April Showers

Bring more April showers. It has rained nonstop for the past five days. This is good- our state is still in the midst of a drought and we need 8 more inches of water in order to be back to normal. I think we're there by now though. I miss the sun. I need to see the sun.

Other rainy-day news: I sat down with turbo-tax today all ready to find out how much the government owed me and was shocked to learn that I owe the government $904. How could this have happened? After taking another 2 and a half hours to pore over my tax returns to make sure I hadn't miscalculated, I realized my university has not been withholding enough for me. This is probably due to the fact that I received a raise in July, one that pushed me up into a different tax bracket. My guess is that the payroll office didn't increase the amount withheld along with the salary. They needed to shave off an extra $150 per month- not a huge deal, not exactly something I would have missed terribly, or anything I could have noticed- until now. But now, at tax time, when I have to pay this enormous lump sum, I'm a little bit annoyed. Especially since I was planning on using my unnecessary rebate for charity. Or at least I was getting a kick out of saying that. Now it's just going to help reduce the amount of what I owe.

Some good things are happening, though- the tulips are up, I've finished one more essay and am nearly done with the third and fourth. I received funding to go to London and finish writing my book (though apparently not to eat- it's all handled by reimbursement and meals will not be covered this year). And on Friday afternoon I painted the hallway green, just to cheer myself up. I love how easy it is to change the look of a place- and one's mood -with paint. Even though I know I'll be moving eventually, it's not a waste. Paint is cheap, and I like doing it. Colors just make me happy. And that's kind of important these days.

In the Blogosphere I'm a Tyrant

I'm sorry if I've deleted some of your comments. I want to explain why here. Do feel free to use the comments section to this post if you'd like to complain or disagree with what I'm about to say (wink, wink).

In all fairness I ought to keep every single comment on the blog even if I find it is not productive or friendly or useful. I ought to, but I know I won't. I wonder if this means The Freudian Petticoat isn't technically an Early Modern Public- because it's beginning to regulate what people say? Then again, it never really was either Early Modern nor Public- discuss.

Here's how I see it: In this strange blog-rinth, everyone steps on everyone's toes now and then. And everyone sticks virtual feet in virtual mouths. I know I have, and a few times my comments have been respectfully removed from others' blogs. And I'm very grateful for that.

That said, here are 10 reasons why I might remove your comment:

1. You make reference to my real-life identity
2. You post something mean and hurtful directed at me or at the other commentators
3. You offend
4. You use the comments section to have a personal argument with me
5. Your comment is unproductive
6. You shill
7. You troll
8. You spam

Hmm, with the exception of the last three these look a bit, I don't know- arbitrary? Subjective? I may allow some of you to trash my scholarship and post offensive jokes, but delete others. And what exactly do I mean by "productive" anyway? And what if I happen to be feeling particularly hypersensitive at the exact moment when I encounter it? What then? Well that brings us to the last two reasons:

9. Your comment just bothers me for some reason I can't explain and
10. I just feel like deleting it.

Sorry, folks. It's my blog, I'll do what I want with it. In the Blogosphere I'm a Tyrant!

For what it's worth, I delete a lot of my own comments. Far more than any others.

State of the House Post, or Vintage Budget Living 101

Living Room

Now that I've just completed my spring cleaning, thrown open the windows to the fresh air and allergies, I thought it might be nice to post some photographic updates (especially given the high praise lavished on my house by certain good friends at the Shakespeare conference). It's pretty much the same but there's quite a bit more stuff: I've finally got my stereo system and vintage KLH-17 speakers up and working- the stereo is on a yellow enamel 1950s kitchen cart (neighborhood salvage shop) in the living room; the speakers are in the dining room (the wire runs along the baseboards and up around the doorway). You can also see some fresh new bed linens, a fabulous hall light (ebay purchase), loads more sunlight, a funky 1970s yellow desk chair (also ebay) and the vintage turquoise pottery collection I've started.

Best of all, very little is new- most comes from salvage, ebay and craigslist.


Living Room: Tea and Sugar posters are reproduction "lecons des choses" from Deyrolle. The coffee table is from 1959, teak with rosewood veneer, a salvage find. The glass side table is vintage Design Research and belonged to my parents in the 70s. Over the fireplace is an old printer's case and a Chinese calligraphy brush. In front of the fireplace are a vintage Chinese basket and rice caddy. Chair on the right was found in the trash.

Dining Room: The dining table is a vintage Heywood Wakefield junior dining table, a craigslist find. The chairs are vintage Thonet from local salvage.























Hallway, Bath, Bedroom entry with vintage Chinese elm bench and art deco dresser.












My desk is an unfinished wood parsons table that I sanded and painted high gloss white. Bookcases are the ever-dependable Ikea Billy. The Kevi chair I found on ebay for $30.

The kitchen table is the "Odyssey" from CB2, a cheap knock-off Saarinen. Chairs are vintage Thonet from the local Habitat for Humanity Re-store salvage shop.



























It's really difficult to photograph the guest bedroom/den. The walls are a chocolatey eggplant or a very blue brown. The daybed is vintage '60s Design Research, belonged to my parents when they were in grad school. The carpet is possibly a Bakhtiar, and is from ebay. It's huge and garish and I love it.

On Reading By Candlelight

I turned out and unplugged for Earth Hour this evening, but I was all alone. Apparently my friends actually have things to do on Saturday night. (Who knew?). And mine was only one of two houses on the entire block that went dark for an hour.

So after a much needed day of cleaning, I lit candles and Saffron and I kicked back on the couch with the facsimile of Bacon's essays I'd purchased for $1 at the library booksale, for a little reading early-modern style.

The first thing I learned was that people then couldn't have possibly read in bed or on the couch (if they even had sofas in that period), because you'd have to hold the candle aloft yourself and then wax would get all over your fingers and your book.

The second thing I learned was that sitting at a table was only slightly better illuminated than sitting on the couch, trying to hold a flickering candle steady while it drips wax all over your book and fingers. And that it takes at least five or six substantial candles to provide enough light by which to discern colors (okay, so part of my reading experiment involved the latest CB2 catalogue- I confess it freely). So obviously only anyone who could afford an abundance of candles could afford not to go to bed before 8pm.

The third thing I discovered was that propping the book up on its edges rather than setting it to lie flat on the table afforded it almost twice the amount of illumination. So an early modern book stand or even a slanted book rest (like on a lectern) was really necessary for nocturnal reading.

After a while it got cold and my eyes got tired and I started glancing towards the clock, counting the minutes left until I could turn on the lights again. Then I placed the book back down on the table for half a second and the cat decided to sit on it, and that was the end of that.

This led me to my final revelation: Yes I am roundly in favor of reducing the world's carbon emissions and stopping global warming, but I love electricity. Electricity is my friend. And that is one of the many reasons why I am glad I live in the post - rather than early - modern world.

Lights Out at 8

I'm turning the lights out and unplugging everything for an hour at 8pm tonight for Earth Hour. I'm actually looking forward to spending an hour with candles and friends and a nice bottle of wine. I had hoped it would be warm enough to sit on the porch, but it's cold and rainy today so that's out. I have no idea if anyone else in this town will be doing this- only one city in the whole state appears to be officially participating, and of course it's only hit the local news today. But I'm hoping I won't be alone.

In Praise of Anonymity

This is why I've decided to try to become more anonymous on the web (and to continue to protect my anonymous friends in the blogosphere). I'm not saying I'm not sharing my identity with my friends, but most of my colleagues and none of my students (so far as I know) read this blog or know it's me, and I'd kind of like to keep it that way.

More on Yummy Mummy

Sorry for the bad pun.

My friend Marie tells us this about early modern mummy consumption:

"As for Jonathan's comment, my understanding is that "mummy" or "mummia" was a brew that involved boiled parts of dead bodies, mixed with other stuff, and that drinking it was thought to ward off death."

Given that some of my own work is about how early modern folk attempt to counteract death and decay through poetry, I wonder if there's more to be said about mummia. In addition to the notion I get from reading Donne that the corpse is an animated body even when it's resurrected for judgement day (see "The Relic"), I'm also thinking about the anxiety/fascination early modern writers seem to have about the affinity between corpses and flowers, especially in Act 4 of The Winter's Tale and in Acts 4-5 of Hamlet.

Ophelia sings about decking a corpse with flowers, is pulled to death with flowers, gets flowers thrown in her grave, "and from her fair and unpolluted flesh may violets spring."

What I'm getting at is that I think the boundary between life (flowers, living bodies) and death (corpses, mummies) was much more tenuous in the early modern period than it is today. Either tenuous and fluid, or organized in a different way. I've been thinking about this because I'm still intrigued by the "Shakespeare and Technology" panel at SAA, which seemed to want to redefine (and sometimes even blur) the boundaries between early modern nature and technology, human and machine.

I know that's kind of a knee-jerk early modern materialist argument, that boundaries were tenuous, everything was less fixed, but I guess I still think we can learn stuff from thinking this way.

Fastest Turnover Ever!

I just got an article accepted by a journal not one month after sending it out. I have never had this happen before. It was a long time coming (I think this is the fourth or fifth try), so I'm glad it took so little time for them to decide. Wheee! No more worrying about finding a home for this wayward sister. She's happily settled and will be available for all to see in 2010.

Extended Families

Hans Holbein, More Family Portrait

I don't have to teach on Friday! I don't have to teach on Friday! It's something called "Good Friday," for Catholics and Anglicans, I think. But it's also Bach's birthday, so I plan to spend the entire day writing and listening to Bach. I've got two pieces to polish up and send out and I must do it before April comes around. I'm still feeling the remains of post-conference depression. I've managed to e-mail my new friends, finish some conversations, write my thank-you notes, and partially redeem myself virtually, but every day I keep remembering more people I need to write. I'm really glad I had those cheesy business cards made as I'm finally starting to get e-mails from scholars I met at the conference who are interested in my work.

Forgive me for sounding Pollyanaish, but the virtual world being what it is, I think this year it will be easier to stay connected. That is, if I don't disappear completely into my book, which five people in the past week have encouraged me to do (and don't worry five people, I will, I'm dying to!). Still it's nice to know how to reach one's friends & colleagues when stuck or confused or in need of inebriation in London or DC.

The funniest bit of SAA news is that I've discovered that one of my new conference buddies is in my extended family (my artist cousin is his partner- who knew?). I did get a very warm, familial vibe from him at the conference, so maybe I ought to have guessed, but neither of us knew this until after the conference ended.

SAA 2008: What I learned

Sometimes it is impossible to learn anything from a conference. Generally all I do is agree, disagree or let my mind wander. Usually my best conference experiences are food-related. But thankfully I actually did learn some things about (gasp!) the early modern period, among others at this conference. In no apparent order they are:

1. We need to use our imaginations more, but this doesn't necessarily mean that we have to stop talking about real material things, just that we have to stop thinking about trying to find them and then find them again (I think).
-Mary Bly's delightful and provocative plenary talk.

2. Descartes may have traveled around Europe with a life-size automaton made to resemble his dead daughter, Francine.
-Wendy Hyman's talk for the brilliant "Shakespeare and Technology" roundtable panel, the sleeper hit of the whole conference.

3. Waterwheels shaped the way early modern London sounded and felt.
-Jonathan Sawday's talk for the same panel.

4. "Petard" was not simply an early modern bomb (see fig. 1 above), it also meant a fart.
-Ibid.

5. If Ania Loomba is right (and she frequently is), we still haven't connected colonialism, the mercantile economy, race studies and East and West enough. I keep finding this difficult to believe though, especially because I thought Amanda Bailey's careful and elegant plenary paper did just that. Also: why isn't anyone writing about the sugar trade in Cyprus?

6. People ate mummies (which technically I knew already from David Read's seminar work at last year's SAA but had conveniently forgotten only to be surprised by it again).

7. Stanley Kubrick's first film Fear and Desire appears to brilliantly rework bits of The Tempest, but since it is nearly impossible to see one of the two remaining copies we just had to take Richard Rambuss' word for it.

8. Early modern publics are small, numerous, material and virtual. They self-destruct when they start kicking people out. They can also be eloquently described with Venn diagrams. This lead me to hypothesize that every time an early modern public spontaneously combusts, five others are born. Clap your hands if you believe in early modern publics! (I know I do).
-Steven Mulaney, Paul Yachnin and Katherine McKluskie's "Making Publics" panel

9. A large number of Dallas women may indeed be living proof of the third (or fourth) sex.

10. It is possible to fuse texan with japanese cuisine and produce delicious results, but only at considerable cost. On the other hand, Salvadoran cuisine fused with texmex is yummy and cheap. And apparently texmex itself is very, very cheesy.

11. Everyone has a Shakespeare Quarterly Revise-Resubmit-Reject sob story.

12. Downtown Dallas has a free vintage streetcar system and a gorgeous triplex of art museums yet remains strangely devoid of people. How can this be???

13. If you've blogged about something really cool but want it to remain anonymous, just say it was an MLA paper you gave- that conference is so huge that no one will know the difference. I thought this was a brilliant idea and am taking this to heart.

14. GEMCS is back!

Dallas, Baby

I'm in Dallas, a day early for a conference, because it was cheaper to fly in early and because it is also my spring break and I need a change of scenery. The plan was originally to wander around and check out the art museum today, but since I had to get up at 5am, I really just want to take a shower and a nap.

Is it wrong to hear the "Dallas" theme song in one's head walking down the street here? I've never been here before, and even though we have a dear family friend who is also a prof down here, musical associations tend to take hold of my brain more powerfully than others. My parents used to let me stay up to watch "Dallas" with them when I was too little to understand that it was about adultery and melodrama. So the music will be forever associated with getting to stay up past 7pm, which was exciting.

The conference begins tomorrow afternoon, and my session is Friday. I'll try to go to some panels and report back from the field. Those of you who know me and will be here, I'll see you soon.

3/2, 32

It's my birthday today, so I get to sleep late and spend the day in my pajamas. It's also Saffron's birthday, and she has been playing around in the wrapping paper from the presents my parents sent us both. Right now she's fallen asleep in the Neiman Marcus box under about six layers of tissue paper, but her tail is hanging out over the side.

What kind of birthday is it when the date of your birthday (read in the US format) mirrors your age? It's not a golden birthday, is it? That would have been when I was two, right? Or is it? In any case, I've been told that 32 is an auspicious number in Chinese numerology and in Jewish mysticism (22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet plus the 10 divine attributes).

I'm feeling much less frustrated and depressed today. I've gotten a lot more writing done and funding applications out, plus had a very successful first meeting of the interdisciplinary early modern reading group I created with a friend at a neighboring university.

And it's warm! One lovely thing about living in the south is that it can be 60 degrees on March 2, with crocuses and daffodils and flowering quinces outside. We have a long, slow spring here though, so none of my dogwoods has started to blossom, nor has the plum or the weeping cherry in the backyard. But the two forsythias in the side yard have little yellow buds on them so I'm hoping they'll bloom in the next week or so.

I kind of overdid it this weekend- I invited a bunch of people over for a party last night, but since I'm teaching 3 classes 3 days a week plus everything else, I didn't get to the shopping and cleaning until Friday night and got to bed at 2am. Then yesterday I finished up the cleaning and did all the cooking and prep work but by the time people started arriving at 9, I could barely stand up. I did have a wonderful, blissful time and was totally un self-conscious which was actually a really great feeling. Two of my closest friends stayed until one, and insisted on ringing in my birthday with me at midnight.

Now I understand why no one throws parties until the end of the semester. I slept late this morning, but I feel as if I've just run a marathon! It's a good feeling, but I'll need the rest of the day to recuperate before I can begin prepping for tomorrow's three classes. I guess you could say I finally feel like a grown-up, if being a grown-up means feeling really, really, really tired.

Scholarly Melancholy

I'm so glad it's the end of the day. It wasn't a terrible day, just one during which I felt terrible. It's not as if my work has been rejected, though I'm starting to get used to that. But I still have two proposals to submit plus two articles to finish and send off. So my meagre sense of accomplishment last week at finishing one proposal and one letter of recommendation now amounts to nothing at all.

Second, and perhaps a bit more poignantly, I've recently learned that I have lost two junior colleagues to really fine research institutions; one came in with me, the other had yet to arrive from his postdoc. I am happy for them, but I can't seem to shake this negative feeling, which is kind of like having an acrid taste in my mouth or a heaviness around my temples. I can't process what I'm feeling either: Am I sorry to lose two friends (technically, one potential friend), or am I just horrifically envious of their successes? Both seem unfounded- it's not as if I'm in either of their fields, and I'm not on the market. Yet I can't stop feeling awful this evening. I'm also exhausted because I taught three courses for 5 hours today- two one-hour sections plus a 3 hour grad seminar. I wish I didn't have such a heavy course load and could spend more time writing and less time rushing to get research and course proposals turned in, proposals that ideally ought to give me more time to write.

And maybe I feel so terrible because my birthday is around the corner and I never thought I'd be living alone in a small town in the Conservative Baptist South where I still feel so displaced, teaching 3 courses and developing gray hairs the week before my 32nd birthday.

I wish my maternal grandmother were still alive. She'd call me "Sarah Heart-Burn," tell me to stop being so morose and melodramatic and to get back to work. Then her sister (my great aunt) would start to sing "Pick Yourself up, Dust Yourself off, and Start all over again." Then suddenly we'd all be in a technicolor musical number, wearing bright red lipstick and vivid green shoes.

If this is just melancholy, then maybe Burton has a cure- I ought to make myself wetter and hotter by going for a run or something. Instead I'm sipping a Pinot and listening to Couperin. It might be exaccerbating the problem.

Fellowship Application Month

It's summer fellowship application month. Most are due at the end of this month and the beginning of next month. And I desperately need them in order to work on my book and start something new. Some are very easy to write as they are dictated by the collections of a particular archive. For others, my book proposal will suffice.

But for one of them, I find myself in the ridiculous position of applying to my institution for the same funding they awarded me last summer, essentially to go back and do more of the same research on the same book project. This is normal- it takes a long time for a manuscript to get "finished" and "publishable." I've been told mine is already "publishable" but it is by no means "finished". And though two weeks in London at the BL last summer may have made it even more "publishable," they did only a little to make it more "finished".

So I've basically got to rewrite my book proposal (which I submitted as a grant proposal last year) to say the same things but somehow make it seem like I'm actually doing different research on a slightly different book project, which is nonetheless the same project I was working on last year. This shouldn't be too difficult- in my research report from last summer I made perhaps too big a point about how little time I actually got to spend with my texts because of how expensive London is (my initial request was almost twice what I was awarded), and how I really need to spend more time with them in order to finish the book and think about my next project. So I can fairly easily make a big todo about how the research I did last summer pointed my book in a "new" direction but I need to go back and finish it up. But that is boring and no fun to write.

I could also write a completely new research proposal for my next project, but it's due this Wednesday, and I'm not sure I could do enough exploratory research to sound like an expert on the new subject. Or I could just condense my book proposal and instead add a section focusing on my other unfinished chapter, the one I wanted to work on but couldn't last summer because I only had 2 weeks in the UK. Ugh, I wish this was easier.

For those of you who have received multiple grants for the same book project over a number of summers, how did you do it? Did you reword the same research proposal? Did you focus on a different chapter each time? Did you make something up? Because let's face it, basically all I need to do is write, but I'd like to be able to write in the British Library, where I could call up all the exact material texts I'm working with.

Right now I'm sitting in my study, looking out the window at daffodil shoots on a greyish day, listening to the divine Karita Matilla sing Manon Lescaut live from the Met, doodling with my current book proposal and hoping to make up my mind this afternoon.

Who Was your Shakespeare Professor?

Today my mother forwarded me this '06 opinion piece from the New York Times, by one of my favorite writers and people, Lorrie Moore. In it, Moore explores why Shakespeare gets most of the credit for inspiring modern writing professors.

Which of course reminded me that my whole career might have been different, had I not been plucked out of my ninth grade English class where I was reading Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry for the third time since age 9, and deposited into the senior Shakespeare elective. I chose Shakespeare not exactly because I loved Shakespeare- I had recently played Ophelia in the local Kids-in-Shakespeare production -but because I had an enormous crush on the goofy boy who had played Hamlet, and I knew he was going to be in the class.

Anyway, here's Lorrie Moore's hilarious article from April 2006: The Modern Elizabethan

My thanks to Muse Maman for sending it to me this morning!

Big Scary Liberal English Professor who Wears a Lot of Black

I seem to have only 28 students this semester. Almost as small a number as I had my first semester here, when nobody knew me or wanted to have anything to do with Renaissance poetry or material culture theory.

I have eight shining, eager hardworking faces in my grad seminar; fourteen men and women in section one of my lower division course, plus six gals in section two. We have a lot of fun, and I'm getting to know them much better than my other students.

I don't know why there are only six women in section two, but I'm secretly hoping it's because I scared off everyone else by using the word "feminist" in the course title.

I guess there are perks to being a Yankee professor in the South. Either that or I've just tarnished my sincerity by learning how to manipulate the system.

One of my "virtual ratings" describes me as too strict and serious and supports this with the evidence that I "wear a lot of black." I found this uproariously funny- especially because I always dreamily imagined I could hang with the cool kids in college and grad school, you know- the ones who wear all black and theory glasses and smoke and talk about Bruno Latour and are all a little bit bisexual, but I was too nerdy or guileless ever to get accepted by that gang. It's funny that I get to be one of them here in the South. And I'm starting to learn how to make it work to my advantage.

Now there's really no reason why I can't send out three new articles this semester.

How d'you like my New Look?

The Petticoat has a New Look for the New Year!

I'm still trying to figure out how to put the font back to Roman Antique, but I'm loving the new colors. For some reason it matches my dining room. One of my friends said my taste in interior decorating was all about "Museum Exhibition Wall Colors." Evidentally, so is my taste in blog color.

Little Reminders that What I do is Important

Are you familiar with the blog (and the book it spawned) Postsecret? A bit sensationalist for my taste, but nonetheless compelling. Back in graduate school, I imagined that my dissertation and first book would be about "Renaissance Secrecy." I wrote a whole proposal on it. And then promptly scrapped the idea when I realized that I would rather read about secrets than write about them. Anyway, on Postsecret people create their own postcards revealing their personal secrets and then send them in anonymously to the blog's P.O. box, and some of them show up on the blog every week. This one caught my eye and made me smile.

I'm currently stressing out about the syllabus for the graduate course I begin teaching on Wednesday, and fretting too much about having to drag my Could-Not-Be-Less-Interested arse to the two sections of comp I'm also obligated to teach this semester. I have exactly the same number of students as last semester (a petite 40), but I'm teaching 3 days a week. Ugh. I wish spring would come soon. Anyway, I need little reminders like this one to keep me going. We all do.

Student Guilt Trips

It's the end of the semester and this student (a senior in a class of 15 underclassmen) only ever came to see me twice during the semester- both times *after* receiving his papers with grades he did not like (one a B, the other a B-).

In an e-mail sent this evening- a full 3 days after the final paper was due, and 4 days after I returned his paper on PL, which was a grown-up but hardly sophisticated summary of Book IV and which I knowingly inflated from the C it was to a genial B minus, quoth the Student:

"Dr. Muse-
I probably don't need to tell you that I am again disappointed with my paper writing. It's frustrating that I'm doing poorly in the type of class in which I typically thrive, but that happens I guess. I'm sure you have as little free time as I do at this point in the semester and I know that you already have two papers of mine to grade, but I figured I would at least ask if I should try to rewrite this Paradise Lost paper for a better grade or if it's too late and I need to just eat the B-. If there is anything I can do to try and improve my grade in the class, I would be happy to do it, as a poor grade in a class I took just out of interest will certainly raise questions on graduate school applications. Either way, thanks for an enjoyable class and have a good break-
Student"

My initial response:

"Are you trying to make me feel guilty for giving you a B in an intro-level English course and thus poisoning your grad school applications? Give it a f***king break!"

My second response:

"Yeah, you can rake my yard and give my cat a bath. And when you're done you can give me $500 for a ticket to Montreal."

I know, I know, I'm a meanie. But only in my imagination and on this blog.

In the end, I wrote him a kind, sympathetic e-mail telling him that yes, it was too late for a revision, that I still had his final paper and his revised other paper to mark, and that I'd be happy to sit down with him next semester and discuss where and how he could improve his argumentation.

New Obsession: German Botanical Charts

I covet these charts. They are affordable at 16 euros unmounted (mounted classroom use they are 40-60 euros), gorgeous and would look great framed. I'm especially attracted to the black background. I already have two wonderful lecons des choses that a dear family friend brought me back from Deyrolle in Paris- Tea and Sugar charts. But now I want more and I want these German botanicals.

Jung, Koch and Quentell Charts online

Hannukah Ham

According to Jewish humor site bangitout.com, this is an actual advertisement in the window of the Manhattan gourmet institution, Balducci's. I can't decide whether it's an intentional joke or not.

Anthropologie: Clothing Academics Since 1999

Whoever writes copy for Anthropologie obviously knows the customer base better than I thought. Case in point:

(I must have these) Tenure Trousers

Hmm. Maybe if I don't get tenure I can go write for Anthropologie.

Why I Sometimes Love the South

Reasons Nos. 14 and 15:

The Camellia in front of my porch is blooming:










And there are mid-November figs from the tree in the garden:

Personality and Perspective

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Professor in possession of a good English Degree must necessarily be a charming and genial person.

Yet for some reason, a list of irritating professor types has surfaced in the blogosphere. I cannot possibly fathom what kinds of deplorable people might have contributed to such a fictitious document. I post it here for your perusal. Please take a look at the comments section below as well (especially those by "Professor Ingenue").

List of Irritating Professor Types

It's funny, when I read this I immediately started treating it like the DSM IV, looking to diagnose myself and my department. Thankfully, we weren't there.

Carigueya

Carigueya, Seu Marsupiale Americanum Masculum. Or, The Anatomy of a Male Opossum: In a Letter to Dr Edward Tyson, from Mr William Cowper, Chirurgeon, and Fellow of the Royal Society, London. To Which are Premised Some Further Observations on the Opossum; And a New Division of Terrestrial Brute Animals, Particularly of Those That Have Their Feet Formed Like Hands. Where an Account is Given of Some Animals Not Yet Described by Edward Tyson, M. D. Fellow of the College of Physicians and of the Royal Society. London: 1698.


As seen on the Mulberry from my study window this evening. And yes, it has feet formed remarkably like hands. And a strange, joker-ish smile. It was rather small, though not a baby, and surprisingly cute (I learned later that the fur is remarkably soft, they never stay in one place for more than three days, and they eat mice and cockroaches and are generally good for the environment).

Fantasy Desk

I've just finished installing a shiny white desk, faded red kilim and knock-off Jielde desk lamp in my milk-colored study. The desk is a simple white parson's table, 5 feet long. I bought it unfinished and disassembled, painted it and nearly destroyed my shoulders and knuckles putting it together (you try screwing sixteen three-inch screws into two thick pieces of solid birch).

But sometimes I like to dream. And on Friday afternoons, after I have packed up my laptop, the three or four books I'll need over the weekend, and filled my bag with file folders crammed with student papers and various articles and drafts of things-in-progress, shut off the light and driven home, I like to pour myself a cup of tea and lick the ebay window. I don't really know what else to call it- "browsing" is too noncommittal. So I've chosen to anglicize the French idiom for window shopping- leche vitrine, or "window licking."

During a recent mid-century modern furniture foray, I came upon this graceful, utterly useful 6 foot desk. It is smooth and polished and slopes, like a piano. It has storage and lots of table space and it is Very Long. It is a desk to dream about. It is also $7500. Sometimes Ebay is like a decorative arts museum.

Edward Wormley Desk on Ebay

Book Envy

I've been buying up new books. Not just any new books, mind you, but new books written by old grad school classmates of mine. It is kind of scary to know that friends from grad school already have their books out. The one I am thinking of, which came out in June, is spectacular. It has a gorgeous (color) cover, a beautiful, catchy two-part title (I thought we weren't allowed to do that anymore!), and six elegant chapters.

This is the first time I am actually able to see the progress from dissertation to book, and it's still kind of magical, despite me constantly prodding and pricking myself with reminders about how difficult it was for this scholar to get the dissertation written, to get a job, to get fellowships, to finish the book, and to get a great second job. I saw this person struggle from the first: I remember when she presented a version of a chapter at our bi-weekly reading group, and how tough everyone was on her. I remember her telling me about the first time our adviser made her cry, and I remember thinking of her words the first time our adviser made me cry (a rite of passage).

I remember watching her wrestle with finishing her dissertation and looking for a job, and I remember when she returned to our reading group several years later, in the middle of a tenure track job, already moving on to the next one. At that meeting, she shared a draft of her book's introduction, which was freshly written, experimental and very messy. I believe our adviser told her to scrap the whole thing and she laughingly agreed. All of this is to say that I saw her struggle. I saw how difficult this project was, and I saw how hard she worked. I saw her skip lunch for an entire year on fellowship just to get more time to write and revise. And now ironically there is this beautiful, transparent book glittering away all on its own, which makes us forget all about the struggle. Sprezzatura indeed, and book author (if you are reading this or if someone points you to this) I congratulate you.

{Coincidentally, but not related at all to this particular book, what does it take to get mentioned in the acknowledgments section of a book by a friend, adviser, colleague or former graduate student peer? I'm not disappointed that I haven't been acknowledged yet, but some of my friends have, and they haven't contributed any more to the discussion, or commented on any more drafts than I have. We've all run the discussion seminar at one point in our time as graduate students. So what do I have to do to get mentioned? Be nicer? Be meaner? Be further along in my career and more published? I'm just saying.}

I began this post planning to write about how much I envy this scholar her beautiful book and beautiful job, but in writing it I've realized that I don't. I'm proud of her and I'm glad I got to see how hard and painful and stressful and long the whole process is. Lunch, adieu.

Yes, I'm Still Here

Yes I'm still here, and I've been posting quite a bit lately.

Are there more than five people reading my blog? Because I really can't tell and I'm feeling neglected. I'd like some comments, please.

Thank you.

Being Under Something

I am "under review" this year at my job. According to ancient departmental documents, this means going through all the same motions one does when one is "up for tenure." The only differences as far as I can tell, are that there are no external reviewers and I'm not expected to have a book contract and a glut of publications. I do have to assemble two dossiers, one of written work (published, polished, and in progress; book proposal), and one of teaching materials including syllabi, assignments, handouts, course descriptions and exams. I also need to compile a list of all my departmental and university-wide activities and committees, which is actually quite short because my department has a "no service" policy for the first year. And finally, I have to be observed teaching.

Anyway, all this is a large introduction to my "whew" news which is that I've finally turned in my dossiers. Yay! Knowing that they are in and out of my hands is a source of huge relief, whenever I pause to remember it (which is not that often during the week, what with teaching and manuscript surgery). Yes, I fretted and rushed to revise everything but putting it all together was in the end a nice reminder that even though it seemed like I got very little writing and research done last year, I was wrong. This time, I was able to revise my book proposal to match my manuscript, and not the other way around. Revising my chapter on Lucrece for the review committee was intricate and painful, not unlike how I might imagine arthroscopic surgery might feel. But it was also necessary and useful- I now have a new, better, stronger argument that doesn't force itself upon the text yet moves in new directions. I'm not exactly "happier" with the piece, but I am less unhappy, and ready to send it out to a journal again. I am, though, tremendously happy about my argument. I just hope it shows!

So I have finally crawled on top of this review process, if only for the time being. Why is it always "under" review and "up" for tenure? The preposition "under" does seem fitting: it feels a bit like being buried under a pile of folders, or maybe held under the proverbial "thumb" of the department while it decides whether to smoosh me like a bug or lift me up like an equal. I exaggerate of course- I'm not going to lose my job over this. But I am going to be critiqued by my colleagues, some of whom relish the opportunity beyond its purpose. Being "up" for tenure is scarier- more precarious -because the fall seems that much further. Given the choice, I'll side with Hamlet's worthy pioneer: I'd rather be "under" than "up."

Book Autopsies

A colleague pointed me to the work of the artist Brian Dettmer, who takes old books- many illustrated with woodcuts and engravings -and carves them up into sculptures and dioramas. It's beautiful and fascinating and a little bit scary because some of these are valuable old texts (see the comments section below on Webster's 2nd).

http://centripetalnotion.com/2007/09/13/13:26:26/

(Peek!)

So at the moment I'm putting off editing my article/chapter on Lucrece (that old windmill tilter) even though it is due to my committee tomorrow afternoon. This committee is a group of three senior colleagues who will be conducting my second-year review later this semester. Yes, that is right, I'm being reviewed in my second year. I will also be reviewed in my fourth, and the 6th year is the tenure review. Quite a lot of reviewing, no?

Anyway, whilst playing hooky from my fucked up footnotes, I decided to steal a glance at the MLA Job Information List, just a tiny look.

So I did. I peeked. I'm not ashamed.

And I can finally let out a sigh of relief. Maybe I'm too much of a snob for my own good, but I saw very few enviously scrumptious jobs in my field. Sure, there were some jobs that looked like nice first jobs, but only one or two that looked remotely second job worthy. Of course I'm pretty happy here at my first job, so maybe I don't know what second job worthy looks like. What I mean is, maybe "second job worthy" is utopian at this point.

There were lots of early modern jobs and it is fairly early in the listings game, all of which makes me glad for my friends on the market. But of those 5 pages of advertisements only two jumped out at me as highly desirable. And I'm not counting the famous place that rarely tenures its junior faculty (what the hell is a "tenure-track associate professor"?).

I peeked into the big spooky room of missed chances and I feel fine.

Blissed out

I'm sort of following in the vein of Flavia on her post about signs that the semester is off to a good start. I have to rave about the students in my upper level Shakespeare class.

First off, there are 27 of them. And it's a seminar because is upper level and a requirement for the major. So it seems like it might be difficult to give everyone a chance to contribute to the discussion. Secondly, last year I had to teach it in a lecture room with raked seating and me in the pit at the bottom. This made discussion even more difficult, partly because the students couldn't see one another very well. And for some reason it made me lose my confidence which is really strange because I LOVE being on stage and performing and I love lecturing. But this course wasn't really supposed to be a lecture course. Anyway, half of my evaluations said I lectured too much and the other half said not enough.

So this semester I made sure the class was put in a smaller classroom. Colleagues and secretaries looked aghast at me, but they allowed it. Yes, we are all crammed into the room, but we managed to make a staggered circle with the desks. Being literally on the same level with the students makes so much of a difference. Plus, everyone can see everyone else.

Yesterday was our first day with a play, and the discussion of speech and language in Richard II was so stimulating, so exciting, that some of the students followed me into my office after class to continue the line of thought. At least 20 out of 27 students spoke, and everyone had something interesting to say. They also began to piggy-back on one another's observations. In the middle of the discussion when we started talking about flattery as a speech act, I read them some quotes from early modern anti-flattery tracts and when I was finished, about 10 hands went up in the air- they assimilated the historical information very quickly.

I was wrong- even though I'm a poetry person, I do like teaching Shakespeare's drama. Maybe I should write an article on Shakespeare and become a semi-Shakespearean.

The best thing about this group of students is that on the first day a number of them mentioned that they were fascinated by language and Shakespeare's use of puns. I've actually got some budding philologists in my class: Whee!

The Advisor

[Boethius, La Consolation de la Philosophie, 1477, British Library]

I'm a freshman advisor this year. That means helping 10 new first year students plan their schedules and edumacating them about core and divisional requirements.

It's all very foggy to me, especially because my own undergraduate experience had no such requirements. We were free to take whatever we chose.

But I did have a great freshman advisor, a very distinguished scholar and public intellectual who nonetheless made sure her seven advisees were in her Friday 3pm discussion section, a time when most distinguished senior scholars are nowhere near campus. This advisor didn't even live in the college town, but 60 miles away in a larger city, if I recall. Her lecture met MWF at 11am, and I vaguely remember that every day after class she would leave for lunch (and lots of intense philosophical arguing, I imagined) with a dashing political science professor who waited worshipfully for her on a bench outside on the main green.

I'm racking my brains trying to remember what excellent advice she was able to impart to me and trying to figure out how she made me feel at ease. But all I can remember is being impressed by the vast number of books in her office, many in stacks on the desk, by the fact that she offered me a cup of coffee, and by the seriousness and focus with which she listened to me and approached my schedule. I hadn't been able to get in to the "Intro to Brit Lit" course that is a requirement for the English major and didn't know what to do. Without that course, I couldn't take any more advanced courses. So she steered me towards a comparative literature course, one that ultimately set me on the path to Renaissance studies.

Aside: I only learned later that there was a mutual dislike between my advisor and the professor of the Renaissance course. The fact that she said such fine things about him as a teacher and scholar and somehow knew the course was ideal for me is a wonderful thing.

I should add that much of what I remember of this advisor has been filtered through my mother's interpretive lens. She is a professional undergraduate advisor at a Big Ten school, so naturally she heard all about my experiences as a freshman and how this advisor saved me from transferring to a smaller school by engaging me academically.

I was miserable during Orientation. Really miserable. I was stuck in the basement (the "0- zone") of a giant hotel complex or army bunker dorm full of artsy, pretentious kids from New York who did drugs and slept around and were so cool and I felt really lost. But once I sat down in her class on the first day, all that changed. I was found. And some of the artsy kids were lost and confused and complaining about all the reading. And some of the artsy kids asked really smart questions and left class deep in conversation with me. And some of them played in a quartet. Ha, I thought! I belong here after all. Incidentally, my mother liked what my advisor did for me so much that she wrote her a letter and the famous advisor wrote back, citing her own experience as a mother with an academically inclined daughter. How cool is that???

Sometimes I wonder if she was so helpful only because I was so eager. I think she had appointments in three departments, so this course might have been designed to get me interested in one of her areas. I was probably also simply dazzled by her star power. If she hadn't left in my sophomore year, maybe I wouldn't be in English at all . . .

So what can I do tomorrow through Sunday when I meet with my advisees? Listen, maybe? And perhaps the best thing I can do is to suggest something they haven't thought of before.

My Daemon is a Tiger

Not that I'm in the least surprised. Excuse me a moment while I preen and reach for my favorite Angela Carter story.

Find your demon here: http://www.goldencompassmovie.com/

(That's Northern Lights for you Brits).

And if you haven't read His Dark Materials yet but promised me you would, you have exactly four months.

More Petticoat than Freudian

This blog is getting really frilly. All I'm blogging about these days are cats and home decor. I won't even mention the perfect loaf of bread I baked today (thanks, Minimalist!). But here's the latest on my settling in: my dining room with the vintage table and chairs (no they are not a set, they just go well together- thanks, Craigslist!) and the infernal pain-in-the-arse chandelier from London, which cost $60 to be rewired and took nearly three hours to install and a great deal of improvising on the part of the electrician. But now it works and it looks beautiful. And I will never, NEVER buy a chandelier in London again unless I already live there.

Here's a picture of my new beautiful living room rug, a kilim that my parents bought for me in Istanbul, helped by our wonderful, tasteful and wise Turkish friend. Look closely and you'll glimpse a guilty pleasure:

FCB

I know, I know, two weeks in a row of cat blogging. I promise I'll stop. But it's really difficult to photograph a black tortoiseshell cat with a digital camera, and in this photo Saffron looks like a Miyazaki character ("My neighbor Saffron"). When I write at home in the kitchen, this is her spot. She's kind of a spirit guardian of the laptop. More likely, it's because her food is located under the table.

Belated Friday Cat and House blogging

I'm in the midwest visiting my parents for a long weekend and I miss my cat. I almost never cat-blog but I have a cute photo of her in my new apartment and I miss her fuzziness and her little face appearing around the side of my laptop screen when I'm trying to write. The house is also gradually taking shape, so here's a double feature: cat photo and living room at night.

Little People

I've just discovered a new thoroughly addictive street art blog, which is feeding my procrastinastion. But I wanted to share it with you because it's so funny and because it's a great way of remembering London. It's called "Little People" and describes itself in a subtitle as "Little handpainted people, left in london to fend for themselves" and it's here.

See if I'm not right.

Still a Freak after all these years

The first time I took the Myers-Briggs personality type test I was 18 and heading off to New England for college. It told me I was an INFJ- Introverted-Intuitivite-Feeling-Judging. I thought I'd take the shorter online version just for fun. I felt I had truly become much more extroverted and rational and would probably become an ENTJ, fitting in more easily with the general population.

But I was WRONG! Thirteen years later and I'm still an INFJ, still part of the tiny .5%. I don't know whether to be happy or sad (that's the "Feeling" part kicking in), but I will say this: the test never lies.

Here's what it told me:

Your Score: Freak- INFJ

33% Extraversion, 60% Intuition, 20% Thinking, 66% Judging

"Well, well, well. How did someone like you end up with the least common personality type of them all? In a group of 100 Americans, only 0.5 others would be just like you. You really are one of a kind... In fact, I do believe that that's one of the definitions for the word "FREAK."

Freak's not such a bad word to describe you actually.

You are deep, complex, secretive and extremely difficult to understand. If that doesn't scream "Freak!" I don't know what does. No-one actually knows the REAL you, do they?

You probably have deep interests in creative expression as well as issues of spirituality and human development.

You've probably even been called a "psychic" before, because of your uncanny knack to understand and "read" people without quite knowing how you do it. Don't fret. You're not actually psychic. That would make you special and you'll never accomplish that.

You're also quite possibly the most emotional of them all, so don't take this all too hard. Nevertheless you most definitely have the strangest personality type and that's not necessarily a good thing. "

This mini-analysis is just there for acerbic silliness. I don't know about any hidden secrets or being hard to read- usually I'm told I'm gullible and guileless and that my thoughts and emotions write themselves all over my face whether I want them to or not (I usually don't want them to!). I'm not psychic, but I do tend to respond more to people's emotional states than to what they may be saying. I do sometimes have dreams that seem to reveal that my unconscious has been picking up on others' unspoken emotional states.

And I always thought I was easy to understand! Maybe only by other INFJs and by myself, though. Of course the part that may not fit with INFJ is that, no longer a pianist or actor, I still have a desire to perform. I'm not sure whether this falls under the category of extroverted or not, since performing for me involves intense focus and reaching a state I call "the zone" where time stands still and one is both communicating and retreating inside oneself. But everyone who knows me even a little bit would surely agree that I am not a "quiet leader" as INFJs are frequently described. I'm pretty outspoken, both a blurter and (on good days) a firebrand. Perhaps it's best not to give too much credence to Mmes Myers and Briggs, though it's fun like figuring out one's astrological signs. Speaking of which, I'm both a Piscean and a Fire Dragon, which seems contradictory to me. Hmpf. Go figure.

Take the test yourself: http://www.okcupid.com/tests/3076838567116464195/Brutally-Honest-Personality

Phew!

Can't . . . move . . . arms . . . anymore. And this even after hiring "Two Men and a Truck" (that's the moving company's name) to cart the heavy furniture on Monday. All that remains are books to unpack and pictures to hang.

Saffron has adapted quite well to the new place, lounging around on the floor, testing the stability of the dresser by jumping on top of it from the bed, sitting in the living room window at twilight and making tiny cackling noises at fireflies.

Here's a sneak peak at the interior as it stands now. Vintage dining table on its way.

I discovered a fig tree in the front garden with at least nine green nubby figs on it, hopefully more by the end of the summer. Yum and yay! There is also a little stream and water-fall fountain fed by a pump that meanders under the stone path leading up to the front, constructed by previous landscape designer tenants. My landlord has promised to set up the pump for me. In the picture to the left you can see a dark crevace near the center of the photo. That's where the stream runs under the flagstones. It then curves around to the left, behind the japanese maple, and continues down to a little stone pond. The pump sends it back up through the garden to the top.

One Day Left!

I'm sorry if I've been out of touch for the past week- I've been gradually moving into my new house. It's so wonderful having a car and moving somewhere so close to home. It's much easier than the last four moves I made over the past four years, changing countries each time. I've made five trips with the hatchback packed full of material goods. I did manage to weed out some things I do not need and will be donating to Habitat for Humanity, but I still have so much "stuff" I think Marx would cringe. Still, it's quite nice to have carted and unpacked the entire contents of my kitchen, bathroom, closets, wall and window hangings. I feel mostly moved in- the only things left are books and furniture and kitty things.

So now please permit me to wax rhapsodic about my new house. And to gush about spending money on beautiful things I don't really need that nonetheless make me very happy. It is beautiful- I had the dining room and the sun room painted and both turned out really well. The dining room is a deep slate blue (Benjamin Moore's "Evening Dove") which looks charcoal grey at night and twilight blue during the day. The sunroom is a velvety cocoa brown with purple undertones (Benjamin Moore's "Desert Shadows"). Both rooms are matte which I think makes the rooms seem bigger and the color deeper. I'm sort of focusing on the dining room first because it is the focal point of the house. It's in the center, between the living room and the kitchen. The bedroom, study and bathroom are down a little hallway off to the right of the dining room. But when you walk through the front door, you're in the living room and your eyes are drawn to the dining room, though you can see all the way back to the kitchen. I'm not going to post pictures until after the furniture arrives (tomorrow), but here's a photo of the funky chandelier I bought for the dining room. Try to imagine it hanging in a slate blue room, the poppy colored kitchen just visible behind it.


I have also gone on a vintage furniture hunt. Last year I found four bentwood chairs by Thonet. I just purchased the perfect Heywood Wakefield table to go with them (hooray for Craigslist).

So imagine, if you will, a slate blue dining room, the poppy kitchen behind, the chandelier to the right hanging from the ceiling, and blond wood dining table and chairs (with a darker patina) in a lovely simple mid-century modern style. Decorating obsessed? Who me? I tend to work best surrounded by beautiful surroundings. So I'm only doing this to enhance my overall creativity, of course.

Muse of Muse

Yes, the muse has to have her own muse. Er, mews. A regular florilegium is Saffron: She never fails to fully digest the flowers I bring home. Currently she has one cabriole paw curled over the top of the laptop screen and is winking down at me as I type.

PLD

Today I have PLD (Post London Depression). I don't know if it is brought on by the jet lag, or by the stifling heat of the Southern summer, or perhaps by the sheer emptiness of this place this time of year but it feels dead dead DEAD everywhere and I want to go back.

Thankfully I ought to have my hands full with packing and schlepping and moving. And writing. But for some reason I haven't schlepped or packed a single thing, and I've only written a few hundred words.

Maybe I'm experiencing urban withdrawal and need another week to adjust. Maybe I just miss my friends and don't know when I'll see them again. In any case, I'm sad and lonely and bored here, and I'm not due for another visit to Montreal until August.

Time to write the book. Because there's really nothing else to do.

Anglophilia

I've been in the UK for over a week now and have gotten completely assimilated. Life here would be lovely, temperate and blissful- If I only had twice as much money, or more. And didn't have to work. I'm currently in Oxford with my friends Dearest B and the evil twin, enjoying a much needed visit to planet academia with people I haven't seen in a year and a half. Soon I'll have tea and catch up with faustus. Apparently everyone is on facebook but me, where they throw sheep and soup at one another contentedly.

In London I've seen two Mozart operas, two shakespeare plays, and two early modern manuscripts at the British Library. I've also eaten the best curry in my life and some very good Turkish food, and encountered people who have actually heard of the university where I teach, which, in London and Oxford is a miracle in and of itself.

More proper blogging later, I just wanted to post a quick update and let everyone know all was well. Please send money.

London-Bound

I leave for London the day after tomorrow. At the moment I'm drawing up a research and writing plan: I need to figure out what to do with my first chapter, whether I want to toss it and rewrite it entirely with a new argument about the same old text, or whether there are salvageable bits; I need to finish researching and writing my final chapter.

But the reading rooms of the British library aren't open all night long and they're closed on Sundays. Plus it can take up to half a day to get the books I need and I can only look at manuscripts until 5pm.

So I'll have some time to do a little exploring. I've spent lots of time in London, but I always stayed out of the way in Crouch End with my family friends. This time I'll be in Bloomsbury. I don't feel as if I know London particularly well. It's so big. The only place in the UK I know really well is Oxford, and that's because I lived there for a year and then dated someone there for almost two years. But back to London: I'm planning on doing some London walks, and already have plans to see an Opera with my mom's best friend, visit family friends, catch up with Oxonians and catch Othello at the Globe. And a pilgrimage to Ormonde Jayne, my favorite perfumer, which has a tiny shop in the Royal Arcade between Albemarle and Old Bond street and makes otherwordly scents out of black hemlock and violet and coriander, and of course I'll hang out in Islington and the East End. But I was wondering if any of my loyal readers (do you still exist?) who have much more London knowledge than I do, might want to make some suggestions of places off the beaten path for me to explore whilst there. Am I missing anything great? What are your London secrets that you don't mind divulging? Where is the best curry? What's your favorite pub? Which parks are hidden and beautiful?

And the Livin' is Easy

So I've been traveling a little bit this summer. Immediately after grading I dropped everything and headed off to Montreal for a week. It was relaxing and, well, at least there were two days of good weather! I saw lots of old movies and plasticized corpses and I ate really well (the advantages of dating someone with a newfound cooking obsession) and generally had a very nice time.

I returned to get everything in order here before going to London for two weeks. No fun- research only. I keep saying this again and again hoping that maybe it will come true and I'll actually get a lot of work done there instead of spending a lot of money I don't exactly have at the moment and pubbing it every evening . . . I'm really looking forward to it though. Haven't been to the UK in a year and a half and I miss the green and pleasant land terribly, along with all my friends there. I've also got a large number of academic pals who will be in London and Oxford whilst I'm there, including my closest colleague friend, who will actually be staying in the same B&B as me. No fun- research only. No fun- research only.

Then I'll return June 20 and begin packing and carting my things over to The New House. Once I'm settled there, I'll divide my time between planting lovely things in the garden (roses, rosemary, lavender, thyme); hunting for mid-century modern furniture, and cranking out my manuscript in my office on campus. Probably mostly cranking in the office, hopefully not sans manuscript and articles.

Yee-Haw

Done with grading. The summer awaits. Not thinking about the book and the articles. Not thinking about the book. Maybe thinking a little about the articles. Mostly thinking about sleep.

House Love

Yeah, you know you want it. You feel the love. Rooms you want to paint in Benjamin Moore "Evening Sky" and "Incense Stick." Arts and Crafts furniture you want to purchase and place in the rooms. Rose bushes you want to plant outside the bedroom window. Ooh, baby. Feel the house love.

I'm moving there in two months. I sometimes stay awake at night decorating and redecorating the rooms, adding a back patio rose garden and purchasing countless imaginary kilims for the back sunroom at imaginary Ottoman bazaars (don't forget to bring me back some from Turkey, M&D! Just because I can't go to the wedding there doesn't mean I don't deserve kilims!).

Here's an old picture of it from last summer before it was painted (now it's light green with white trim). The previous tenants were landscape designers who practiced in front and on the sides of the house. They ran a little stream through the front like a brook that is really a pump-fountain. I can turn it on if I like. The backyard is huge and hilly and unfinished. I wonder how much it would cost to cover it with daffodils. In the living room there is a working fireplace with the original iron "summer door" which will keep out the drafts and birds and also the cat. I can burn logs there in the winter and roast marshmallows even.

I can't wait.

The Shakespeare Authorship Question

Some time early in the semester I was randomly contacted by William Niederkorn to complete an online survey about the "Shakespeare Authorship Question" in my teaching. I duly completed the survey and have just received a follow-up e-mail with a link to the survey's results in The New York Times.

It's not particularly interesting. 82% of us (295 randomly selected Shakespeare professors at colleges and universities) think the authorship question (did Shakespeare write Shakespeare?) is irrelevant to the study of the works, and only 6% thought there was a good reason for discussing it at all. 11% said that possibly there was good reason.

What bothers me is not the fact that this poll tells us what we already knew, but that the New York Times didn't really do or say anything new or thought-provoking with the survey. The article ends with an anonymous Shakespearean wishing more people were as interested in the plays as they were in the authorship question, evidently a sentiment most of us echoed in our responses.

But why do a survey like this anyway, if you're just going to conclude that "Professors believe in him"? The tin echo of the language of religious faith aside, what's the point? It would've been far more interesting to interview professors about their pedagogy and methodology- how do they teach Shakespeare to undergraduates? To graduates? The authorship question has never been taken seriously by most of us, but the stability of the body of work known as 'Shakespeare' has already been toppled by scholars of material textual studies, and that some 14 years ago.

Do we all combine history and research in our teaching? Do we talk about "the genius" of Shakespeare in our 100-level courses, push students to discover textual contradictions (perhaps put there by Shakespeare himself) in our upper-level undergraduate seminars, and then ask our graduate students to accept the fundamental instability of the material text and the consequent loss of 'Shakespearean' identity? Has anyone been able to present a consistent picture of Shakespeare scholarship to their students of all levels? I think we are constantly lifting 'Shakespeare' up and breaking him (or it) down in our teaching, and also in our scholarship. I would have liked the New York Times survey to have done something more with its assessment: It's not simply that most of us don't think the authorship question is relevant; it's that we're asking our students to engage with the text in (frequently contradictory) ways that will seem new and exciting to most armchair Shakespeareans. Shame on this article for not articulating that.

Stuff I Learned in English Class

It's that time of year again. The time when students write silly things in their papers and I feel guilty for pumping them full of insufficient and erroneous information.

Today I learned that:

"Raping women was common in medieval times. Men would frequently rape women as a means of expressing their power and demonstrating their dominance over women."

I also learned that:

"When I say romantic love, I mean a love that hits you like a brick wall when you first see someone."

More coming up . . .

Pick Yourself Up

This is my all-time favorite number from Swing Time (1936), my all-time favorite Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie. And it is here, on Youtube (though you have to click on the box above twice and watch it on the Youtube site but it's worth it).

Why do I love it so much?

- Because Fred mischeviously pretends he doesn't know how to dance

- Because she's a terrible teacher

- Because when they finally dance it's like they just discovered that they speak the same language

- Because of the art deco dancing studio with the little white fence

- Because they make it seem so easy and so egalitarian

Poking my Head Up Briefly

I'm buried under a mountain of final papers and exams. Oh, about 90 of them by the end of the semester which is in about two weeks. I also have two students defending their MA theses this week and I only got the theses last week and weekend. When did MA theses become like dissertations? 153 pages, 4 chapters, a scholarly introduction and it will be longer when she adds all the footnotes she's missing. Oy, Gevalt!

Ok, that's enough for now. I must return to my little house built out of papers.

Postscript: Pseudonymous Cat

In a conversation last night at the hotel bar, another blogger asked me what my cat was called.

"Saffron," I replied.

"Oh, so it is Saffron," she said.

"Yes," I replied, looking at her quizzically.

Then we both laughed because of course she thought I might have come up with a blog pseudonym for the cat, the way we do for our friends, colleagues, partners and institutions.

"An Antic Blogsposition": On Playing a Part, Disguise, and Being Funny

I'm at a big important annual conference. And I am having a wondeful time.

Perhaps it's because I'm surrounded by Shakespeareans, but I'm thinking about plays and players today. One of the best things I've discovered about blogging anonymously (though most of my dear readers know I am much less anonymous than those blogs I love to read and support), is that it is rather like play acting. One takes on a new identity that permits a liberty of language and expression only associated with performance and with assuming a role. In the same way that Rosalind-as-Ganymede really begins to relish the rhetoric, wit, and play of her newfound pants role, and Hamlet is able to transcend class barriers by insulting Polonius and ceding the platea to the grave-digger's joke routine, blogging under a pseudonymous identity permits a certain freedom and jouissance.

Which makes me think about a discussion I had over lunch yesterday with a gentle and sage senior professor at a small obscure university who expressed such a delight for our profession that it momentarily humbled my vaulting ambition. We were talking about Shakespearean clowns. He laid out his theory that clowning and "clowniness" is transferrable from character to character on the Shakespearean stage. Wit is, in other words, infectious, and easily picked up by characters surrounding a clown. He cited Viola's playing with Feste in Act V of Twelfth Night and of course Hamlet and the Gravedigger.

Since I have been investigating the philological and cultural impact of "antic/antique" for some time, I brought up the connection that Margreta de Grazia makes between Hamlet's "antic disposition" and clowning, that to have an antic disposition means to play the fool on the Renaissance stage (and to play the medieval vice character on the Renaissance stage). He concurred with me very graciously.

But what my research on "antic/antique" has also uncovered is that "antic" frequently meant "disguised" in the Renaissance, so in many ways it's not just about clowning but also about the way an assumed identity allows for a freer circulation of wit, humor and social critique.

Which is precisely what pseudonymous blogging at its best is all about. And that is the reason why it has to continue. At the conference, I may or may not have privately "made discovery" of a number of pseudonymous bloggers I greatly respect and depend upon for their humorous critique and celebration of the profession. However whether this is true or fabricated, I shall vehemently refuse to "delate" on them. Also, if wit is indeed transferrable, perhaps some of it might rub off on me.

In order for the academic blogging community to survive, we need to maintain their antic dispositions: Let them be well used, for they are the abstract and brief chronicles of our time. And they are also very funny.