-housed in the History department) that was approved by the Senate, so I'm thinking about a new undergraduate course for it in the Fall.
• Began thinking about my Spring courses, of which there are only two this time (for reasons related to bullet point #2 below). 

Service:

• I started the semester as chair of the Curriculum Committee.  Then...
• I underwent a magical transformation (no sparkles involved) and became interim Associate Chair of the Department.  I was expecting to become interim Associate Chair next semester, not this semester, so there was some desperate flailing around.  However, I seem to have settled in, and we'll see how this goes.  (I spent several years as director of the graduate program, so I've done administrative duties before.)  In any event, this job will come with a dollop of accreditation work next semester. 
• Was on a promotion committee. 

Sherlocking Along

I'm teaching the Sherlock Holmes and adaptation seminar again this year, and we've now moved past selected Doyle stories and an example of Rathbone/Bruce into the core of the semester--works which engage not just with Doyle, but with the tradition of adaptation itself.  Four works specifically, each paired: Michael Dibdin's The Last Sherlock Holmes Story and Charles Marowitz's black comedy Sherlock's Last Case, on the one hand, and Michael Chabon's The Final Solution and Mitch Cullin's A Slight Trick of the Mind, on the other.  (There are several other works on the menu too: more film and TV, chunks of Newman's Moriarty parody, some short stories and mashups.)  Dibdin, Chabon, and Cullin all respond to the nationalist/imperialist Holmes who emerged during the era of the WWII propaganda films, in which Holmes and Watson save not just the day, but the world from villains far more threatening than even Moriarty.  Even the Rathbone/Bruce Hound of the Baskervilles ends with Mortimer (rather aged up) proclaiming that "We've admired you in the past, as does every Englishman.  Your record as our greatest detective is known throughout the world, but this, seeing how you work, knowing that there is in England such a man as you, it gives us all a sense of safety and security.  God bless you, Mr. Holmes."  Holmes-the-Protector-of-All-Things-English was apparently not undermined by the infamous "Watson, the needle!" that ends the film, but it is precisely this attempt to position Holmes as a combination national hero and moral bulwark that Dibdin takes on: after all, his Watson covers up for the insane Holmes' somewhat, er, inconvenient alter ego (see below the fold, for those who haven't come across this novel) because of the "danger to the moral fibre of the entire nation" (165), among other things, if Holmes' true nature is revealed.  In Watson's rather self-serving reasoning, Holmes can ultimately only continue to embody English rectitude by being killed off (literally) into fiction; that his subsequent resurrection by Arthur Conan Doyle is, of course, due to cash flow problems instead of high-falutin' values suggests the irony at work.  Marowitz's play, far more brutal, casts a similarly jaundiced eye on what my students called "Superman Holmes," but here, it is Watson driven mad by Holmes' sheer egotistical cruelty.  This is a Nigel Bruce version of Watson, forever consigned to comic second banana, whose concealed rage eludes both Holmes and the viewer; translated into an actual comedy, the "humorous" character becomes all too aware that the Rathbone/Bruce relationship dynamics look rather sadistic than otherwise.  The implications of  "Watson, the needle!" come back in the tea-making scene that opens the play, in which Holmes coolly orders Watson about like his own personal servant.

Chabon and Cullin, by contrast, are more melancholy than murderous.  Perhaps it helps that they are post-Brett, as well as post-Rathbone; moreover, neither Holmes has a Watson who exists in anything other than memory, although Chabon's gets a somewhat incompetent substitute.  These ancient Holmeses are transplanted to the WWII and immediately post-WWII eras, where, contra the propaganda films, they prove to be at best, partly helpful; at worst, useless.  Faced with terrifying enormities (the Holocaust) or motiveless killings, neither Holmes can supply the comforts offered by Doyle's endings, let alone the heroics of propaganda narrative.  Strikingly, Chabon's Holmes is recognizable--like the dead Dorian Gray--primarily because of the accumulated artifacts associated with him, like the magnifying glass; his legendary self has reduced down into a collection of signifying curiosities that say "Sherlock Holmes," even when Holmes can no longer be fully himself.  In Chabon's novel, Holmes himself seeks a kind of emotional satisfaction from solving the problem of the missing parrot that, ultimately, is detached from a tragedy he cannot even perceive, let alone understand.  The pleasures there are local, not national.  Cullin's novel is even more explicit that the sense of safety on offer from Sherlock Holmes stories is, in the end, an artifact of their status as stories; what happens when a crime turns out not to be one, and cannot be resolved in a traditional Holmes plot?

On the plate for this semester

Once again, what is a full professor at a regional comprehensive doing this semester?

Teaching:

• British Literature II (40+ students).  I haven't taught this in three years or so; as always, I made some minor tweaks  to the syllabus (e.g., adding in The Good Soldier at the end). 
• Introduction to Literary Analysis (about to be 15 students). The required introduction to the major, which I usually teach at least once per year.  The second half of the semester is entirely new, as I decided to change up my alternating Hamlet/King Lear segments by doing Macbeth instead.  (Which proved to be a bit of a headache, as almost every single literary response to Macbeth proved to be a) out of print, b) not yet in print, c) not available in the USA.  Nevertheless, I did finally manage to round up a few things, plus, of course, Throne of Blood.) 
• Curious Case of the Adapted Detective (17 students): The Sherlock Holmes seminar, a.k.a. the research capstone.  Mostly the same as the last time I taught it, with the minor addition of Stephen King's uncharacteristically charming "The Doctor's Case."

Service:

• The department's Undergraduate Curriculum Committee, which will have at least one major undertaking that I know of (possibly two), plus various things having to do with assessment.  I...may be chairing this committee? Not sure yet.  (If I'm the chair, I'll also be on the department's Executive Committee.)
• An ad hoc department committee, for this semester only. 
• Service, of course, is one of those things that tends to expand unexpectedly.

Scholarship:

• Hey, I'm back to working on my book again (aka Book 3 1/2).  Right now, I'm knocking an article into shape, parts of which will later be used for a book chapter.  I'd like to have two chapters cleanly drafted by the end of the school year.  (We'll see if writing that sentence will get me sufficiently energized.) 
• I didn't do any conferencing last year, due to over-committing myself to articles + delivering an invited lecture.  I'm working on a conference proposal for the spring. 
• I have to decide the fate of an article in a collection that doesn't seem to be finding a home (perhaps this sentence will magically cause something to occur...). 
• It's possible that I'll need to revise an article that is in a collection that has found a home, but that's more likely to happen next semester.

 

 

Mill's Inaugural Address and the Contemporary University (Or Not)

Below are some provisional thoughts I'm still working through about attempts to transplant John Stuart Mill to the contemporary university system.  As a Victorianist (albeit not a philosopher), I'm always a bit cautious about using nineteenth-century thinkers to solve or provide analogies for twenty-first century problems, as opposed to engaging with them as sounding boards.  In this case, I'm mostly interested in everyone's obsessive turn to On Liberty, which is not about university instruction, and their avoidance of the Inaugural Address, Delivered to the University of St. Andrews, which is.  The problems here are somewhat different than (but overlap with) those posed by Newman's Idea of a University, which I discussed several years ago.  Warning: quite long. 

A professor's life: Spring 2017

Yes, yes, it's still winter, but it's the Spring semester coming up, because universities are apparently in denial about the seasons, or something.

In any event, here's what's on the January-May agenda for yours truly, a full professor at a regional comprehensive with a 3-3 teaching load:

Teaching:

• Three courses (Freshman Composition, 19th c. British Short Fiction, British Novel II).   Composition is always a new prep, because I change the syllabus to provide some sort of context for whatever that year's summer reading was.  British Novel II is revised from its last appearance, and 19th c. British Short Fiction will be pretty much a repeat.   

Service:

• Academic Senate (this is my last semester as a rep)
• Undergraduate Curriculum Committee (a senate standing commitee; this will get very busy after February)
• Chair, Appointments, Promotion, and Tenure Committee (we need to do our semi-regular revision of our guiding document)
• I've also been working with a colleague on a new minor that will be co-hosted with the History department.

Research:

• Article #4, due at the end of February (this exists as part of a longer chapter in Book 3 1/2, so it needs to be sanded down, as it were, with a new intro and conclusion; this will also be an excellent time to update the scholarship, anyway)
• Invited lecture, end of April (about 40 minutes, so 19-20 pages or so; I've already begun this)
• Two book reviews, one this month or early next month and one by March (for Open Letters Monthly and Victorian Studies)

 

Extra Curricular

I awoke this morning and was promptly puzzled by an op-ed from Inside Higher Education, a state of mind I more commonly associate with op-eds at the CoHE.   

What I did not find puzzling: the paperwork (I need to fill out paperwork for every new course I propose); the courses with "umbrella" titles (yes, we have those); the assessment procedure; the working with higher-ups; etc.  These are normative procedures on my campus, and I imagine that they're normative procedures on many other campuses as well. 

What I found mildly puzzling: removing pre-reqs (OK, in some instances, but...).

What I found entirely baffling:The idea that you could have two hundred students in Principles of Poetry and have a successful course.  Oh, I'm sure there are universities that have two hundred students in Principles of Poetry, or whatever you'd like to call it, but they would also have to have discussion sections and multiple TAs.  My department has no TAs.  We would not put two hundred students into Intro to Poetry, because that would make no pedagogical sense.  It was not clear from the article that Bugeja quite understood what's necessary for good teaching outside his own department. 

Bugeja's ideas about how the Faculty Senate should control curriculum were also a little odd, the first because it's old rather than new, the second because it's not workable.   Any change to the major that led to duplication would be whacked down in committee even before it got to the entire senate (I know this, because I've both been on the UCC and I'm currently a senator).  Moreover, the danger of cross-major duplication seems to me, from my own observations at least, to affect small majors more than big ones--the obvious case being women's studies and ethnic studies departments, which are usually both extremely tiny (despite frequent outbursts of angst from academic observers further to my right) and likely to see their course material appearing elsewhere.  It's possible to get around this by cross-listing, which then obviates the duplication issue somewhat. 

Now, having the UCC approve every new course...no.  No no no no no.  No.  Absolutely not.  We have a special committee set aside to handle General Education courses specifically, and that committee is a huge burden.  Similarly, the UCC handles significant changes--new majors, changes to major requirements, new tracks or programs, new certificates.  That committee is also a massive time-sink, with dozens of applications to approve, and I teach at a very small college.  We could not approve, or even look at, every new course.  I can imagine that a very tiny SLAC could be hands-on with new courses like that, but a committee at a small SUNY like mine would simply implode under the weight.