Hey! Nothing like setting modest goals and instantly achieving them. I’ve become a huge fan of World Soccer Daily and resolved to get an email read on the air. After the first two losses by the US, I sent an email about Bradley’s record (which is largely summed up by the last bullet in this post) and was quite happy to receive a positive email back from co-host Kenny Hassan.

After the valiant defeat to Brazil, I sent a second (more inspirational) email to the guys about how the US needs to shake off this heartbreaking loss and focus on beating Mexico at the Azteca next month. Happily, Steven Cohen read it on air during Monday’s show. You can hear it around 1:24:45 on this MP3 version of the broadcast.

Pretty pleased about it.

In footie playing news, I broke my scoring streak at five goals in five matches. My touch left me at the worst possible time as our under-strength team went crashing out of the play-off semifinal two weeks ago against a team we’d beaten 3-0 twice during the season. I had an awful personal outing, but injuries and absences of key players really did us in. Having fewer subs on a scorching hot day (90+ humidity) did not help. So we won the league handily but in the end by a couple points plus a massive advantage in goals scored and goal differential, but all for naught.

In happier news, I scored a hat-trick the following Monday night but it wasn’t much to crow about considering we were playing against 8 men on the other team. Still, three decent finishes if I do say so myself. And two days ago I popped in a dandy of a goal off a corner in the first half, then recorded three saves in a 20 minute stint in goal in a second-half shut out. So four goals in two games? Again, I’ll take it.

I put down Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, the book I’ve been reading along with a bunch of graphic novels, because I was having a hard time reading it. I finished Ana Castillo’s So Far From God, which I really started enjoying about half-way through, and I’m midway through The Sand Child by Tahar Ben Jelloun. All of these are on my reading list for my preliminary exams.

A plurality of voices and abrupt shifts in time in the narrative (jumping from past, present, and future) are common traits of “magical realist” texts. I’m realizing now that while this technique can be interesting and provocative in a single work, it gets to be a bit much when you see it in book after book after book. I’m ready for a straight up beginning-middle-end novel, thank you.

I’m also trying to figure out the shape of the two courses I’ll be teaching in the fall, one of which is Intro to Creative Writing. After reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and a slew of graphic novels, I’ve decided to work “visual narratives” as part of the course.

I’ve also decided not to make it a separate unit but rather work it in as an option over the course of the semester. I wasn’t convinced about the idea until I started browsing through an examination copy of Creating Nonfiction: A Guide and Anthology I received, and noted that the authors use a number of graphic illustrations featuring nonfiction. By scouring the Internet, I’ve also found tons of PDF copies of graphic novels I admire both for their art and their storytelling, so it will be easy to excerpt sections and share them with the class. I’m excited for it, especially since a quick scan of the class roster revealed that nearly a third of the class are coming from the art school.

Current Mood: Fine, Thanks |

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Did the world exist before the Internet? It never ceases to amaze me how much fun stuff I come across—either via searching or stumbling. Top recent finds:

* The Burgomeister’s Books
Tons upon tons of free ebooks. I’m about half-way through The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon and it helps a lot to have an electronic copy on my iPod for those times when I’m pinned under a baby and can’t reach the hard copy.

* My P2P.eu - The last time I tried watching footie over the Internet, I downloaded some glitchy Chinese software that never consistently connected to a live stream. This site is another story. Via SopCast, TVU, and online streams, I feel like I never need any match, anywhere, at any time, ever again. That may be overstating things a little, but by the looks of it not by much.

I got my grades back—two A’s to end the semester. Yippee! Although grading in grad school is something of a joke, some profs use a default of an A- unless you’ve wowed them over the semester, and I’ve heard some dole out B+’s and (shock! gasp!) even B’s if they think you’re dogging it. While having a baby the week before papers are due is a damn fine ace up the sleeve, I definitely did not have the same kind of time to put into my schoolwork down the stretch. I would have understood had either of these profs decided that, baby or no baby, I didn’t quite deserve a full-blown A when I could have elected to take an extension but instead chose to cram it all in by the normal class deadline.

And do good grades help you once you graduate? No, but bad ones can certainly hurt you. Glad that’s put to rest!

Current Mood: Fine |

Through a lot of hard work, I’ve positioned myself pretty well heading into these last couple weeks of school. More or less, I have two papers due and need to review about 20 student portfolios. The papers need to be in the range of 12-20 pages each and the student portfolios shouldn’t take more than a couple hours to go through—at this point, I only need to separate the ones I consider “clear passes” from those that I believe are borderline or failing.

The clearly passing and clearly failing are pretty easy to identify, but it’s the borderline ones that take the most time, as you have to ask yourself whether you could reasonably justify (to yourself at this point) whether they accomplish enough of the course goals to pass. I’ve given the students plenty of time—the last two weeks of class—to get feedback, work on revisions, go to the writing lab, etc. in order to make sure that a variety of readers agree that they’re achieving those goals.

Now, how many of them chose to use this time wisely remains to be seen, but I’ve also informed them well in advance that because I’ve allotted this time and suggested many, many ways to both revise and do some quality assurance testing, I won’t hesitate to bring their portfolios into the assessment room and let someone else be the judge. At least three from my “control” stack automatically go to portfolio assessment anyway, so it’s like I’ve explained: it takes work to pass this class, so do the smart thing and put that work in now rather than not passing, and having to do a whole semester of coursework over again and still have to put this work to increase your odds of passing.

Of course, I also understand where they’re coming from since I’m doing my best to get through the end of the semester too. I think I’m doing well in both my classes, and one final paper I’m pretty set on, the other I’m a bit at sea. My plan is to put my head down and plow through the best I can. According to my calculations, I should have seven full days in the next two weeks to do nothing but concentrate on these two papers, and that’s more than enough time to put something together that’s pretty decent for each.

Of course, if a baby comes anytime before the May 10th due date, all of the above goes out the window as I look for a nice hayfield to crash land in…

Current Mood: A Bit Blah |
Currently Listening To - Björk - “Homogenic”

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Students were asked to reflect on their 101 experiences over the course of the semester. Here’s a quote from one:

From a 101 student reflective essay on their 101 experiences: “When first stepping foot into 101 the first day, I looked at Trent with his shaved head and tall boots with the tucked in pants, oh yeah and that goatee. I thought ‘Oh no, dudes going to be an ass.’”

Thankfully the next statement was “I was totally wrong.”

Current Mood: First Impressions are Everything |

Since Amy’s due on Sunday, May 10th, I’m trying to get all of my final papers done by the Friday before, May 8th. Normally they wouldn’t be due until the 18th or so, so effectively I’m shaving about a week-and-a-half off my semester. If that doesn’t happen I can always ask for an extension, but I’d rather have things totally done and dusted before life goes wonky.

It feels like I’m reading about three hundred different things right now and trying to keep them all separated in my head. I have classes where I’m reading social and political philosophy in one and business and technical writing teaching theory in the other; on the side, I’m reading chapters out of Magical Realism: Theory, History, and Community, finishing Borges’ Ficciones, and I’m listening to Octavia Butler’s Kindred. And then there’s the small matter of reading the essays from English 101 along with the material I’ve assigned…

Oddly enough, I kind of like it. It’s strange how I find myself making connections between all of them, including the business writing stuff. And then it all comes around when I’m thinking about what information I privilege when I teach.

I had a dream last night that I got to hang out with Fernando Torres in a hospitality tent at the FA Cup, after Liverpool lost to Newcastle. He was telling me that if Liverpool kept playing like they were, he thought they would still win the Premier League title. I wondered aloud if Newcastle was going to do the dubious double of winning the FA Cup and getting relegated.

Dreams often have a grain of truth in them, and both Liverpool and Newcastle are out of the FA Cup. That leaves Liverpool winning the title or Newcastle going down. I know which one my money is on.

Oh, one last snitty “I was here way before you” comment directed to FSC’s Mark Rogondino. This past weekend, he said that Newcastle had been in the Premier League since the year it started back in 1992. “Before then,” he said, “They were playing in the Championship.”

Wrong. In 1992, the old First Division became the Premier League. To make things confusing, the old second division renamed itself the First Division, even though it was the second-tier league. This continued until 2004 when the First Division decided to brand itself the Championship and the second division (which was formerly the third division) changed its name to Football League One. So to correct Rogondino’s statement, he should have said, “Before then, Newcastle were playing in the Second Division.” Which wouldn’t have made sense to most viewers but would have been factually true.

The sobering thing is that I remember reading about the proposed name change to the Premier League in Soccer America, which I read during study hall in high school. The claim back then was that the marketing ploy would help brand English football and would help it get a foothold on a global audience. (Back in those days, the Italian Serie A was the place to be with AC Milan winning everything in sight.) So, how’d that work out for them?

Current Mood: Tired |

Last “Confident Homecoming” class last night. We determined that the misery was all down to the instructor because the last few weeks haven’t been bad. We’re confident about coming home now. It’s just coming home with a baby that complicates things.

Also, on the car ride over Amy insisted on telling me the longest story ever about how she first waffled, and then ultimately decided to go for the five-year warranty on our newest big purchase, the Power Miser 900. It’s a hot water heater. She kept getting mad when I interrupted her to say that this conversation was what all non-married couples feared most.

Federations is now available for pre-order from Amazon. Buy it! I assume it must be some kind of accident or oversight, but my name appears nowhere amidst the promotional hyperbole.

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Man Ure vs. Villa on Sunday was a remarkable spectacle, wasn’t it? Heartbreaking for Villa but what an ending. Happily, I don’t have Man Ure enough for this to upset me too much, although I do think their fingers are touching trophy now. It’s that game in hand that spoils things.

Porto, Chelski, Barca, and Ars*nal in the semifinals of the Champs League? Who would’ve thunk it? ‘Pool are well and truly out as are Bayern, but I’m not writing off Man Ure. Remember ‘89? They did things like this every round. And my heart would love see Villareal bounce back in London, but my head says Spanish teams just don’t do that.

Geek admission: I love writing long, properly formatted bibliographies. I compiled a 30-item list yesterday, the fruits of some good research. Now I just have to read the articles and write the 15-page paper.

“This was a wonderful paper,” I said dreamily the other night. Amy looked over and asked if it was a student’s. I said no, I was talking about mine. She rolled her eyes and I quickly added, “Oh, I’m not reading my own paper, I’m just reading the bibliography. It’s like a narrative in itself, you know.”

Finally, I am always trying to bring in texts from outside the class in an effort to convince my 101 students that the course is applicable to just about everything in their lives, if they pay attention. The goal is to alert them to the rhetoric that always surrounds us, to decipher the possible purpose behind the rhetoric, and to pay close attention to both the language and design of texts that help reinforce this purpose. To demonstrate this, on Monday we’ll be looking at this article from Madison Magazine on how menus are put together. A quote:

A menu seems so simple, but in truth it is part business plan, part efficiency expertise, part artistry, part culture vulture and part psychological tug-of-war….A restaurant menu announces its intentions in a variety of ways, balancing practicality and desire right down to the paper. A higher-end restaurant menu may be literally more substantial: heavier paper and broader dimensions seem to prepare the eye for double-digit prices. Capitol ChopHouse, for instance, presents its guests with a simple two-color printout at lunch but an oversize cardstock version at dinner.

When I find things like this I think, “What a great example!” This is quickly followed by the thought, “God, I must be insufferable to listen to.”

Current Mood: Pretty Good |

Amy attended our first baby shower yesterday, expertly hosted by a couple of our great friends, and came home with lots of wonderful schwag. Watching the nursery fill up with stuff drives everything home. At this point, I think we’re as ready as we can be. I hope.

I, however, stayed home with Amy’s dad and installed a couple jacks so we can have wired Internet in the house while he did the tough stuff—crawling around in our attic dropping cables down, drilling through walls, and converting the foot of our futon into a stand-alone ottoman. The man has mad talent and isn’t afraid to use it.

There are about four or five weeks before the end of the semester. I desperately need a triple shot of motivation to get ahead of the curve so I can check out completely after the baby’s coming out party, since my friends who have babies while in school have said that’s it’s near-impossible to get caught up after the fact. What makes things worse is being nearly finished with required classes, when I might suggest that motivation in coursework is (ahem) already on the wane.

The indoctrination process to a discipline is an interesting one. I am finishing my third year of school and knew almost nothing about literary theory coming in. Last week, I managed to paraphrase Michel Foucault, Fredric Jameson, and Friedrich Nietzsche during the discussion of a Marxist critique of contemporary politics—and it all made sense. I have also surprised myself by being able to recognize structuralist theory, and recognizing my own deconstructionist tendencies when critiquing said theories. Furthermore, I can see traces of both in my 101 students’ writing even though these terms mean nothing to them. This is strange.

In short, I can make sense of this stuff even if I’m particularly able to forward the conversation much—at this stage, deciphering what’s going on without a lot of effort is enough. The funny part about coursework is that it exposes you to all these dialogues happening in a bewildering variety of places; after awhile, you start to hone in on the topics you find most relevant or interesting and learn how and where to find out more, and it’s about that time you no longer want to keep taking “general” classes because you want to focus more on the stuff you like—completely losing sight of the fact that those “general” classes seemed awfully jargon-laded and specific back when you started.

It’s almost like these people setting the curriculum knew what they were doing or something…

Current Mood: Flattened Affect |

It seems like whenever I entertain the idea of closing up the blog an acquaintance mentions that s/he reads it regularly and enjoys it. I had two of those yesterday, which is also a bit of a coincidence considering I go months upon months without anyone mentioning this space.

Also, I noticed there was a huge dip in February according to the site’s Webalizer stats:

I have a feeling I wrote fewer posts in February, or I simply became 20% less interesting. Either that or the stats are somehow tied to the DOW. Not sure. It could also be that I have less time to read and comment on other people’s blogs, which often results in them checking in and commenting on my blog. And when I do get 10-15 minutes to tool around, I usually check out Facebook instead.

I will say, however, that when I find out people have been reading this space it makes me cringe, since the language here is sometimes sloppy at best. Some folks say that a blog is your public image, but I say that I post with speed in mind, since I don’t want this space to be more of a time-sink than it already is.

In other narcissistic news, I realized the other day that Google now offers my name as a suggestion if you get as far as typing “trent he” into the search box. 1880 results, apparently. Surely, fortune and super stardom can’t be far behind?

As a neurotic fledgling academic fearing that I will never land a tenure-track job, I’m always seeking out fertile areas for academic publishing and research that still meet my interests. After being in school for the better part of three years, I’m also learning that I’m not a stellar literary critic. I mean I’m decent, I can hold my own, but writing publishable academic papers is tough, tough stuff—as it should be.

I’m finding that I’m much more interested in pedagogical theory and the teaching of writing in general—this idea of how do you teach well, and how do you help students add complexity and nuance to their writing. I’m also finding that the issue of incorporating computing technology into the classroom is not nearly as straightforward as it may seem, as students have an overwhelming tendency to be unthinking consumers of technology without being critical users of technology. The push of course is to incorporate computers more and more into the curriculum, an idea that many old school academics shudder at. Many academics who welcome (or at least tolerate) this change encounter a lot of difficulties: students have a wide spread of knowledge and abilities when it comes to software, and of course there’s a difference between bringing computing into the classroom and doing it well.

This isn’t a new problem but it’s one that interests me a lot and I’m trying to carve out my own little niche here, where I can address this seemingly basic question: What are the best ways to incorporate computing technology into writing-centered courses? Will the same techniques and strategies work for composition, professional writing, and creative writing?

It seems like there’s a lot of wide open space with these questions, which should mean such research would be appropriate for conference presentations and even publication. Fingers crossed.

Current Mood: Procrastinating Reading |

Ah, it’s time to get back to work after a nice spring break. Unfortunately. I’ve got to finish the second half of Spinoza’s Theologico-Political Treatise and write a paper on the different societies posited by Hobbes, Rousseau, and Nietzsche. It’s a short paper, 4-6 pages, and I haven’t decided on a topic yet. I might try to work in utopian theory, or I might try to write a paper on how the organization and behavior of multinational corporations uses many of the ideas put forth by these fellows. I’m not dreading it, but I’m not looking forward to it either.

I also have about 16 or so student essays to comment on. My strategy this semester for 101 has been to give them lots and lots of writing to do, both in class and out, which is gives them plenty of practice and keeps them in “writing mode,” so to speak. The downside is that it’s not fair to give out work and then not comment on it, and perhaps because of the workload a good number haven’t put in much effort on the last essays in each series, the ones that would be good candidates for their final portfolios. Of course, this was also the case last semester when I gave out fewer writing assignments.

Like many educators, I struggle with the fact that a good number of students catch on quickly and progress by leaps and bounds, and others make it a habit of doing the least work possible. Of course, I want a 100% pass rate and I’d like students to get something out of the class but that’s largely out of my control. The hard part is trying to figure out if you could have done things differently and reached a few more students, or whether some students are just hard-wired against the subject matter (or you). I’m reasonably sure that as long as you’re thinking critically about your pedagogical practices and trying to make things work, you’re probably doing more good than harm.

Over break, I read two short books: Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo and The Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe, both of which are on my prelim exam reading list. Rulfo’s novel is widely regarded as a founding text of Latin American magical realism, a book that inspired many writers from “el boom,” and I too really enjoyed it. It’s a confusing text with a non-linear narrative and lots of dialogue without tags so you’re not always sure who is speaking and to whom. And then there’s the small matter that the dead talk to the living, and time jumps back and forth, so you can’t be quite sure whether the person speaking is alive (and thus the scene is in the past) or dead (and thus the scene in the present). Of course, past and present are pretty fluid.

As for how it fits into my area of study, it takes some brain power to figure out how Pedro Páramo meets, refutes or challenges definitions of magical realism, like this one, this one, or this one. Fun stuff.

What’s also interesting to apply the criteria put forth in those definitions to the Japanese Abe’s The Woman in the Dunes. Do they work the same way—at all? If they don’t, does that mean that Abe’s work shouldn’t be considered magical realism? Or are there flaws in the definitions? Both? And of course the grandmaster of all questions, if it isn’t magical realism, what is it? What category would use/invent and what other works would fall into it? For me, Abe’s novel reminds me mostly of Haruki Murakami and Franz Kafka—authors who do, or do not fall into the magical realist camp, depending on who you’re talking to.

Again, finding proper categories isn’t the be-all, end-all purpose. However, looking at how people choose to outline their definitions also shows what they value. For example, if you read my assessment of the essays linked about, you’ll see that I feel these authors are using their definitions to carve out a niche specifically for Latin American literature. Yet this spawns lots of other questions, like how applicable are these definitions to non-Latin post-colonial works from Africa or India? Carpentier’s theory of the baroque might work for India and some North African lit, but would it apply to a Sub-Saharan work like the Nigerian Ben Okri’s The Famished Road? What about to the positively austere The Woman in the Dunes? We return to the problem of whether the definition is broken or whether these works are something other than magical realism.

In the end, it’s mostly about finding interesting questions.

Current Mood: Okay |

For those readers who may be interested (and I suspect there are few): upon the recommendation of two of my advisors/mentors, I’ve started a new blog to keep track of what I’m reading for my preliminary Ph.D. examination. Of course, underlining is all fine and good but this is a way of serializing my thoughts on what I’m reading and potentially getting feedback from anyone who wanders by.

The basic setup is this: I have a major area and two minors; the major area has a list of around 40-45 books and about 10 or so critical sources (books and/or series of articles); each minor area has a list of around 20-25 books and about 5 or so critical sources (books and/or series of articles). I write up a series of questions that I write along with my committee members, and then over a three-day period I write 10-15 pages on each (30-40 pages total) citing liberally from the book list. About a week later, there’s a two-hour oral exam where you get grilled critiqued on your answers.

Here’s one of the best (and most common sense) pieces of advice I’ve received as a graduate student: when you’ve finished reading a scholarly work, immediately write down what you think the author’s main points were. Also write down the specific things you agree with, and the places where you disagreed with or had questions about. Due to the sheer volume of reading required, it’s virtually impossible to keep all your sources in your noggin at the same time. When the time comes to recall the info, there’s an amazing shampoo effect when you read these notes, where you suddenly remember the work and its context with a lot more clarity. When I’m being a good student, I do this regularly. When I’m being lazy, I don’t do it. The difference between the two is remarkable.

I’m eating away at my major list fairly regularly, both the fiction and criticism. The questions I plan on asking myself revolve around definitional problems of magic realism, the fantastic, and postmodernism. Based on the multitude of definitions, would work X be classified as magic realism, fantasy, or postmodern? More than one or none? The foregone conclusion is that definitions for literature that straddles boundaries will always fail, but it’s interesting to look at what motivates certain scholars to claim certain works and reject others. For instance, based on what I’ve read thus far, I’m having a hard time finding a place to categorize Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Song of Solomon. For me, this is a good problem to have.

Anyway, this blog will be much drier in tone and the primary purpose is to have it as a resource when I write my 30-40 pages. For instance, if I put the work in now, I can quickly find the most relevant passages and key ideas from, say, Alejo Carpentier’s “On the Marvelous Real in America” and “The Baroque and the Marvelous Real” at the click of a button.

You can find it here: http://preliminarythoughts.blogspot.com