Writer, Professor, and Everything Else
Last week, I read Deb Hawhee’s blog entry on her upcoming sabbatical, about a dean telling her that she had better not show up on campus next semester, and I have to say, I got a bit of a twinge. That probably should have been me, I thought.
Well, it’s not quite that bad.
Continue reading “The end of Sabbital Lite for Fall 2007”
We went and saw The Golden Compass this afternoon, and, as my subject line here suggests, I was disappointed. Warning to folks who don’t want either the movie or the book spoiled for them: spoilers after the jump.
Continue reading “The movie version of “The Golden Compass” blows chunks (IMO)”
I guess this is my this Public Address morning. I just got done posting on my unofficial blog a video of a melting bunny I found via Jeff’s blog; now I’m posting here a link to the Flickr pool “Faces in Places.” This immediately made me think of one of the arguments/observations that Scott McCloud makes in Understanding Comics, a book I’ve been using (successfully, I think) for 328 the last couple of years. So besides being an amusing link, this may be actual teaching material for me.
I actually find this quite beautiful and disturbing at the same time. If you’re curious, it’s called “Chocolate Haas” and is the work of Sander Plug, an artist who seems to specialize in doing wacky things. I came across this via this Public Address.
Wandering through this evening’s Ann Arbor News, I came across this “concerned citizen” letter to the editor that I know newspapers always love to run. Follow the link to read the whole thing (it’s the first letter); here’s my favorite paragraph:
My question is about YouTube and MySpace. What is it about putting all of one’s personal and private business out into the public domain for friend and foe to gather information so that they can either stalk you, attempt to rape or molest you or even attempt to kill you. Is your 15 minutes of fame worth the cost of a rapist, predator or murderer showing up at your front door?
Ah yes, much YouTube/Myspace molestation for sure….
Anyway, one link led to another, and I learned that the U of M student government president was brought down by a Facebook scandal. There was a story about it on the national media site Gawker, and an article in the (University of) Michigan Daily.
I think this is the sort of entry worthy of interest/reprint on EMUTalk.org, actually…
Sort of sums things up. From Sean Bonner’s Flickr photostream, via boing boing.
You know, this is the sort of thing I would normally post on my unofficial blog, but I heard this on NPR’s “All Things Considered” when I was driving home, so I figured that if NPR could feature it on their program, I could feature it on my official blog.
Via the NCTE Inbox, I came across this story this morning, “Novelist saddened her Appalachian observations facing a book ban.” Normally, this isn’t the sort of thing I would spend much time with because while I do care about such things and I of course oppose them, stupid book banning happens all the time. But this is a book written by the woman who was my MFA advisor, Lee Smith. Lee is/was a super-duper writer, teacher, general smart person. I’m not writing fiction right now (someday again, hopefully), but I learned a ton about it and writing in general from her. So a shout-out to her.
The book that’s being banned here is Fair and Tender Ladies, which is a first-person narrative of a girl and then woman, Ivy, from the time she was just learning to write until her end. I was most interested in the form of the book, how Smith starts out writing the character as a child– with all the misspellings and grammar errors and that sort of subject-matter– and how Ivy evolves into adulthood. Anyway, I wouldn’t describe it as a young adult novel (in the article I link to above, Smith doesn’t describe it that way either), but I think it’s a PG-13 story in its most graphic passages. Though it’s been a while since I read this; maybe there’s a full-frontal scene I forgot about.
Anyway, it’s a good book and I hope that being banned helps revive it a bit– I think that’s the usual result. And once again, I am reminded that it is a small academic world.
This is my fear about what might happen around our house one day when Annette and Will reach level whatever in their silly little Runscape game… and also why I don’t know if I want to start WoW anytime soon.
… I thought I’d throw out the the chance for folks looking for grad school credit and/or a course in computers and writing to sign up for the class I’m scheduled to teach for winter term, English 516: Computers and Writing, Theory and Practice. There’s a description here; anyone really interested can email me at stevendkrause at gmail dot com.
It’s been kind of a weird late fall/early winter around here. EMU students have been traditionally slow to register for winter (what everyone else calls spring) term classes, mostly because even in the best of times, our students need to settle their accounts for fall before they can register for winter, and they often don’t register until right before Christmas or right before the semester starts in early January. But nowadays, the economy in southeast Michigan is in poor shape, and I think that and other things are having an impact.
Right now, it looks to me like my class has enough students to “make,” but I would just as soon run this class full or over-loaded, and it occurred to me that there might be a few folks out there who might either be interested themselves or know someone. I know that EMU graduate students not in the writing program can take the course with the instructor’s permission; I don’t know how it would work for someone not at EMU, but I’m sure we could make it work and it would potentially be a fun/cool experience for one and all.
Anyway, like I said, if you’re interested, let me know.