Invisible Adjunct

Notice

I plan to take this site down two weeks from today (i.e., Wednesday, 9 June).

UPDATE (June 4):

I have received many requests to keep the blog up, or at least to allow mirroring. I haven't yet decided what to do.

In any case, the site should eventually be archived at the Internet Archive. I requested a crawl over two months ago and I know the Alexa crawler has since visited my site. The results do not yet turn up, but apparently this can take several months.

Signing Off

Gentle Readers,

A few months ago, I made a vow to myself that this would be my last semester as an invisible adjunct. Since I’ve failed to secure a full-time position in my final attempt at the academic job market, what this means, of course, is that I made a vow to leave the academy. Six more weeks of teaching, and I head for the nearest exit.

Though I must inevitably feel a sense of loss and sadness, it’s thanks to this blog and its readers that I don’t feel the kind of life-twisting bitterness that I might otherwise have experienced. I’ll take with me, among other things, a knowledge of XHTML (which I never thought I could learn!), an undiminished passion for the Scottish Enlightenment, and a heightened sense of life’s possibilities.

In the meantime, I’ve decided to give up the blog.

I do so with both a good deal of reluctance and a certain sense of relief. Writing blog entries and reading and responding to comments has become such an integral part of my regular routine that it’s very difficult to walk away. For the next few weeks, at least, I’m sure I won’t know what to do with myself (novel-reading? I just finished rereading all six of them). But this weblog has always been a labour of love, and lately I find that my heart is no longer in it. I think the time has come to focus my energies elsewhere. Anyway, I guess I’ve pretty much said most of things that I wanted to say, and then some.

I’ve also received more support than I ever could have imagined or expected. Indeed, the response to the blog has been, quite simply, overwhelming. Since I can’t even begin to express what this has meant to me as I've struggled over the past year or so to make sense of my experience in the academy, I won’t even try. Instead, I’ll just take this opportunity to express my heartfelt gratitude to all those who participated in the transformation of what began as “yet another me-zine” into something like an online community. To everyone who has read, linked, commented, and emailed: I thank you.

Yours sincerely,

IA

History Papers

Writing is unnatural. As is most of what we do, which unnaturalness is only natural.*

Timothy Burke has a nice entry on some of the problems and challenges commonly encountered in students' history essays. If you've ever graded student papers in any discipline whatsover, you'll surely recognize some of the "smaller but important stylistic errors and misfires" that Burke enumerates here, though you may use slightly different descriptors (e.g., what Burke calls endless unbroken paragraphs, I term the runaway paragraph -- as in, for pity's sake, rein it in and assert some authorial control). I suspect the choice of tenses problem is, if not peculiar to, then particularly significant for history papers.

It reminds me that writing history essays is unnatural: that is, an impressively complex art and craft that takes practice, and that requires guidelines. By extension, the teaching of the writing of history essays must be likewise unnatural (which is to say, etcetera, etcetera).

*Adam Ferguson on the state of nature:

We speak of art as distinguished from nature; but art itself is natural to man. He is in some measure the artificer of his own frame, as well as his fortune, and is destined, from the first age of his being, to invent and contrive...
...If we are asked therefore, Where is the state of nature to be found? we may answer, It is here; and it matters not whether we are understood to speak in the island of Great Britain, at the Cape of Good Hope, or the Straits of Magellan.

-- An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767), I.i

Take that, Rousseau! (I'm only sort of joking).

Nice Work!

Congratulations to Rana! She's been offered an internship at the Smithsonian.

Mansfield Park Poll

Continuing with the Austen reread theme (because this academic/adjunct stuff is bringing me down):

As an RC (though admittedly a sadly lapsed one), I've always been more than a little bit weirded out by the marriage of Fanny Price and Edmund Bertram. Hello? Not only were they first cousins, but they were raised in the same home, where they called each other brother and sister. Perhaps an impediment as far as the fourth degree was a tad harsh, but I must say I think the Church was onto something with those consanguinity laws.*

It's no use wishing for another ending, of course, and in lit. crit. terms, I'm sure such reification of fictional constructs must be deemed hopelessly naive. Nevertheless. What if Fanny had relented and taken Henry Crawford on board, thus clearing the way for a union between Edmund and Mary? Wouldn't both of our moral exemplars have been better off marrying outside the immediate family?

The not so subtextual subtext to this poll: is Fanny Price an appalling little milksop, or the fit and proper center of a properly centered moral universe? (or, to put it another way: is Mary Crawford a serpent in the garden, an actual force for positive evil, or just a slightly racier version of Elizabeth Bennett: EB on steroids, say?)

*Legal beagle question of the day: What kind of civil laws now take the place of the canon law in the area of consanguinity? I know there must be laws, I would assume they would vary from state to state. Not something I've ever really thought of before -- I suppose because, well, it's never occurred to me to want to marry one of my first cousins. (Note to singleton blogreaders: I do have a lot of first and second cousins, of both male and female persuasion, and some of them are still up for grabs. If you're over 21, have never been convicted of a felony, and are willing to relocate to Canada, drop me a line and I'll see what I can do**).

**You know I'm only joking, right?

Professor Plum, in the Library, with the Candlestick

Well, we don't disagree too strongly, other than perhaps you gotta stop calling people 'Professor'-- I feel like a murder suspect in 'Clue.'

-- Timothy Burke to Matthew Yglesias, comments to "We All Agree!"

It's been years since I've played Clue. I used to love that game.

"Micromanagement at its Worst"

The sponsor [Republican Shawn Mitchell] of a bill aimed at protecting the rights of conservative students on college campuses said today he would shelve the bill and allow state colleges and universities to prove that they are committed to protecting political diversity.

-- "'Academic Bill of Rights' yanked before vote"

The Denver Post reports that Rep. Mark Larson, a Republican, objected to the bill as "'micromanagement at its worst,'" and "said he had lined up enough votes to pass an amendment gutting it." Good for Larson for upholding the principle of limited government that Republicans are supposed to defend.

As proof of their commitment to "political diversity," the University of Colorado, Colorado State University, Metropolitan State College and the University of Northern Colorado have

agreed to make sure their grievance procedures address political diversity and that students know they can file a grievance against a professor who has discriminated against them because of their views.

Grievances, eh? Since the most common form of discrimination practiced by professors is that of discrimination on the basis of the quality of students' work, and since the most likely form of evidence to be cited in a grievance would be the grade received in a course, how might this play out in the actual world? Here's one scenario: Angry [lefty/liberal/conservative] undergraduate receives a C, and then files a grievance against the offending [lefty/liberal/conservative] professor, citing viewpoint discrimination. As parents threaten legal action, and case gets taken up by local media, university administrators persuade/cajole/coerce the professor to raise the grade.

Can anyone doubt that such grievance procedures would take the logic of the consumer satisfaction survey student evaluation to a new level, exerting still more pressure to further inflate the grades? Who needs the hassle? I'd like to propose a new legislative amendment designed to save time, trouble and heartache (not to mention paperwork and lawyer's fees) all around: Every student who expresses a view has the right to an A; and any grade lower than an A is not only prima facie evidence of discrimination but is also by definition a violation of this constitutionally protected right.

Fly Away with You

Spread your tiny wings and fly away,
And take the snow back with you
Where it came from on that day.
The one I love forever is untrue,
And if I could you know that I would
Fly away with you.

-- "Snowbird," Written by Gene MacLellan, Immortalized by Anne Murray

Does it get any cheesier? My sisters and I once read an interview with Anne Murray (in a Canadian tv guide, maybe) in which she emphasized her down-to-earth quality by insisting, "I'm not the glamour puss that you see when I'm on the road." Well, I can't remember exactly how she said it, but she did say "glamour puss." Glamour puss? Anne Murray? We found this highly amusing.

Off to Florida to visit a colony of snowbirds, in the midst of which can be found my parents. Since area restaurants cater for these seasonal migrants, I may be able to order vinegar with my fries.* Blogging will resume next weekend.

*Why don't Americans put vinegar on their french fries? This is a serious question.

Casting Call

He had very early an inclination to intemperance, which he totally subdued in his travels; but when he became a courtier, he unhappily addicted himself to dissolute and vitious company, by which his principles were corrupted and his manners depraved. He lost all sense of religious restraint; and, finding it not convenient to admit the authority of laws which he was resolved not to obey, sheltered his wickedness behind infidelity.

-- Samuel Johnson, "The Life of Rochester"

Johnny Depp is filming The Libertine, in which he plays the lead role as the Earl of Rochester. Works for me.

Conference Calls

1. Via Electrolite:

Michael Bérubé has an idea for a conference on the conference:

One of these days I want to put together an academic conference that addresses the phenomenon of academic conferences. It will be called 'The Longer Version,' and will be distinguished by three features: one, every paper will have a respondent who, instead of waiting for the paper to end, will simply snort, harrumph, and blurt 'I think not!' at random moments during the paper. Two, questioners will be required to begin all questions by saying, 'this is really more of a comment than a question-- I wonder if you could say more about X,' on the condition that X was either unmentioned in or tangential to the paper itself. (Questions must be at least three minutes long.) And three, every speaker will be required to answer these questions by saying, 'I actually address this question in the longer version of this paper,' regardless of whether there is a longer version or not. (If the conference proceedings are published, they will consist only of sections of papers that were cut for time during the actual conference.)

I'd like to condition for just one more requirement: for every paper delivered, there should be at least one questioner the substance of whose remarks amount to, 'That's all well and good, but why aren't we talking about my work?"

2. Via an anonymous reader:

Dr. Kevin Cramer, a member of the H-German discussion board, calls for "more stringent vetting of conference announcements" after "a rather unsettling episode":

In November of last year I responded to a call for conference papers under the rubric of 'Symposium on the Psychological Interpretation of War,' sponsored by the Library of Social Science in New York (Dr. Richard Koenigsberg, Director). As this invitation appeared on my professional list-serve, I had no reason to question the bona fides of this organization (their website was also innocuous). The other participants (around 20 total, in two sessions), from multiple disciplines and major universities and institutions here and abroad, also learned of this conference through their professional list-serves and other networks. The conference took place last week.

The Library of Social Science, it turned out, was Dr. Koenigsberg's
apartment living room in a run down corner of Elmhurst, Queens. The
'Library', it seems, was not much more than a vanity project and
sometime vendor of academic books at various professional organization
conferences around the country. Incidentally, a $150.00 registration fee
was charged. There were no stipends for travel or accommodations and no
meals were provided (other than candy, fruit, and bottled water.) Dr.
Koenigsberg's doctorate is, I surmised, in psychology or psychoanalysis
but, in his own words, 'he has been studying Hitler for 30 years.'

"Caveat emptor," says Cramer. Indeed. The dead giveaway here was of course the candy. Word to the wise: if you don't see, in the words of Alex Pang, that "peculiar academic reception food group" known as the chunk o' cheddar on a toothpick, you should begin to suspect it's not really an academic conference.