Teaching experiment

Today my department chair confirmed my teaching a course in the Winter term (January – April) of 2010. Originally he wanted a postcolonial theory course, but after a conversation with our undergraduate coordinator they decided instead on a postcolonial literature class. I will begin to structure the course this summer, and as an exercise I will chart that process here (or in whatever format/site/etc we decide to continue).

These updates will include not only the material itself, but also more basic questions of pedagogy: the syllabus, delivering lectures, handling student responses in papers and exams, and so on. Further, I will continue to discuss these issues and track the effective and ineffective strategies/techniques during the class itself. Are you folks interested in playing along?

Your list

I have heard several times now that people who write down a list of everything they want to accomplish in life are more likely to do so than people who keep their goals inside their mind. This makes sense to me, as the same rule applies for writing papers — the most effective way to communicate everything you want in the final draft is to write them all down at the beginning, rather than try to remember and organize your thoughts internally. I recently began a “list notebook” which contains everything from lists of things I want to purchase for the apartment long-term to what qualities great professors share. Also included is my “life list” which I just wrote this evening. It’s fairly short but (for me) comprehensive:

Blog organization

I admit, I am a stickler for organization when it comes to entries and categories. As I understand things, every new post we submit is dumped into one page (“Home”). We can differentiate between types of posts by applying categories, and then click and/or search through categories to find every relevant entry. This is a nice feature, but I wonder if, in addition to it, we might also have a few dedicated pages for specific things? For example, could we segregate posts relating to the page I just created for “ideas, research, writing” to that page, so that instead of searching for that category I could click on the page tab?

I imagine this blog as similar to the DevonThink 2.0  database I use on my computer for organizing files for my research. Yes, the program allows me to search through everything in the database with a category function, but it also lets me create folders (here: pages) to organize that information as well.

Also, is there a way to create a page in the above manner and with access restricted to specific authors? I would love to share certain things with you all about my research and get your input/opinions, but I do not want the information freely available via search, for the same reason Bellee stopped submitting poetry to Society back in the day. I want to make ideas accessible to interested parties, however in some cases (such as outlines, articles) it is in my best interest to keep them private until I formally publish them–I cannot get a job in academia otherwise.

Edit: also, how do I edit the header…?

Note: this all relates to my desire to use the blog more frequently. I am just working out the kinks.

“Cabrini Green” – 8.5×11.5 – watercolor and a marker

This is the first completed painting I have done in almost 11 years. Sorry for the quality of the image; I only have a built-in Mac camera at the moment. Due to this, the image is reversed. I’m not happy with the area around the eye, or the awkward appearance of the background around the face. But it’s a start!

Blacks, texts, and the white imagination

Care to help brainstorm elements of my dissertation?

For the past two weeks I have kept an informal mental catalog of the most visible/popular/prevalent examples of blacks and black culture in the contemporary white Western imagination. Where and in what forms does the average white person encounter blacks and/or Africa?

State of things

I have decided to stop sending e-mails updating my ‘progress’ in Canada. Very few people respond to the messages and the blog affords me the opportunity to perform the same gesture in a more productive way; at least you two will read and (possibly) respond to them, and I know you at least remain interested. This also helps me visualize where I’ve come from and where I am going.

Completed:

I delivered a modified version of the paper I posted below at a conference hosted by the College of the Bahamas and gained some valuable insights regarding my work. I also created an account at Flickr to host pictures of Nassau.

I submitted a twenty-something page essay last week for my doctoral seminar. In it I examine two recent post-Civil War Liberian novels which have not received any critical attention. I argue that each takes the form of a political bildungsroman and features a dominant narrative in which characters from the ruling minority ‘grow up’ and accept their indigenous counterparts, yet the text also reveals a counter-narrative in which, perhaps, the idea of national unity is instead naïve and they ‘grow up’ in a very different way. Regardless, their use of language and behavior suggests they haven’t really embraced the notion that the descendants of black colonists and indigenous Liberians belong to the same national unit. As you might imagine I draw from nationalism studies, particularly the theories of Walker Connor, among others.

Fiona and I have decided to move in together after learning that the English department has accepted her into the PhD program, i.e. she will be in Ottawa for the next several years. Our leases both finish in May and we will look for a two-bedroom apartment in the downtown area, roughly near where I currently live. When we finish with it—especially if one or both of us gets the OGS grant—you will be jealous.

Currently working on:

I have three essays to complete in the next three weeks (in addition to my duties as a TA and other work for my classes). One will focus on rhetorical strategies in the later speeches of William V.S. Tubman, a long-serving Liberian despot. Another concerns the recent work of Liberian poet Patricia Jabbeh-Wesley. I don’t know what I will concentrate on for the third essay, probably either the first Liberian novel or the works of its first truly indigenous writer, a man named B.T. Moore. I haven’t even begun to consider an approach yet. As you can see, I use my classes as an opportunity to delve further into Liberian literature, about which I have become increasingly excited. They say the hardest thing about working on a PhD is maintaining enthusiasm… thankfully I haven’t burned out in the second semester.

I have finalized my panel for the 2008 MLA Convention in San Francisco and decided that rather read a paper, I will simply contextualize the proceedings and introduce the speakers. This gives them more time to speak and frees me from having to work on something at the last minute.

Future projects:

The chair of my department has asked me to organize a graduate conference for next year, and I have tentatively accepted. I have thought about organizing it around late-February and will need to form a committee and discuss it further. If this happens, we will need posters and fliers. Perhaps some future work for you two? I’d need to work it out with a committee, of course, but I have you both in mind.

Once I complete my papers, I will begin working on polishing a few of them for publication. I have two in mind specifically, one for Research in African Literatures and another for Comparative Literature Studies. I will keep you informed.

Ottawa, snow and public transportation

We recently received an enormous amount of snow in Ottawa, twenty inches in a day-and-a-half. It has not snowed this much since the 1970s, apparently. This recent weekend storm broke the all-time record for snowfall in Ottawa and our forecasters predict more storms before the end of the month. Last year the city council budgeted around 67 million dollars for snow removal and spent a few million more. Inexplicably, they budgeted only 65 million this year and have predictably already exhausted those funds (we can thank our miserable right-wing mayor, for whom no one actually admits voting). Subsequently many side streets remain unplowed but for the efforts of the people who live on them, and it has become awfully difficult to walk just about anywhere.

The awful, mismanaged public transportation system in Ottawa amplifies its pedestrian ’suck factor’ — city counselors have threatened to take over OC Transpo unless its administrators get their act together. One can stand on the corner waiting for a bus scheduled to arrive in fifteen minutes for thirty, forty, or fifty without luck. Fiona and I have actually waited for an hour and fifteen minutes for a bus once when she needed to get back home to her apartment; we currently both live next to arguably the worst bus route of them all–the number two–which stretches from one side of the city to the other. Consequently, we don’t even look at bus schedules anymore as there’s no telling when one will arrive. The only thing you do know for certain on the number two is that it will be crowded.

During the summer the problem solves itself. Ottawa is a small enough city that I can walk anywhere without difficulty or concern for my safety. However during the winter, especially when the city doesn’t apportion enough money to plow sidewalks, walking isn’t always an option. I don’t want to give you the wrong impression; I like living in Ottawa and have no immediate plans to leave (hard, I know). I simply wish to throttle the man who runs our public transportation system, and to adapt the immortal words of Weird Al Yankovic, rip his heart right out of his ribcage with my bare hands and throw it on the floor and stomp on it until he dies.

What I Do: Conference Paper

My parents know I work as a student of course, but they didn’t become familiar with the specifics of my doctoral research until a phone call immediately before coming to Ottawa for my master’s graduation, in which I told them, “We should go out to dinner with my thesis advisor. Oh, do you know what I study?” You two are probably in the same boat: I study Liberian literature… and that may be the extent of your knowledge on the matter. You know I write papers, attend conferences, etc. You also know that I really love speaking in public, but unfortunately other than a hastily unprepared ’speech’ a half-decade ago at Bughouse Square I can’t remember whether you’ve ever seen me in my element. Maybe that will change: in November the African Studies Association will host it’s fiftieth anniversary conference in Chicago and I will try my best to get on the proceedings and deliver a paper. If that happens I will sneak you both into the event for sure. But until then, maybe you’d find a paper I just completed for the upcoming Bahamas conference interesting? It will not read the same as a normal paper, nor can it approximate the experience of a paper delivered, but if nothing else I’d like to share with you two what I do lately.

Some general rules about conference papers: organizers usually give you fifteen minutes on a panel with two or three other presenters; that equals seven or eight double-spaced pages. You should expect that: a) no one has read the books you analyze or know their author/s; b) no one knows the relevant historical or social context; and c) in a conference like this, where most people will present on history or sociology, very few know anything about literary theory. As such the content of my conference papers tends to read more general in nature and also a little more colloquial than in a formal essay (the paper below still reads too formally in my opinion, but I will make changes on the plane). Other than in direct quotes, I allow myself a couple of uses of the verb “to be” in conference papers and formal essays. You’ll note that I have e-primed this paper as I do normally, and that I qualify most of my uses of the verb “to be” to eliminate it’s troublesome implications. Tell me what you two think.

The subject of the conference is “Abolition of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade: Telling the Story”.

Incidentally, though I don’t expect it, should someone other than Angeli or Ed read the following presentation, I should remind them that it remains my intellectual property and that any use of my words or ideas requires the necessary citation, which you can find at a web site like The OWL at Purdue.