On K'zoo, Part I -- The dorm bathroom as a DMZ

Before we all left for the Zoo, Jeffery Jerome Cohen posted a "good luck" message that also said, "May you never meet the mystery person with whom you share the bathroom in your dorm." One year I did meet the people with whom I was sharing -- two 20-something publisher's reps -- and it was the best K'zoo bathroom experience ever. After they left their bathroom door open, but had vacated the bathroom itself, it seems, I ventured in through my side and called out. They came in and I asked if I could use the sink or whatever -- it was something that allowed for simultaneously bathroom usage -- and we all got to chatting, just like in a dorm. See folks, that's how you use a communal bathroom -- communally. In fact, in those bathrooms, someone could be on the toilet, two people could be at the sinks, and one person could be in the shower. That's how it worked in college, and those of us young enough to remember -- or not so privileged that we went to colleges with private "rooms" -- have no problem with this.

On the other hand, there's the suitemate Ancrene Wiseass and I got stuck with this year. She scolded us. But in true K'zoo dorm bathroom weird, passive-agressive form, she did so by note. At the time AW and I were really pissed off by it and it seemed dripping with nasty condescension, but I saved the note for posterity and now it seems pretty darn polite (lots of "I'm sorry" and "please" and smiley faces), if rather cowardly, what with being a note and all.

Anyway, our suitemate was apparently kept awake the first night by the conversation taking place on our side of the wall until the wee hours. AW and I got in kind of late, still had some catching up to do, and, most important, AW had to edit her paper down to a reasonable size for the next morning, and I was helping her. It's not like we were partying or anything. But we both do have voices that carry -- I just didn't realize how much voices carry through those walls (is anyone else humming 'Til Tuesday now?). So apparently our suitemate couldn't sleep and it was making her ill, and so the next day she bought earplugs and wrote us a note. My question: why didn't she just knock on our door and ask us to keep it down instead of suffering in silence?*

Ah yes, because of the weird, wasp-y K'zoo bathroom "etiquette" of never encountering or addressing your suitemate(s) directly, but only communicating through wordless signs of doors and light switches -- unless, of course, you're a newbie and a pair of publisher's reps. Then you'll have a grand ol' time and no one will ever have to wait for someone else to relinquish the bathroom.

Seriously, folks, we're the new generation -- can we change this silliness and use the dorms like dorms?? And by the way, why does everyone think the dorms are so horrible? I've stayed there four or five times now and find them quite comfortable and the price unbeatable. Plus, no shuttle bus nonsense to deal with. And until this year -- the first time I was sharing a room -- I'd never bother to bring my own towel or hangers or anything like that (though hangers would have been good in the past -- I used the chairs and bed posts). Besides, the whole hotel/dorm divide is starting to look like a haves/have nots divide and it depresses me.

Speaking of which, my next post (probably from Cowtown unless my motel on the road has wifi) will be on class and the nametag.


*I know this is coming from the woman who still has not told her downstairs neighbors they're too noisy. But that's more complicated. How does a thin woman tell the heavy people that they walk too hard? How does the childless woman tell the parents that their child is too loud? How does the dogless woman tell the dog-owners that their dogs are too rambunctious and noisy?

Help! I want a Gmail account

UPDATE: Done! I now have a Gmail account, thanks to Julie of No Fancy Name, the queen of all things bloggy. Would you believe "drvirago" was taken?! Who's the imposter? Well, anyway, I am now drvirago2 [at] gmail [dot] com. Now to go change my sidebar.

This message is for those of you with a Gmail account. I want to sign up for one, too, and get rid of the sbcglobal address for Dr. Virago because in a month and a half I'm moving in with Bullock (no, he didn't build our house, like the Bullock on the show did, but he is building me bookcases) and he has a different ISP than I. But the problem is his ISP is very, very local and identifiable, and I need a nice US-wide anonymous address for the blog. Gmail seemed perfect, but then I learned you have to have a code text-messaged to you and I don't have a text-message capable phone. The other option, however, is to have a friend invite you to join (what is this -- Friendster???).

So please, pretty please, will one of you invite me to join? Send an e-mail to drvirago[at]sbcglobal[dot]net. Thanks!

Friday Randomness Extravaganza: Random Bullet Points of Crap, Friday Random Ten, and a Random Poem

OK, I don't know what was up with Blogger the last few days, but it has prevented me from doing any posts, let alone my K'zoo update (which is more a musing on blogging and its uses, actually, but from a particularly K'zoo-oriented perspective, and which I will post later). So until I get something more substantial up, here's a Randomness Extravaganza. And yes, even the poem is random. I used the Representative Poetry Online "Random Short Poem" function.

But first, Random Bullet Points of Crap (concept yanked from Ianqui):

• Did I tell you yet that I'm going to be the Graduate Advisor next year instead of an Undergrad Advisor? Yup, it was decided and agreed (love that passive voice) that it made more sense for the person who was teaching the graduate research methods course (i.e., me) to be Graduate Advisor. I'm really going to need that course release, I think, since I'll have to do admissions in the spring and recruiting before that. My plan, btw, is to try to get more of our area high school teachers into our program. I know that a lot of them are doing DL programs, but I'm going to emphasize that there's just no replacement for personal mentoring and instruction that comes with a traditional program. Anyway, I'm really excited by this turn of events, but I'm a little nervous, too.
  
• In related news, I picked up Graduate Study for the 21st Century: How to Build an Academic Career in the Humanities, by Gregroy Colón Semenza, at the Palgrave booth at K'zoo, and so far it looks *fantastic*. And that's not just because Michael Bérubé did the foreward. But as he says: "Trust this guy. He knows what he's talking about and his judgement is unerring." I'm going to give my students in my methods class the chapters on "The Graduate Seminar" and "The Seminar Paper," but for those of you with Ph.D. students -- or who are Ph.D. students, especially in the beginning stages -- I recommend the whole thing.
• In more personal and frivolous news, the Boyfriend's new name on this blog from here on out will be Bullock. Why? Because in honor of the upcoming new season of Deadwood, he has started growing a Bullock-style moustache and soul patch. I have to say, it looks kinda cool, but it's still in that scratchy phase. Not good for kissing. I hope it softens up soon.
• That new season, btw, will begin June 11. I can't wait, especially since my Bullock has a 50-inch HDTV. Oh it's going to look so awesome! (That reminds me -- I could insert a Deadwood-related fact about Dr. Virago here, but I want to pick up that "100 fact" meme thing on its own. I think I left off at #4!)
  
• Meanwhile, I'm going away for a week and a half -- to visit and help out with the increasingly elderly, frail, and demented parents -- so I guess Bullock's moustache will be fully formed when I get back. And expect some blogging from Cowtown. I will definitely take my computer with me and blog from the Panera at the fancy-schmancy outdoor mall near the old homestead. Or maybe Dean and Deluca has wi-fi -- then I can feel really fancy.

Friday Random Ten

1. Real Men - Tori Amos (Joe Jackson cover)
2. Should've Been in Love - Wilco
3. Tina Toledo's Street Walkin' Blues - Ryan Adams
4. Kid A - Radiohead
5. Bad Day - Actual Tigers
6. Unfair - Pavement
7. Rat Velvet - The Lemonheads
8. Jesus Walks - Kanye West
9. I'm Waiting for the Day - The Beach Boys
10. The Fallen - Franz Ferdinand

Friday (Random) Poetry

Paul Laurence Dunbar, "We Wear the Mask"

We wear the mask that grins and lies,

It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,--

This debt we pay to human guile;

With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,

And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be overwise,

In counting all our tears and sighs?

Nay, let them only see us, while

We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries

To thee from tortured souls arise.

We sing, but oh the clay is vile

Beneath our feet, and long the mile;

But let the world dream otherwise,

We wear the mask!

Pants Off Dance Off!

As some of you already know, one of my favorite words in the English language is "pants." So when Unfogged linked to something called Pants Off Dance Off, I just had to go take a look.

My eyes! My eyes! They're burrrrrrrrrning!

Go see for yourself. No words can do it justice.

[For the Cliopatra readers -- and others -- coming here for a K'zoo update, I swear I'll post one. I also swear I'm not always this silly. Only sometimes.]

Trip to the Zoo

I'm leaving shortly for Kalamazoo-zoo-zoo-zoo and I'll be back Sunday night. I will not be blogging from there as I am going blissfully computer free.

I promise not to feed the animals.

Update: I'm back. Much frivolity was had. Oh, and there was this professional conference thing going on, too. Te-hee. Actually, after I sleep for about 24 hours, I'll probably say more, but right now I'm too tired to think any more.

So tired. So very, very tired.

K'zoo Blogger Gathering Redux

Another Update: I've just sent an e-mail to everyone who wrote saying they'd like to come. In said e-mail are pictures of Ancrene Wiseass and me. We're fully clothed, so the message shouldn't end up in your junk mail box -- I hope!

And if you haven't yet e-mailed me for the meet-up details, it's not too late!

Update: I'm keeping this post up top to make sure everyone has seen it. Meanwhile, my paper is written, but darn it all, I'm having a heckuva time getting it down under 15 minutes.

The information in this post is the same as the one below, just in more concise form. Plus, "meet-up" was an inelegant phrase, while "gathering" is also a codicological term, so I like it better.

When: 5-8 p.m., Thursday, May 4

Where: E-mail me, drvirago [at] sbcglobal [dot] net, and I'll give you the details so that the whole world doesn't know where the anonymous bloggers are meeting.

How: The location is in walking distance from the Valley dorms and all conference areas on campus. Those of you who are staying in the downtown hotels may want to carpool, if you won't be on campus before then. You are welcome to use the comments here to find out who's where and set up a carpool.

Credits: Thanks to Ancrene Wiseass for first suggesting this and to Elisabeth Carnell for making the reservations for us.

Friday Random Ten

My iPod has a sick sense of humor -- from death, through theology, luck, and reason, back to life, but then into depression, followed by esteem-building shot down by cynicism (that particular sequence cracked me up), and then to abandonment, finally alleviated by...fucking Tenacious D style. (And if you haven't heard that last song, you're missing the funniest parody of earnest rock balladry ever.)

1. Badly Drawn Boy - "Epitaph"
2. Wilco - "Theologians"
3. Thom Yorke (solo and acoustic) - "Lucky"
4. Cake - "Cool Blue Reason"
5. Kate Bush - "Room for the Life"
6. Ken Stringfellow - "Down Like Me"
7. Neil Young - "I Believe in You"
8. Pavement - "Elevate Me Later"
9. Julieta Venegas - "Casa Abandonada"
10. Tenacious D - "Fuck Her Gently"

Tag: friday random 10

Friday Poetry Blogging

Finally, at last, Dr. Virago, who works almost entirely on poetic texts, jumps on the Friday poetry Blogging bandwagon!

In honor of Spring and of Jo(e)'s poetry-inspiring word-of-the-week, "muddy," I give you e. e. cummings. I love this poem for the words "mud-luscious" and "puddle-wonderful" and all the rest of its word- and sound-play, but also for the brilliant way it seems to be a sentimental and corny poem about spring and children, but is really about the dangerous excitement (or exciting danger?) of sexuality and adolescence. Plus, who doesn't like a poem with the word "piracies" in it?

This is also dedicated to my friend the Empress (aka the Pastry Pirate) who claims she hates poetry because she thinks it takes complex ideas and reduces them to Hallmoark card greetings. I think she just hasn't read enough good stuff. And this one seems like the kind of stuff she'd hate at first -- sentimental, soppy -- but really isn't at all. Unfortunately, I can't figure out how to make Blogger do the word spacing that the poem requires with the "far and wee" lines -- which tries to imitate the sound of a far-away whistle coming closer and closer -- but at least I can do the line breaks.

in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame baloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old baloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing

from hop-scotch and jump-rope and

it's
spring
and

the

goat-footed

baloonMan whistles
far
and
wee

I have a lurker from my university

Hello Lurker!

Of course, I have only myself to blame. I haven't been all that discreet. I haven't told any of my colleagues or peers or students about the blog (other than the Boyfriend and Victoria and "BP"), but I have mentioned many blogs in my classes and brought them up on screen in my high-tech classroom. (Sometimes we were goofing around before class started, but some of them had a pedagogical purpose -- like the Chaucer blog, for instance. We discussed if it was "really" in Middle English and what marked it as linguistic parody.) And my blog is on the blogrolls of some of those blogs. And that's probably how the lurker originally got there. If so, I missed that first tell-tale referral link on Site Meter, but I have since seen, over the course of a few days, a number of hits coming from the same IP address at my university and it's not my office, nor the Boyfriend's, nor Victoria's, nor BP's.

And I'm certain that whoever it is has figured out pretty quickly who "Dr. Virago" is. If you know me already it's not that hard to figure out.

So, Mr./Ms. Lurker, if you are a student, I want you to know I'll never say anything damning about you or your peers here. In fact, I'll never say anything I wouldn't say to you. You may learn more about me than I really intended (and perhaps more than you wanted to know -- like the fact that I can imitate a chimpanzee), but hey, it's still nothing I wouldn't say to adults in general. And I hope you won't hold it against me that I mix the silly and the serious, the professional and the playful. You already know I do that in the classroom, too. If it's good enough for Chaucer, it's good enough for me. :)

And if you're a Dr. Lurker, well then, I say pretty much the same to you. I'll never air department dirty laundry, should we have it. And if I have something to complain about, I'll do it in private. If you explore the blog, you'll find I use this blog in mixed ways, mostly for swapping teaching and professional advice with other professors and grad students (and being electronically social with them as well), and also for keeping in touch with far-flung friends and family. It's a small peer-group I have here at "Rust Belt U" (I hope the name doesn't offend you) and the blogosphere makes it bigger. Thus the blog is both personal and professional, for how can one ever really separate the two?

And since you're here, why don't you join the party and say hello? We're a friendly bunch.

Because everyone else is doing it...

...I'll do the ABC Meme. Besides, I never finished my list of 100 facts (though perhaps I will) and I know the blogosphere is just dying to know more about me! Ha!

And now updated to include vikings and pirates!

Accent: To those claiming they don't have one: yes, you do. You can't speak without one. At any rate, my midwestern twang is only noticeable any more when I say my home state's name, though I still cannot distinguish the vowels in Mary, merry, and marry. Oh, and I have a hard time expressing the difference between /a/ and 'open o' for my students, but it's just as well, because their regional accent also doesn't express much difference, either.

Booze: Like Lecturess, my favorite cocktail is the Sidecar. I also like the Mojito. I love a buttery smooth single-malt scotch, but generally I drink wine. I prefer the 'big' reds.

Chore I Hate: Um, all of them? But I especially hate cleaning the tub because it gives me a backache.

Dog or Cat: As I've said elsewhere, I find this a false dichotomy, but if forced to choose, I'll go with the lower maintenance cat.

Essential Electronics: Watch. I have no natural sense of time.

Favorite Cologne(s): Clinique Happy.

Gold or Silver: Mostly silver (platinum if I could afford it) but I have a unique high school ring (designed for my school by a serious jewelry designer) that I wear all the time, and it's gold.

Hometown: Cowtown.

Insomnia: Generally I go to bed late enough (and during the academic term I'm sleep-deprived enough) that I fall asleep immediately. [This is also exactly what Lecturess wrote and I see no reason to change it since it's what I'd say, too.]

Job Title: Assistant Professor.

Kids: None. I do like to come up with names with which to saddle imaginary ones, however: Mathilda, Hrothgar, Guthlac A and Guthlac B (twins, of course), Aggravayne (various spelling), Aetheldryth, Mary Magdalene (no, not just Magdalena or Madeleine or any truncated version, but the whole nine yards, and no shortening or nicknames allowed!), Eustace, Orm, and so forth. It's a fun game -- try it!

Living arrangements: Turn of the century duplex apartment (top floor) above the world's heaviest walkers and most hyper-active kid.

Most admirable trait: If I get mad at you, it passes quickly. I wouldn't say I'm forgiving so much as forgetful.

Number of sexual partners: More than one but fewer than Wilt Chamberlain.

Overnight hospital stays: Not counting my birth? Then none.

Phobias: Internal bleeding. Just typing that made me irrationally double over in pain.

Quote: Well, in my high school yearbook it was "Is not life one hundred times too short to bore ourselves?" -Friedrich Nietzsche. And if that's not really Nietzsche or the quote isn't accurate, blame whatever quotation book I took it from. I decided this was lame. I am replacing it with: "A viking is a pirate until he finds a place he wants to be." It's my favorite line from the cheesy living-history museum on the Isle of Man.

Religion: Recovering Catholic.

Siblings: Two sisters (one deceased), one brother.

Time I wake up: Between 7:30 and 8:00 a.m. on weekdays. 9 a.m. on weekends unless I have to get up for a long run or a race.

Unusual talent or skill: I can do a damn good impersonation of a chimpanzee. Also, Beavis when he's had too much sugar. They're kind of the same talent, really.

Vegetable I refuse to eat: I'm not fond of zucchini, but I'll eat it.

Worst habit: Dawdling.

X-rays: Spine (when I was a hypochondriac 12-year old and was convinced I had scoliosis [sp?]), teeth (the usual), and breasts (when you have a sister die from breast cancer, you start having those mammograms earlier in life).

Yummy foods I make: Um, the Boyfriend is laughing at this right now. I really need to learn how to cook without slavishly and slowly following recipes.

Zodiac sign: Aries on the western calendar, Cock in the Chinese zodiac -- both appropriate for a Virago.

Site Meter and vanity Googling

Awesome! I just caught a major scholar Googling herself and landing on my blog. (OK, that sounded kinda naughty and I really didn't intend that.) She did it from her own institution, which is how I know it was her. I supposed it could be her chair or one of her colleagues or students, but I'm going to assume it's more likely her.

Anyway, I love seeing people vanity Google themselves, especially major scholars, because it tells me that even the big wigs need a little self-esteem boost every now and then.

And even better, she landed on a post with some substance, and not the one about goats, or the one about dogs, or the one about blue eyeshadow. (And no, I'm not going to link to those.)

Dear Students

Dear Students,

I really don't care why you were absent the other day. Really. Unless it's a story worth telling (for instance -- you were rescuing a child from a storm drain a la George Clooney on ER), don't bother with the details. Just get whatever information you need from me (the paper topic, the translation line numbers, whatever) and let's get on with our lives.

With no harsh feelings, just precious little time,
Dr. V

A variation on "Dear Students" posts seen at Xoom and I Know What I Know (whose own contribution warmed the cockles of my heart).

[Note for those who're interested -- my attendance policy is simple: Don't miss class. If you miss more than three classes, it will affect your participation grade. A death in the immediate family (with obituary or funeral card for proof, I'm afraid) or your own grave injury or illness requiring hospitalization or other extreme treatment may qualify you for an exception or an incomplete, if necessary.]

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly as marionette morality play

Hey fellow late medieval and early modern literature people (and perhaps also fans of Being John Malkovich), you've got to check out the blog Tuco's Lament. Its author is using the blog to describe his process of creating a marionette version of Sergio Leone's The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly as a morality play. Awesome! You have to at least go see his Tuco puppet -- so sad faced and so perfect, as Tuco or Everyman. The tiny graveyard is pretty cool, too. So go check out the blog and give its creator encouragement, because the world needs more such creative uses of genre and medium.

I found out about all this because the blog's creator and puppeteer, Laurent, wrote to me when he linked to my post about the drama selections in the new Norton Anthology. As you might recall, I brought up my problem with Everyman always being held up as representative of medieval morality plays (or worse, medieval drama in general) and there was some discussion of this in the comments, as well. Laurent confirmed in his email to me that in the 1970s, when he was in college, Everyman was indeed his only exposure to medieval drama. At least he liked it enough to be inspired by it later! But I'm also glad he came by and learned that there are other medieval morality plays. See -- blogs can do educational good in the world!

Will someone finish my K'zoo paper for me? Then how about a movie meme?

(And while you're at it, don't forget to e-mail me to get the details of the K'zoo blogger gathering.)

Here's a meme to distract us all from our work. I saw it at Blogenspeil (where ADM said she might write my paper for me if I do her handouts...hmmm...) and apparently it's a moral imperative for the women bloggers to do this meme, because Maggie May says Luckybuzz says that only the boys are doing it so far. Plus, for me it works as a good reminder of films I haven't seen and generally want to. I have no idea where the list came from or even what logic dictates what's on the list.

Bold the ones you've seen; star the ones you love.

"2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968) Stanley Kubrick
"The 400 Blows" (1959) Francois Truffaut
"8 1/2" (1963) Federico Fellini
"Aguirre, the Wrath of God" (1972) Werner Herzog
"Alien" (1979) Ridley Scott*
"All About Eve" (1950) Joseph L. Mankiewicz
"Annie Hall" (1977) Woody Allen
"Bambi" (1942) Disney
"Battleship Potemkin" (1925) Sergei Eisenstein
"The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946) William Wyler
"The Big Red One" (1980) Samuel Fuller
"The Bicycle Thief" (1949) Vittorio De Sica
"The Big Sleep" (1946) Howard Hawks*
"Blade Runner" (1982) Ridley Scott*
"Blowup" (1966) Michelangelo Antonioni
"Blue Velvet" (1986) David Lynch
"Bonnie and Clyde" (1967) Arthur Penn
"Breathless" (1959) Jean-Luc Godard
"Bringing Up Baby" (1938) Howard Hawks
"Carrie" (1975) Brian DePalma
"Casablanca" (1942) Michael Curtiz
"Un Chien Andalou" (1928) Luis Bunuel & Salvador Dali
"Children of Paradise" / "Les Enfants du Paradis" (1945) Marcel Carne
"Chinatown" (1974) Roman Polanski
"Citizen Kane" (1941) Orson Welles
"A Clockwork Orange" (1971) Stanley Kubrick
"The Crying Game" (1992) Neil Jordan
"The Day the Earth Stood Still" (1951) Robert Wise
"Days of Heaven" (1978) Terence Malick
"Dirty Harry" (1971) Don Siegel
"The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie" (1972) Luis Bunuel
"Do the Right Thing" (1989) Spike Lee
"La Dolce Vita" (1960) Federico Fellini
"Double Indemnity" (1944) Billy Wilder
"Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" (1964) Stanley Kubrick*
"Duck Soup" (1933) Leo McCarey
"E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial" (1982) Steven Spielberg*
"Easy Rider" (1969) Dennis Hopper
"The Empire Strikes Back" (1980) Irvin Kershner*
"The Exorcist" (1973) William Friedkin
"Fargo" (1995) Joel & Ethan Coen*
"Fight Club" (1999) David Fincher
"Frankenstein" (1931) James Whale
"The General" (1927) Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman
"The Godfather," "The Godfather, Part II" (1972, 1974) Francis Ford Coppola
"Gone With the Wind" (1939) Victor Fleming
"GoodFellas" (1990) Martin Scorsese*
"The Graduate" (1967) Mike Nichols*
"Halloween" (1978) John Carpenter
"A Hard Day's Night" (1964) Richard Lester*
"Intolerance" (1916) D.W. Griffith
"It's A Gift" (1934) Norman Z. McLeod
"It's a Wonderful Life" (1946) Frank Capra
"Jaws" (1975) Steven Spielberg*
"The Lady Eve" (1941) Preston Sturges
"Lawrence of Arabia" (1962) David Lean*
"M" (1931) Fritz Lang
"Mad Max 2" / "The Road Warrior" (1981) George Miller
"The Maltese Falcon" (1941) John Huston
"The Manchurian Candidate" (1962) John Frankenheimer
"Metropolis" (1926) Fritz Lang
"Modern Times" (1936) Charles Chaplin
"Monty Python and the Holy Grail" (1975) Terry Jones & Terry Gilliam*
"Nashville" (1975) Robert Altman
"The Night of the Hunter" (1955) Charles Laughton
"Night of the Living Dead" (1968) George Romero
"North by Northwest" (1959) Alfred Hitchcock*
"Nosferatu" (1922) F.W. Murnau
"On the Waterfront" (1954) Elia Kazan
"Once Upon a Time in the West" (1968) Sergio Leone
"Out of the Past" (1947) Jacques Tournier
"Persona" (1966) Ingmar Bergman
"Pink Flamingos" (1972) John Waters
"Psycho" (1960) Alfred Hitchcock
"Pulp Fiction" (1994) Quentin Tarantino*
"Rashomon" (1950) Akira Kurosawa
"Rear Window" (1954) Alfred Hitchcock
"Rebel Without a Cause" (1955) Nicholas Ray
"Red River" (1948) Howard Hawks
"Repulsion" (1965) Roman Polanski
"Rules of the Game" (1939) Jean Renoir
"Scarface" (1932) Howard Hawks
"The Scarlet Empress" (1934) Josef von Sternberg
"Schindler's List" (1993) Steven Spielberg
"The Searchers" (1956) John Ford
"The Seven Samurai" (1954) Akira Kurosawa
"Singin' in the Rain" (1952) Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly*
"Some Like It Hot" (1959) Billy Wilder*
"A Star Is Born" (1954) George Cukor
"A Streetcar Named Desire" (1951) Elia Kazan*
"Sunset Boulevard" (1950) Billy Wilder
"Taxi Driver" (1976) Martin Scorsese*
"The Third Man" (1949) Carol Reed
"Tokyo Story" (1953) Yasujiro Ozu
"Touch of Evil" (1958) Orson Welles
"The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (1948) John Huston
"Trouble in Paradise" (1932) Ernst Lubitsch
"Vertigo" (1958) Alfred Hitchcock
"West Side Story" (1961) Jerome Robbins/Robert Wise
"The Wild Bunch" (1969) Sam Peckinpah
"The Wizard of Oz" (1939) Victor Fleming*

K'zoo Blogger Meet-Up

Much more concise version of this post now here.

UPDATE: I mistyped my own damn e-mail address below, but it is now corrected.
AND ANOTHER UPDATE: Elisabeth reserved the location until 8pm, in case we want to lolly-gag some more. Woo-hoo!
Also, over e-mail, a couple people have asked about carpooling, but the top secret location is within walking distance from the dorms, so that's what I was planning to do. If people are in hotels elsewhere, do you want to set up a carpool? You can use the comments here to arrange things, if you like.

Original post

Hi everyone. With Elisabeth Carnell's gracious and generous help (a thousand thanks, E!), I've arranged the plans for our First Annual K'zoo Blogger Meet-Up. On behalf of Ancrene Wiseass and myself, I'm sorry that it took awhile and that we didn't host more discussion about when and where. But with my mom and Wiseass's exam, we both got a little, well, overwhelmed. But since I'm slightly less overwhelmed at the moment, I made the final arrangements (or, well, I e-mailed Elisabeth and *she* made the arrangements). (Btw, things got really rough for Wiseass recently -- but her exam went through and of course the brilliant woman passed, so go congratulate her if you haven't already.)

Anyway, I drafted a post with all the details. And then I thought: wait, but then the whole world knows where a bunch of anonymous bloggers will be and when. And that wouldn't be a good thing.

So here's the when: 5-8 pm Thursday.
I know that day and time won't be good for everyone, but no day and time was going to be good for absolutely everyone. My logic here was that the 5-7pm hours only overlap with wine hours and business meetings and is early enough for cocktails before dinner. Plus two hours of meet-up time will allow some people to come for part of it. ETA: And then Elisabeth added an extra hour just in case people still wanted to hang out. Excellent idea! And also, if people want to mosey on elsewhere afterwards -- to evening conference events, to dinner, or whatever -- they can. And groups of bloggers can mosey off together afterwards if they like.

For the where, e-mail me at drvirago [at] sbcglobal [dot] com net (inserting the appropriate punctuation, of course...UPDATE: it also helps if I get my own e-mail right! d'oh). For those of you who are thinking, "But Dr. V, you never check that e-mail" -- I have finally set up Outlook to retrieve it and check it at least daily. I will e-mail you back with the where.

And would the medievalists who read this post a notice and link on their sites, as well, so that we can be sure everyone sees it? Thanks.

And they're off! Live blogging the Boston Marathon (sort of)

FINAL UPDATE (others below): My brother survived Heartbreak Hill and its aftermath and finished with a new PR of 3:05:37! Woo-hoo! Congratulations Fast Fizzy!

Original post:

The Boston Marathon started about an hour ago (at time of writing). Yes, that's right, it's Monday. And they started at noon. What can I tell you -- the Boston Marathon is weird.

If you want updates on the leaders (go, Meb, go!), you can follow the race's progress at the Marathon website. If you know someone in the race, you can track their progress with the "Athlete Tracking" link on the main page.

And of course I'm tracking Fast Fizzy. Last I checked, he was running a 6:51 pace with a projected finish of 2:59:28, which would be totally awesome, as Fizzy has never broken 3 hours. But that's only after the first 10K and there's a lot of hills to come, plus Fizzy has a tendency to take off fast in the first 10K and then settle into a more manageable pace. Then again, I said that when he was running the NY Marathon and he kept up the pace and set a new PR. So maybe the adrenaline will do it for him again.

The three men's leaders, meanwhile, are running at a crazy 4:43 pace, in single file. Perhaps we'll have another photo finish, just like in NY. The women, it seems, are still in a pack, running at at about a 5:30 pace.

More updates on Fizzy later.

Half Marathon UPDATE: Yup, as I suspected, Fizzy has slowed down, but only a wee bit. He's now running a 6:55 pace with a projected finish of 3:01:13. Still, that would be a PR and put him that much closer to being able to break 3 hours. Keep it up Fizzy!

25K (15.5 mile) UPDATE: Fizzy has dropped a wee bit more speed -- he's now at a 6:57 pace -- but it's been literally downhill most of the race to this point and he has the slow climb to Heartbreak Hill yet to face, as well as the equally tortorous steep downhill from the crest of Heartbreak Hill (about mile 20.5) to the end.

Why would the last downhill miles be so hard? For those not in the know, after about mile 18-22, depending on your fitness and natural endurance, you start to build up lactic acid in your leg muscles and they tend not to do what you want them to do. They turn into either heavy bricks or a mushy mess. Downhills are hard on the legs. Steep downhills after 20+ miles at race pace are murder. Many a seasoned, elite runner -- including the awesome Greta Weitz -- has hit "the wall" on the downhill side of Heartbreak Hill.

So, hang in there Fizzy!

Winners UPDATE: Apparently people other than my brother are running this race. Who knew? Anyway, here are the men's top 3 and the women's top 3 (they started earlier):

Men's official results
1. Robert Cheruiyot (KEN) 2:07:14 (Course Record by one second!)
2. Ben Maiyo (KEN) 2:08:21
3. Mebrahtom Keflezighi (USA) 2:09:56

Women's official results
1. Rita Jeptoo (KEN) 2:23:38
2. Jelena Prokopcuka (LAT) 2:23:48
3. Reiko Tosa (JPN) 2:24:11

Fast Fizzy 35K UPDATE: Hot damn! Fizzy has made it over Heartbreak Hill and he's still at a 7:02 pace with a projected finish of 3:04:16 -- about 4 minutes faster than his previous PR in the NY Marathon. If he can hold it together down the hill to the finish, he's golden! Next update will be his finish time!

Calling Margery Kempe crazy -- and why it matters

I’ve taught The Book of Margery Kempe, in whole or in part, seven times now – as a TA discussion leader three times, as a professor to undergrads in the my Early English Lit class three times, and to MA students in a medieval women writers seminar once – and every time I’ve been concerned by the students who simply want to call Margery crazy, or who “explain” her behavior by medicalizing and pathologizing her, even if they are sympathetic. They speak gently of how she’s out of her wits; continuously suffering from her bout with post-partum depression; suffering from depression in general, etc. Or, they deride her as a nutcase, a freak, an annoying pain, and so forth.

To all of these responses I have replied, kindly, that such responses don’t really help us analyze Kempe’s text or to understand Margery herself as a text, as “good communication” (her own words), as a performance of affective piety that’s not completely out there in the context of her own times. What I’ve really wanted to say to the students who say she’s “just a freak” is this: “Not at all helpful – anyone else want to say something more thoughtful?” Generally it’s all I can do to keep from rolling my eyes.

This last time I taught The Book of Margery Kempe, I didn’t get the “she’s a freak” responses until the last day of discussion. Part of what held them off, I think, was that we spent the first day talking about authority, auctoritas, authorship, the idea of the book, textuality and orality, scribes and amaneuses, the manuscript and its readerly marginalia (and what it tells us about The Book’s early reception), and the practice and meaning of writing, as well as Lynn Staley’s practice of referring to the author of The Book as Kempe and the protagonist of the text as Margery. I know some people might find this last bit a false distinction and an illusion, but it’s a really useful one for getting students to think of The Book as a constructed literary object and not simply a transparent record of a life. My students were so caught up in wrapping their heads around the different meanings of authority and the ways in which the scribes of Kempe’s text are necessary for her authority – no matter what the state of her literacy – that they didn’t have time to think about Margery’s behavior. And since I’ve been emphasizing the material culture of the book and also a little reception history for each text we’ve studied, they were curious to hear about the marginalia by The Book’s friar readers and what it said about how they saw the text. (In addition to reading medieval texts and learning about their manuscript contexts this semester, I’ve also had students do a kind of wacky miscellany project in which they create their own commonplace books and then write marginalia in each others’ books; so I think they’re very aware of what marginalia might tell you about a reader and what it doesn’t tell you. But that’s another post if you’re interested.) And they were fascinated, as well, by Kempe’s use of the third person and that one place in chapter 5 where someone (the scribe? Kempe herself?) slips up and refers to Margery and John Kempe in first person plural: we. My students wondered: did Kempe invent the scribes for the sake of her authority? Or did she write a rough draft herself which then the scribe copied, missing only one first person reference which he failed to convert to third person? They were intrigued by the idea that Margery’s illiteracy (whether real or exaggerated) might be a boon to her spiritual claims, rather than a check on her authority.

So all of this distracted them for at least a day and made them focus on the text as text. They might have started devolving into the “she’s crazy” routine on the second day, but I had laryngitis and the weather was nice, so I split them up into groups and sent them out into the courtyard with a list of discussion questions. I couldn’t hear everything every group said at every minute, but for the most part, they seemed to be discussing the issues of genre, gender, and authority and that I’d written out for them.

But by day three, the “crazy” comments started. In part, that’s because they’d had a weekend in between class meeting and my class seems particularly prone to forgetting everything we talked about from Thursdays to Tuesday. I swear these kids must be heavy drinkers or else some other kind of trauma is killing their brain cells and memory, because otherwise they’re a bright and curious group. Anyway, the same students who thought the third person was a fascinating and clever ploy on Kempe’s part now thought that calling herself a “creature” made her “sound like a freak.” And the litany of “crazy” and “insane” and “unstable” began. I tried my usual tactics of quelling the name-calling. And then finally, it hit me. Or rather, something one of my graduate students had written in his response paper on the very first day of Kempe discussion came bubbling up to the surface of my own memory. I asked him to read aloud the sentence (we have “slash” courses – graduate students take classes with undergrads) which said something along the lines of ‘Perhaps I’m reacting just like the bastards who tormented Margery herself and made her justified in seeing herself as a martyr.’ All of a sudden I realized that students’ seemingly less than helpful name-calling and judgments of Margery’s sanity were actually not only helpful, but possibly exactly what Kempe and the text wanted. Margery may not have been pleased by reader calling her crazy – and had she been around to overhear them, she would have chastised them for their sinfulness and idle talk – but Kempe and her text actually require such a response. To be the saint she so wanted to be, Margery needed persecutors. She prayed to be relieved of such persecution, but in those prayers, Jesus came to her and told her that they only made her more beloved to him. And so, in narrating these experiences – the outlandish behavior that provokes Margery’s attackers (the loud crying, wearing white, constantly traveling on pilgrimage, etc.); the persecutions she claims to have experienced, including numerous encounters with ecclesiastical law; and the mystical, private “dalliance” with Christ that authorizes both the behavior and the worldly criticism for it – Kempe is looking for two responses, both of them embedded in her text. Either a reader will find Margery holy and see her words and experiences as appropriate models – as do many people within her text – or a reader will think she’s annoying, crazy, and freakish, as do many other people in the narrative, but in so doing, will only reinforce her holiness by showing her to be persecuted and yet steadfast.

Of course, I didn’t say all this to my students. It was nearing the end of class, so I time only to say a few words. After my graduate student read that bit of his response paper aloud, I said something like this: “So, if you find Margery annoying and weird, you give her authority as a martyr. If you find her holy and sincere, you give her authority. Either way, the text constructs the readers it wants and that authorize its existence and meaning. Only if you are utterly indifferent are you misreading the text.” And I left it at that. We’ve been talking a lot this semester about how text can assume and anticipate and work for various reading positions – naïve readers, accomplished readers, and so forth – and so maybe my students made that connection to The Book of Margery Kempe anticipating, expecting, and wanting multiple kinds of readers.

At any rate, I feel I’m now freed from worrying that my students are dismissing the text if they call Margery “crazy.” Instead, I can tell them that they are playing right into her hands, that because of them, Kempe’s authority as quasi-saint and holy woman is even greater.

technorati tag: teaching-carnival

And oh yeah -- happy holidays

Apparently the Boston Marathon is the only spring holiday I recognize (see below). I'm a heathen you know. Though at least I'm an accidental patriot, as the Boston Marathon is always run on Patriot's Day.

But to all of you who are either Christian or Jewish and are observing, in some way, either Easter week or Passover (or both for the dual-religion households out there), may your holiday celebrations be filled with blessings of wisdom, renewal, love, and joy.

Friday (not so) Random 10: Boston Marathon Edition

My brother Fast Fizzy is running the Boston Marathon on Monday, so this, my first Friday Random 10, is for him. I searched the words "run," "move," "speed," and "quick," and came up with the following list. (Actually, I also came up with Liz Phair's "Fuck and Run," but decided it wasn't really appropriate to the theme. Neither is "A Quick One, While He's Away," but Fizzy's a big Who fan, so I decided it was suitable for that reason.) As it turned out, a lot of it is stuff Fizzy would like -- bluesy and rootsy music, classic rock, stuff from the '70s (two from the Dazed and Confused soundtrack). Don't know how he'd feel about the show tune and Coldplay bits, though. Only a fraction of my CD collection is ripped to my hard drive so far, so this is what I got:

1. Run, Baby, Run - Sheryl Crow
2. Run For Your Life - The Beatles
3. Fox on the Run - Sweet
4. Set Out Running - Neko Case
5. I'd Run Away - The Jayhawks
6. Cherry Bomb - The Runaways
7. Move On - Jet
8. I Move On - Catherine Zeta-Jones / Renee Zellweger (Chicago sountrack)
9. Speed of Sound - Coldplay (live at Austin City Limits)
10. A Quick One, While He's Away - The Who

Run, Fizzy, Run!!!!

(The rest of you may mock the Jet, if you will, but that stuff's good runnin' music.)

Update: Hey, Fizzy, if you're reading, Karl the Grouchy Medievalist has added more songs in the comments, including some you'd probably really dig.

Tag: friday random 10

Things I said to students this week...

...that I really probably shouldn't have said.

• After seeing the "freak-out look" on an independent study student's face (after I'd just given sound but very detailed advice on how to start pulling the research together and start writing) I said, "Oh I know that look. That's the look I give when I'm freaking out about something and someone -- usually male -- thinks what I want is sound advice on solving a problem, when what I really want is to freak out a little while first. Hm. So apparently when I'm wearing my advice-giving professor hat, I'm male."
• In describing my Medieval Times experience (before the start of class): "The Merlin-like figure offers prayers to pseudo-neo-pagan gods and goddesses, which of course isn't at all medieval. But then, you couldn't really have a production that's supposed to appeal to a huge, wide, diverse, ecumenical, multi-culti American audience being overtly Christian, because that would be kinda creepy." (OK, I did save myself from this one. How? I said "I'm sorry, my 'word hoard' is on the fritz." Since we were in Old English, they laughed. Whew! I really didn't mean creepy -- I was going for "a turn-off for many of their potential paying customers.")
• On Boorman's Excalibur and the scene of Uther lying with Igrayne: "He's in full plate armor. Ouch! Do you know how much that stuff weighs?"
  

I'd rather be researching

I've been working on my K'zoo research/paper this morning, but now it's lunch time and time to switch to teaching responsibilities. But I don't want to! I want to continue reading and writing. This is a far cry from the beginning of the semester when I couldn't switch my brain from teaching to research (if you'll recall). Why is that? What's the difference?

I'll tell you the difference: grading. Ugh. Only 5 more papers left but I really, really don't want to do them. And even though we're doing Mankind in my medieval lit class tomorrow and I love that play and love teaching it because I get to be rude and silly and get students up and taunt them in Middle English -- despite all that, I've got no energy for teaching.

Please, please let this semester be over soon. I'm pooped.

Doggies and kitties and monkeys, oh my!

OK, there are no monkeys in this post. I just wanted to say monkeys. Why? Because it makes me laugh. And you know what's even funnier than the word "monkeys"? The phrase "monkey pants."

It's late and I've been grading all day. I'm giddy with delirium.

Anyway, there's a point to this post. Pets. I've been gingerly broaching the topic of pets with the Boyfriend lately. I desperately miss having a cat so much that I still can't bring myself to get rid of my cat stuff, even though my dear Delphina departed almost four years ago. But Boyfriend is more of a dog person, and that' s OK with me because I like all animals. (Even goats, as you'll recall. And a friend once had a parrot who thought I was his girlfriend; I dug him, too.) I'm still trying to get the Boyfriend to warm up to cats, though, because I'd like one in addition to a dog. In fact, I really don't get the whole "cat person"/"dog person" standoff, frankly. I'm an equal opportunity fuzzy and feathery thing lover, and other creatures are pretty cool, too.

So lately I've been investigating dog breeds, looking for ones that get along with other creatures, that would enjoy a run with me so I can combine dog-walking duties with my running, and that aren't destructive diggers or noisy barkers. Oh, and cuteness is a plus, too. As a result of my preliminary research, I've become utterly obsessed with a rare breed called the Portuguese Water Dog. Go look -- how cute! Not only are they cute and fluffy, but they're supposedly smart, even-tempered, affectionate with humans and other creatures, eager to please, and quick to train. And they're working dogs, so they need a lot of exercise. (They don't have to get it in the water, though they'll happily dive right in.) They're also a 'hair' breed rather than a 'fur' breed, which means no dog-fur smell and no shedding (nor more than we lose our hair, that is), though they do have to have their hair cut like we do. And get this -- they have webbed feet! So not only are they cute and smart and gentle natured, they're freaks, too! They're like the bizarro-Golden Retriever or something. How could I not fall in love with them?

Seriously, leave it to me to fall in love with an odd, uncommon breed. Because, you see, it's not enough that I have to explain what I do for a living ("I teach and study medieval literature...no, older than Shakespeare...no, not 'mid evil'...Yes, 'normal' English majors take my classes...no, I don't play wenches at Ren Fests...No, I haven't read Dan Brown and don't intend to...") -- I also want to have to explain what breed my dog is, too. ("It's a Portuguese Water Dog...no, you're thinking of the jelly fish...no, it can't breath underwater...no I didn't give it a permanent; that's natural wave...yes, I realize our hair kind of matches...")

Anyway, if anyone out there has any first-hand experience with Portuguese Water Dogs, let me know the pros and cons of having one as pet, beyond the whole 'costs $1800' part, which I'm ignoring for the moment since I'm in the fantasy stage.

And yes, I'm going to do that Margery Kempe post. Really.

My Nano is brilliant

I'm grading. So I'm listening to the music I've so far managed to load onto my computer and onto my new birthday Nano to make the process less painful. I can't read literature or scholarly works or write with music, but I'm only now realizing that I can grade with music. (A sad statement about student writing, I'm afraid.)

Anyway, in the past, while listening to the Boyfriend's bigger iPod on shuffle mode (usually on car trips) I've noticed that shuffle isn't as random as we'd probably all like it to be. (I think there was a Slate article on why this is, but I'm too lazy to find it.) But in listening to my Nano I've decided that the shuffle programming, though not perfect, is nevertheless brilliant on a level approaching Hal. Seriously, I think it's sentient.

To wit - earlier today it played the following sequence:
Lemonheads - Second Chance
Beck - Scarecrow
Willie Nelson- Healing Hands of Time
The Lovin' Spoonful - Daydream
Ken Stringfield - Uniforms
Lemonheads - Ever
R.E.M. - Letter Never Sent

At first I was annoyed with the double appearance of the Lemonheads, but then I realized, holy cow, it's giving the Lemonheads a second chance in this string. And besides that, what more perfect way to break up a Mitch Easter-produced string (Stringfield and REM) than with the ultimate sensitive punk boy song. And just look at the American roots in that roster!

And by the way, I've said it before (though not here) and I'll say it again: The Lovin' Spoonful? Most underrated American rock band ever.

And speaking of jangle-pop strings, later today it followed R.E.M.'s Laughing with The Shins' One By One All Day. Until that moment I hadn't really realized it, but The Shins are the inheritors of the jangle-pop tradition, aren't they.

Oh yeah, and now it just followed Jon Brion with Clinic. Excellent.

Yup, my Nano is brilliant, say what you will about my taste in music!

Introducing the "Really Dead Women Writers" Meme

Bardiac has bothered to put in writing what I also thought when I saw the "Women Writers Meme" around the b-sphere (most recently at Badger's place): Where are the pre-1800 women writers on that list?

Go read Bardiac's post, because everything she says is what I would've said, including the part about other feminists not taking you and your work seriously if you work on early literature. And that includes student feminists who, no matter how many times you tell them they're seriously over-simplifying matters (or just plain wrong), write papers about anchoresses that argue that the women were being 'locked up' by patriarchy. Never mind that there were male anchorites. Never mind that maybe a life of reading and prayer and being considered a source of wisdom by townspeople and visitors alike might be more appealing than, say, having 14 kids all 14 of which might have killed you in childbirth. Never mind that being an anchoress could be read as a medieval version of a "room of one's own." Sigh.

Anyway, Bardiac has proposed we put together our own list of pre-1800 women writers (those of us who work in those fields or have read widely in them). She's already taken some of the medieval goodies (I shake my fist at you, Bardiac!) but there are more I can add. So here's Bardiac's list with my additions (and I changed some of Bardiac's links to translations I prefer):

The (draft) REALLY DEAD WOMEN WRITERS meme.

Behn, Aphra - Oroonoko

Christine de Pisan (aka Pizan) - The Book of the City of Ladies

Julian of Norwich - Revelations of Divine Love

Locke, Anne (aka Ane Lok, etc) - A Meditation of a Penitent Sinner

Marie de France - The Lais of Marie de France

The Paston Women - The Paston Letters

Margery Kempe - The Book of Margery Kempe

Anonymous - The Floure and the Leafe
(I am convinced the writer was a women. Unless you can name a medieval dream vision where the dreamer was not a persona of the author -- and therefore the same gender -- I stand by my convinction.)

Lady Mary Wroth - Poems

There's more I could add, but I'll leave it to others. Don't want to hog them all!

Update: I was supposed to add five texts and I only added 4. D'oh! Oh well -- more for others to play with! And they've already begun: Medieval Woman, La Lecturess, and Amanda at Household Opera. And if you add more to the list, don't forget to visit Bardiac or drop her a line at bardiacblogger at yahoo dot com, so she can compile the whole list.

Oh, and also, Christine de Pisan and Marie de France wrote other texts -- feel free to add those to your list!

The sound of silence

Sorry I haven't written much this week -- I've been running around like the proverbial chicken with its head cut off, doing a very disorganized job of keeping up with everything and also still trying to get over this cold. Perhaps I'd be a little less unfocused and anxious if I could just clear my head and lungs enough to get back into running, if only just for 3-4 miles.

Anyway, I want to thank Dr. Crazy and Jeffrey Jerome Cohen for linking me in reference to the men and feminism musings below. I'm especially honored to have been noted in the same paragraph in which Jeffrey says this:

I suppose this is just a long way of saying that the community which electronic communication fosters is, well, important -- and is often not deeply enough considered when we think about what shapes our scholarly lives.

And yes, Jeffrey, I will get you on my blog roll as soon as I get around to updating it. Once again it is woefully out of date. I am the second worst blog roll updated in the blogosphere after Michael Berube. (I'm too lazy to insert the accents today.) Anyway, I do want to get back to following up that post and discussing why I was so surprised by anyone saying a man couldn't claim he's a feminist. And I also want to respond to Dr. Crazy's post, with which I found so much to identify. But it will all have to wait a little while.

Also, lately, I've been getting a lot of traffic from Geoffrey Chaucer. I cannot truly express how delighted I am by being able to write that last sentence. But it also makes me realize that this blog is lately a medieval blog in name only and I really should write something with medieval content. So, when I get around to it, I will write about the following two topics: 1) Visiting an 8th grade class of "at risk" students and teaching them runes right before they start reading The Hobbit (and on my next visit I'm going to teach them about Angl0-Saxon Riddles) and 2) thinking about how students' tendencies to call Margery Kempe "crazy" or "a freak" (the last from one of my own students yesterday) might actually be a surprisingly productive way to get students to talk about the text and not just Margery Kempe the person, and to think about how texts construct their readers. I'm promising these posts in writing to make sure that I'll actually do them.

But now I have to finish my morning's thinking about my Zoo paper and seque into teaching mode to translate some OE and ME for my linguistics classes and grade papers on Marie de France that aren't going to be as good as they could be because I wrote paper topics that were too difficult. (And that in itself could be a post -- and perhaps will be soon.) And I also have to go to my office hours this afternoon. And maybe, just maybe, I'll feel clear-headed enough by the afternoon to go for an easy, short run.

I also have to call my poor mom now that I finally have a voice again.

Can men be feminists?

What follows is not so much a coherent post, but a preview and necessary background for a post I want to get to once I've articulated my ideas well enough for my tastes. (I'm a slow writer. Sometimes I wonder what on earth I was thinking entering the blogosphere!)

A couple of days ago, in response to a blog commenting brouhaha elsewhere, Chris Clarke wrote a blog post called "Why I am not a feminist." If you know Chris's blog, his writing, his commenting elsewhere, and his general blogospheric persona, then, like me, your first reaction to such a post title was "Wha?" Intrigued and a little alarmed, I kept reading. Ultimately the post was a pretty passionate statement of why he could advocate feminist positions but could not, ultimately, claim the mantle of "feminist." As he concluded:

My goal is to be the best ally to feminists I can be, in the political realm and in the much more difficult personal realm.

But I cannot call myself a feminist: the label is not mine to claim. [emphasis his]

You really must go read the whole piece; like all of Chris's writing, it's really worth it. And it really struck a nerve in me or something, because I wrote a really long response, which I haven't generally had the time or energy to do lately. It's the fifth one down, so you don't have to go far for it. It's so long it could be its own blog post, but its most salient point was this, I think:

Feminism is a political position that can be held by anyone. “Woman” is (perhaps) an identity that only some can claim. You are not a woman, but you are a feminist, given your political claims above.

(I was addressing Chris, of course. And the "perhaps" is a nod to debates and theories of the constructedness of gender categories.) After a while the comments got really rich and interesting, with a range of opinions about whether or not men could call themselves feminists. Chris pointed out somewhere in there that there may have been a generational shift (and that may be true) as the feminists he'd known were adamant that a man could not call himself a feminist. Then someone else (Ampersand, I think) suggested that the difference might lie between radical feminists and liberal feminists. Well, I'm both a Gen Xer and a liberal feminist, so my own acceptance of male feminists might be influenced by either context. I don't know which is the more powerful influence.

And then Ampersand at Alas, A Blog took up the discussion (and, in fact, may have been at the beginning of it, before Chris took it up, but I missed that part). And I'm not just linking to him because he called me eloquent (*blush* -- thanks!). Mainly I'm linking to Ampersand's post because of the powerful personal story he tells of why he's a feminist and how feminism liberated him, someone who, in his words:

could not - really, really could not - "do" masculinity. And because of this, my peers (aided by too many adults who should have known better) taught me to hate myself. It took years, but I was an eager student, and I learned. I used to stand in front of mirrors interrogating my reflection, asking why I couldn't just be "normal," beating myself as hard as I could with my tiny balled fists (in retrospect, thank goodness I was a weakling!).

You really have to go read the whole thing. It's heartbreaking and powerful. And it makes a whole lot of sense to me. According to Ampersand, "Feminism is the only movement in the world that has anything at all sensible to say about how gender roles are used as a whip to keep people in their place." As a female who identified not quite as a boy but with boys when I was young (and Mom claims she raised me like she raised my brother and not as she raised my sisters -- this after reading Friedan and de Beauvoir), and as an academic feminist who works on masculinity, I get this both personally and intellectually. This makes sense to me. But I need to think some more to articulate in better detail why I think feminist men can and should claim their feminism.

In the meantime, feel free to take up the discussion (again or anew) here in the comments. Can men be feminists?

Random bullet points of crappy crap

• I'm still sick and I still have no voice. This really sucks. On the bright side, I did an amazing job of running my classes yesterday entirely through handouts and small group work. This makes me think I could, after all, design a decent DL class. Maybe I'll do that next summer.
• The group blog CatchingFlies, to which I only ever contributed two posts -- because I suck -- is now no more. I'm not even going to bother to link to it because BP didn't just post a farewell and stop posting, but gave up the URL (because, being a Typepad group blog, it cost money). Word to the wise: don't do this if you can help it. If you stop your blog or want to wipe it from memory, just delete the incrimating posts, but keep the blog active. Why? Because spammers take over the old URL if you relinquish it. CatchingFlies is now full of drug spam. Since so many of us are anonymous, I guess it doesn't matter that our "names" can later be associated with crap, but it still bugs me.
  
• Most of you don't know this, but my mom has been in the hospital twice more since the first time over Christmas. She's now in rehab and we've been making arrangements for her to move into assisted living. (Or actually, Virgo Sis and Fast Fizzy have been making the arrangements.) Mom decided that's what she wants and it's also what she really needs. Dad can't take care of her because he's a) demented and addled, and b) a selfish sonuvabitch who does things like his own laundry, but not Mom's, and then claims he's "doing all the work" and "taking care of things."
• Oh but wait, there's more. Now Dad's balking at the cost of assisted living. And by balking I don't mean "worrying about it because it's expensive and they're financially strapped," but "being a selfish shit and screaming and yelling at the cost and, for the moment anyway, refusing to pay for it despite the fact that he's sitting on plenty of assets even before you get to the non-liquid stuff like the house." In other words, he has the money, but he doesn't want to spend it. On Mom. Because he's an asshole.
• Don't believe that my dad is an asshole? Here's a choice Dad quote of late: "I hope you kids inherited my healthy genes and not hers. I should've had her checked out before I married her." What an asshole.
  
• My sister Ms. V would have been 51 today. Maybe it's a good thing she didn't live to have to deal with this crap.
• Tomorrow's eldest niece's birthday. She's Ms. V's daughter. Her birthday is forever linked with her mom's. Because I probably still won't have much of a voice tomorrow, I can't call her.
• Because I haven't had a voice for half of the week, I haven't been able to call Mom, and I know she's lonely.
• Because I don't have a voice, I can't call and yell at my selfish rat-bastard of a father.
• And now I have to write a thank-you note for the birthday check Dad sent me only after Virgo Sis reminded him (well, he is in early stages of dementia, so I guess I can't really be mad about that). But still, I'm not feeling very thankful or filial right now.

Edited to add: It's really Virgo Sis who is dealing with this head-on right now. But she's so upset that it made me upset, especially since I can't call anyone, including her. So voila -- a blog vent! These things are so damn useful! Oh, and I still haven't written that bloody thank-you note.

Comedy / Tragedy

I'm afraid I haven't been in a bloggy mood since getting sick. Now I've lost my voice, as well. I hope it's back tomorrow, because my medieval lit. students actually like Margery Kempe and are really into discussing concepts of authorship, authority, self, and agency with respect to the text. And when I asked at the end of class for them to think for the next class (tomorrow) about how saints' lives are informing Margery's and the book's (self)-fashioning, they all nodded their heads. So I'm looking forward to hearing what they have to say. Maybe even if I don't have a voice, I can make them do all the talking. And so far not one person has called her crazy. Whoda thunkit?

Anyway...that's not what the post title refers to. That refers to the links I'm about to give you so that you may bide your time until I'm in the mood for more detailed blogging.

Comedy (more in the video store sense than the classical sense):

Geoffrey Chaucer not only hath a blog and t-shirts, but also, now he hath a flayme werre with John Gower, who hath his own blog. And the t-shirts are multiplying. My new favorites are the ones that say "How queynte!" "Bele chose" and "I am a gentil harlot and a kynde," as well as "I study medieval literature -- That's where the money is," "Chaucer: Funnier than Dante, Prettier than Boccaccio," and finally, "Chaucer: Because Shakespeare was too easy."

Tragedy:

You're going to need to go back to Chaucer's blog after this. I'm sure most of my readers (at least the ones active in the blogosphere) have already heard about the gang-rape sccandal at Duke, and have seen that the blogosphere, especially the feminist part of it, is trying to keep this in the public eye. The MSM seems to be paying little attention to it. Others have already been more eloquent and informative on the subject than I can be at the moment, so I hereby give you some worthy links:

• Ancrene Wiseass
• Alas, A Blog
• Also a link round-up there
• New Kid on the Hallway
• And this post at Pandagon, too
  

Ugh. I habbuh code in muh nose.

I'm sick. I hate being sick. I rarely get sick (hence the hating it -- I'm not used to it). I so rarely get sick that the cold medications in my medicine cabinet expired way back in 1999. Usually all the running I do gives me some sort of superpower resistance and when everyone around me is hacking and coughing, I'm just fine. Not this time. This time it got me, too.

Grrrrr. I'm not a happy camper.

Ni! Ni! Ni! at K'zoo

Hey fellow pilgrims to K'zoo, have you noticed that this gentleman is presenting at session 469 (1:30 Saturday)? Don't recognize him? Go look at Session 469 here. (The curly hair in his face is mine, btw, in a trimmer state than it is now. How I got in the picture is a whole nuther story. It's what lead up to the the one that involves the orangutan.)

Nano nano naaaaaaano!

I've got a Nano! I've got a Nano!

Boyfriend bought me a 4G Nano for my birthday!! Woo-hoo! Now I feel guilty because he spent too much money. (Now, he says, I can no longer urge him to buy more clothes, because he has spent all his "pants money" on the Nano.) But I'm also excited to install iTunes and start filling it with music. I gotta start ripping more of my CDs to my computer, too, so I can be like all the cool kids in the blogosphere and do the Friday Random 10 thing (since I seem not to be inspired enough to do poetry Fridays -- I keep worrying I'll post something obvious -- and I don't have a cat). And then y'all can see just how much my music collection and Scrivener's overlap. (OK, we're not exactly alike in our taste, but there's a lot of similarity, and everytime he mentions something I don't know, I check it out and like it. Go figure.)

And speaking of music, Virgo Sis bought me two really interesting looking cultural studies books on rock: Simon Reynolds and Joy Press, The Sex Revolts: Gender Rebellion, and Rock 'n' Roll (Harvard UP), and Simon Reynolds, Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978-1984 (Penguin). (She also bought me a cute sweater, but it doesn't quite fit, so I have to exchange it. But I thought you all would be less interested in a sweater than books.)

And my friend The Empress, who always sends me a box full of little goodies, many humorous, did so again this year. It included, among other things, a CD by a band called Beowülf (what is with heavy metal bands and the abuse of the umlaut -- at least this one is on a vowel!), a nailpolish in a color called "Cabana Boy," and one of those ubiquitous plastic bracelets, only this one is dark purple and says "IRONY." I must wear it. Ironically, of course. Oh, and one of the oddest items was an animal-shaped lemon reamer in translucent yellow plastic that looked suspiciously like a sex toy -- for those with an addiction to food porn, I suppose. ;)

Meanwhile, as I said in my comment in the last post, The Boyfriend and I spent my birthday around the countryside in Neighboring State to look at the area where we're fantasizing we could buy some land. It's still a real possibility, but we discovered that some of the [Ethnic Immigrant] Hills area is seriously ticky-tacky -- plastic dinosaur parks, waterslides, fake Old West towns (huh?!), and cheesy references to the Ethnic Immigrants after which the area is named. If you've been to the Wisconsin Dells, it's a bit like that on a smaller scale (though there was a eerily familiar giant Paul Bunyan statue).

And while we were doing all this, I started to come down with the sore throat and cold Boyfriend's had for a week. Boo! I'm not supposed to get sick on my birthday! I'm not supposed to get sick at all -- I don't get sick! Boo!

But I discovered that a cocktail hour screwdriver made my throat feel good enough for a nice steak dinner that night. So now you know -- throat hurts too much to swallow? Have a screwdriver! You get the Vitamin C in the OJ, the antiseptic qualities of the vodka, and the numbing effects of the ice.

OK, gotta load iTunes and start playing with my Nano!!!!!

Happy Birthday

They say it's your birthday* -- well it's my birthday, too, yeah!


Oh hell, I'm in my late 30s. How did *that* happen?
Still in the same running age group, though, so that's something.


Oh, and only 9 months until Christmas. Start your shopping now!


*You = Elton John and Gloria Steinem, among others.

Geoffrey Chaucer hath a blog...AND T-SHIRTS!

I know many of you are already fans of that Middle English blogger extraordinaire, Geoffrey Chaucer. Well now you can show your admiration in the form of a t-shirt. Dammit, how do I choose between a t-shirt that says "I wolde I knewe how of thee I might be quitten" and one that says "Okaye, sometymes it raineth in March: make notte a chauncerye case of the whole mattere"?!

Oh, and he's thinking of moving to the real blogosphere. Yay! Update: The new URL is here.

Hear ye, Hear ye: First Annual K'zoo Medievalist Bloggers' Guild Meeting

If you get a sense of deja-vu all over again when you read the following, it's because much of the following is posted over at Ancrene Wiseass.

Ancrene Wiseass and I are beginning to plan the First Annual Kalamazoo Bloggers' Guild Meeting (AW's name -- I promise not to make you pay half of your money to fund a Corpus Christi play). But we're running into some logistic difficulties and would like your input on several matters. To wit:

1. If you're thinking of coming, please let us know in the comments thread below. If you're thinking of bringing a friend, colleague, significant other, familiar, or minion, please let us know that as well. We'd like to get a sense of how large the gathering will be.

2. We've been told that it would be best to meet early in the conference so's we can keep meeting and greeting over the weekend. This means we should probably aim to converge on either Thursday or Friday evening. Which night would you prefer, and what time frame would be best?

3. The location of our guild-hall has yet to be determined, and we'd very much appreciate your suggestions. The shelter in the park near the pond is one possibility, but we'd have to cross our fingers and hope for good weather. Any other nominations?

Also, New Kid suggested in the comments at AW's place that we e-mail photos to each other beforehand once we know who all is coming. Duh! Why didn't I think of that? She also suggested meeting in either Bernhard (the conference center/computer center/food court place -- did I get the name right?) or the Valley lobby that's farthest away from registration, the book exhibit, and the cafeteria -- which would be the lobby in the back of the one farthest up the hill. (Wiseass, btw, hasn't yet been to K'zoo, but I have; so I'm more likely to know what you're talking about if you say "the business building where the movies are" or "that dive bar near campus with the leather and wood decor" or something like that.) What say ye?

Gout -- not just for DWEMs anymore

So get this: Mr. Noisy Downstairs Neighbor has gout.

No, really! He told me so himself.

I didn't know people still got that! I thought you had to be Henry VIII or John Milton to get gout, not a hip-hop loving, slow-talking, big-walking, child-indulging, pot-smoking, 30-something duuuuude in 21st century Rust Belt Historic District. (Then again, you should see the copious amounts of beer bottles in the recycling bin each week. Perhaps that has something to do with it.)

Part of me wants to say: sweet, sweet, poetic justice! But that would be mean. And besides, dangit all, it just makes him noisier because now he's on crutches!

City mouse? Or country mouse?

I am a very adaptable person. I love big, fabulous* cities with city excitement and city dining and city nightlife. And I love fast public transportation, especially if it goes underground. But I also really like the country and wildlife. And even though I'm not fond of suburbs conceptually, there are some that aren't so bad -- like the one I grew up in, for example, where you can still walk to the grocery store because my parents' house happens to be very close to it, and where you can hop on a running/biking trail that runs parallel to a long creek through the area, and through some parks and golf courses, where you can see blue heron and deer and those sorts of critters. I don't know that I'd like to be way, way, way out in the country, hours from the nearest city, though. One of my favorite spots in the world is my friend E's mother's house, on top of a ridge in Yorkshire, with fabulous views in every direction, and where's there nothing else but her neighbor in their semi-detached, a farm, a set of row houses, and a pub, but it's just about a mile up the road from the train into Leeds if you need to get out.

Anyway, the reason I bring all this up is to say that some of the nice things about living in these here parts are that a) the cost of living is low, and b) you don't have to go far from the city to get country or from the country to get city. So the Boyfriend and I have been daydreaming about buying pretty, countryside, wooded land on which someday to build a weekend house, one that's close enough to nearby Cool College Town for a good dinner out and access to the Whole Foods, should we want it, and also not so far from Rust Belt that we wouldn't use it enough or friends wouldn't want to come up.

Because we've been talking about this, on the last two weekends, when I've been on my way back from conferences and reading groups in said Cool College Town with my academically tonier friends at the R1 university, I've been driving around prospective areas. Along the way -- and also with the advice of Smartass Poet (who, while having a penchant for teasing the department medievalist -- and really, is there anyone who *doesn't* tease the medievalist, dammit? -- is actually a good guy) -- I discovered an area called [Immigrant Ethnicity from a Green Country] Hills, full of rolling hills, woods, and lakes. It's simply gorgeous. And with the help of the magic of the internets, I also found a realtor with a perfectly cheesy name based on a particularly evocative name of a town in said green country. The Boyfriend wondered if maybe we'd get a discount in such places, on account of my name very obviously belonging to said ethnicity. Sigh, if only.

My name did get me out of a moving violation ticket once, however, but that's another story.

So anyway, some of you may find this surprising and amusing, but the other night at dinner with the Boyfriend, Smartass Poet and spouse, and Victoria and spouse, I actually found myself agreeing with Smartass Poet that raising goats sounded kind of fun. No, really! And when I went on the realtor's site and found a 40 acre deer farm, I thought, "Oh, if only we could afford 40 acres! That would be so cool!"

That's right, I'm having visions of my life story as "Dr. Virago, Farmer Woman." Or how about "Professor by Day, Goat Herder by Night." Or perhaps the Boyfriend and I would make a good remake of "Green Acres." Omigod, if we *do* ever end up getting such a place, we *have* to call it Green Acres. (Hear that, honey?) [Update: Ha! Apparently the Boyfriend's grandparents' farm was once known as Green Acres. That does it. Whatever land we buy will definitely be called Green Acres now!]

OK, I'm getting silly now. There's not going to be any real working farm involved, for pete's sake. It's way past my bedtime, though, and I get giddy when I get tired.

*Speaking of fabulous, and totally off-topic, can I just say how excited I am to be on Michael Bérubé's blogroll under "Fabulous Ones (Comrades and Unclassifiables)." That's fabulous as in mythical, but then isn't that what a virago is? But the question is, am I a comrade or unclassifiable? Well, I've only met him once and according to this, I must be the latter: And (this last question bedevils all of us literature professors) what was I to do with those damned medievalists? Especially the ones whose blogs are full of thorns? But being unclassifiable also suits this virago. Being bedeviling: priceless. (Hm, though to be properly medieval, I need to get thornier! At least there are a few in my blogroll.)

L'esprit d'escalier -- and also a request for advice

Hi everyone (if you're still out there). I thought maybe I'd test the waters of blogging a little bit again -- maybe a couple of times of week. The impetus at this moment comes from the fact that I'm in my office after 5pm on a Friday, no one else is around, and I just thought of something kind of funny that I should have said at our faculty meeting today, but didn't, and now there's no one to tell it to. So, I thought, "I know! I'll tell the blogosphere!" It's not really funny (so don't get your hopes up) but I did literally think of it on a stairway, and actually, there's something serious worth talking about in the context (which I'll do below). Also below are questions to all you in English literature.

So at our meeting today, we were discussing this nice big bequest our department has received from a former faculty member who passed away recently. There are restrictions, of course -- the main one being that the money has to go to students. So we're setting up scholarships and writing prizes and travel funds and the like. In discussing the travel funds, one of my colleagues said we has to put some kind of limits on it so that we wouldn't be overwhelmed by the applications of students going to "non-competitive" conferences where they accepted everybody. (I'm making him sound much snobbier than I think he actually meant to be. I think his real concern was how to keep the fund alive and not drain it by giving it away too easily. But still...) As other colleagues, usually of the older persuasion, concurred with this gentlemen that some conferences were better than others and therefore more deserving of funding, "Victoria" offered the suggestion that the applications would have to include a narrative in which students assessed the value of this particular conference to them and their education and professionalization. (I heart Victoria.) I concurred and said that, for instance, the biggest conference in my field, the "Zoo," was created precisely to be open to all scholars at every level, now including undergrads (vs. the more "competitive" conference which was, at that time, open only to full professors), and was relatively easy to get into, but that for a budding medievalist, it would be an invaluable experience.

That's when Smartass Poet said something disparaging about medievalists and their boring conferences, to which I responded. "Hey! We've got dance, mister!"

To which he responded, "Oh, what do you do dance to? Madrigals and motets? And do you dance in rounds and carols?"

I said something lame about there being plenty of the white man's overbite, which would make Smartass Poet feel right at home. (Yes, our meetings sometimes are like a dinner table full of teenagers.)

But what I should have said is this: "Hey man, we party like it's 999."

**Groan!**

OK, maybe I shouldn't have. And I told you it wasn't that funny.

Now here's the serious part. What was up with the colleagues who thought our poor, hapless MA students should only get funding when they go to a "competitive" or "peer-reviewed" conference? Our students would benefit just from attending a conference, any conference, let alone giving a paper at one. They need to hear other models of presentation and thought and interaction, to understand that they should think of themselves as participating in a scholarly conversation. Most of them are so unaware of scholarly expectations and conventions -- despite the models we give them ourselves and in the scholarship they read -- that they're not likely to get in a really competitive conference. Starting on a smaller scale is exactly what they need. And they also need to see other graduate students in action, to see that what we expect of them actually is possible at the graduate level. (Some of our students are under the impression that we expect too much of them -- like coming to a seminar with something to say, for instance.) Many of them don't even try to go to conferences because of the expense -- because until now we didn't have funding -- so just getting them to apply and go to conferences is enough of a goal, I think. And I have a feeling some of them don't even know about the existance of conferences or what's done at them, so maybe the advertisement of money to go to one might make them more curious. the last thing we need to do is put stringent limits on such an encouragement.

As you can gather, I think some of our MA students are a little, well, clueless. It's partly our own fault, I think but also partly the nature of our program and who it attracts. We have only an MA program (once upon a time we had a Ph.D. program and I think it's very good that we don't anymore) and its population has diverse educational needs. A number of them are local high school teachers and they are some of best students, as well as the population best served by our program, I think. Amazingly, they are also the least likely to complain about the workload, despite doing this on top of fulltime jobs! Others have started off in other disciplines at the BA level and then realize they really should have been English majors and want to follow that dream after all, and they're also some of our really bright students. Then there are the ones who are still trying to figure out what they want to do, and they're the most mixed bag. Some are talented slackers. Some are just slackers. Some are just plain odd.

Anyway, I can't really change the nature of the pool of students who come into the program, but next year I'm taking over the "Methods of Literary Research" course from a senior colleague who is retiring. I have big dreams of whipping our MA students into shape, of making them realize that they are junior members of a profession, even if their two-year stay in our program is just a layover on a journey elsewhere. Of course, I'm sure that the class will rudely burst all my idealistic bubbles once Fall semester rolls around, but between now and then I can dream.

Right now the shape of the class as I imagine it is partly a course in basic research methods for literature, with visits and talks by my colleagues on their various field-specific resources and hot topics, but also a meta-discussion about what it means to be a part of a scholarly conversation and how to enter into it. I think I will also address some issues of professionalization (how to write a CV and that sort of thing). My retiring colleague currently has them do an annotated bibliography as their final project, but I think I'll modify or add to that somewhat and ask them to assess and describe the state of the scholarship of a work of their choice -- that is, where have the liveliest threads of discussion been, where are they now, where are they going?

But here's my questions to you all:

1) If you've taught or taken such a course, is there a good, recent, introductory book about the broad trends and directions in literary studies today? Or one written to graduate students about making themselves part of the scholarly conversation? Book orders are due soon! Help!

2) If you were a first-year graduate student again (or are now) and feeling overwhelmed and clueless, what would you like such a course to teach you, either in terms of how to do research or what's expected of you as a junior member of the profession?

Thanks everyone!