b l o g o s

on being edited

Yesterday I received two documents via email from the editors of a special collection on Burke and the archives. Since my co-prof and I are in the process of wrapping up a seminar on Kenneth Burke, and just this week, we ran a class on academic publishing that included some tips on incorporating archival findings into their nascent articles, I have archives--and Burke--freshly on my mind. So rather than wait until close to the deadline the editors gave me for turning this thing around, this morning I figured I'd settle in with the editors' suggestions to see just what I needed to do to make this piece a better contribution to the collection. 

And then it dawned on me: this is the first real line-by-line feedback I have gotten since I don't know when. Sure, there are reader's reports for journal submissions and book manuscripts, but sometimes those come down to cantankerous quibbling or generalizations about writing style. In the past few years, I have been doing this sort of editing/feedback work for others in the field--for dissertations-in-progress, for jr. colleagues, for journal and book submissions, for (especially) book reviews that I edit for QJS.

Academia is strange this way. We spend the first parts of our careers receiving more feedback than we give (obviously there are exceptions, like writing groups, etc.), and then once that first book is published we find ourselves squarely in the realm of giving far more than we receive. I by no means want to discount the importance of my "first reader" JM, who sees and helps improve everything before it leaves this house, nor do I want to discount colleagues who have lent a pair of eyes on chapters or articles-in-progress. In all, though, what we have is a pay-it-forward model that I have usually not given a second thought to.

Until this morning. This morning I find myself giddily--that's right, giddily!--plotting changes my editors requested and reworking sentences they have marked as trying to do too much. The piece is getting the benefit of two pairs of eyes, and the result is the most informed, thoughtful, and smart comments I've received since my dissertation advisor combed through my limp-along chapters some years ago. And I'm only now in a position to really appreciate the kind of time it took to offer this feedback. My essay has been in the hands of two very talented and knowledgeable in-the-field colleagues, and I couldn't be happier with or more grateful for their labor.

bureacratization of the nonimaginative

Most other people probably realize this, but at NCA this past week, it finally hit home with me that the longer we are in the field, the more our conference experience becomes bureaucratized. For all the board meetings, business meetings, individual meetings, meetings with publishers, and mentoring meetings, I pretty much didn't get to attend a panel unless I presented on it.  I'm also fairly sure--because we talked about it--that the other senior people in the meetings I had on my docket were having the same kind of conference. 

This is a sad state. I generally like to be in the conference audience, to see what's going on in the field, to ask questions and get conversations going from the other side of the podium. I hope to do more of that at RSA in May. I remember one president of ASHR who made a point to go to every single panel that made it onto ASHR's schedule. Tiring, I'm sure, but boy did he get a good sense of what kind of intellectual work the organization is supporting.

nca, yay. chicago, double yay.

The dryer just shut off, so I really need to go finish packing and therefore need to make this short. I am giddy about heading to Chicago for NCA. It's the Chicago part, more than the NCA part, that has me giddy. But NCA is okay, I suppose. I like the people, no doubt, and look forward to running in to everybody.

As an extra bonus, I convinced JM to fly and meet me there after his teaching obligations for the week are done. Chicago is where we always used to go to shake off the end of the semester, to eat some good food, and to catch a film that we might not otherwise catch in a theater. Mornings will be early for me--chock full of meetings and panels--but Friday and Saturday evenings, back to our favorite spots we will go. I even managed to work in an appointment with my favorite hair stylist. So if you don't recognize me, it's either because I'm 6.5 months pregnant, or because my hair has been blown straight. Come to think of it, the combination might not work very well, but I don't even care.

I do know that we miss you, Chicago. We look forward to toting our kid there. But in the meantime, we are excited to have you all to ourselves, even in the midst of the crazy convention.

guarding the guardians & c.

During our last weeks in Urbana, C asked me to translate a phrase into Latin. A rare request, since usually it's the other way around. But it was a phrase that deserved to be rendered into Latin and then magic-markered onto a bright collar for their greyhound Rocket. The phrase was this: "who will retrieve the retrievers?"

You'll have to hunt down the collar to see the Latin.

I thought of this story when I hung up the phone today after nearly an hour and a half of talking with a former advisee. We don't usually talk on the phone really, mostly email. But the cool thing about today's conversation is that my advisee was the one giving me advice. At least someone will advise the advisors. As for the retrievers, I think you ought to check with Rocket, because I'm pretty sure he knows the answer.

scattershot 8, cinco de mayo edition: or, why today feels like a good day

1. I woke up at 5:45 with no alarm feeling rested.

2. It is the birthday of many important people.

3. I get to have lunch with a sweet and funny friend at my fave campus lunch spot.

4. JM and I are going to take six huge boxes of books to the p.o. to mail to Powells, and Powells will then give us money in return. We are also going to donate about a hundred and fifty books to the books for prisoners program.

5. That swine flu isn't all that scary after all.

6. The economy is showing signs of recovery.

7. I have been reading this interview with our president, who is a very, very, very, very smart man.

8. My dissertating advisees are, as the kids say (or maybe the fact that I am saying it means they are no longer saying it), rocking out. Two have recently won very competitive fellowships, another is making crazy headway on her diss, and another is defending hers on Thursday. Another of these recently bungee jumped from the highest commercial bungee point in the world. And she lived!

 

what one can learn about one's self from cleaning out one's office

A few years back, during a round of budget cuts, the English Department, which never, ever has any money, made its final cuts.* It cut out long distance telephone service, and it cut out exam books. These are the little booklets of lined paper (sometimes known as blue books) that students use for exams. The solution was to xerox exam books, and so students were given stapled sets of paper with lines crookedly xeroxed onto them. These little copies were so sad.

And then a couple years later I was jointly appointed in English and Communication, a department where people get grants, and things are much more flush. Imagine my delight when, during a supply-gathering visit to the main office I discovered that Communication had exam books! Loads of them, sheathed in plastic wrap, in various sizes (5, 10, 20 pages).

Today while I was cleaning out my office, I found several stashes of those exam books, tucked under a stack of folders on my filing cabinet, hidden away in a drawer, stacked with my course packets on my bookshelves. Two packs weren't even open. Apparently over the past four years I have been hording them, like a child of the Depression who dies of old age in a house with a basement full of canned beans, or a hibernating animal after a long, hungry winter with a fort of twigs and nuts. After I cleaned out my office, I had a stack of exam books more than a foot high, my little nutty stash.

*by final, I mean final. When the next round of budget cuts came, the Head reportedly showed the Dean the budget, and the Dean reportedly said "nevermind."

here's something

So far, the single biggest advantage to being in London vis-a-vis my job is that I can wake up in the morning, answer all my email, and then have about seven or eight hours of a day before another email trickles in, since it is the dead of night back home. Experience tells me that another advantage, to be felt when I return home late next week, will be that I will wake up prit-tee early and have lots of time to work in the still and dark.

rhetorical studies reading group: Joshua Gunn

Last night the rhetorical studies reading group had the pleasure of spending time with Joshua Gunn from the University of Texas. We read three very recent essays of his--one on freemasonry (R&PA), one on the "big rhetoric debate" (RSQ) and one on sonorous rhetoric (QJS). Gunn is perhaps best known for his book Modern Occult Rhetoric (go here for my review of that book), and all his work, as we discussed last night, engages the category of the ineffable. More than the other meetings this year, this meeting felt like an episode of "Inside the Actor's Studio."

When CF, JMM, and I arrived at the IPRH building, we were delighted to see this blown-up image of the Sizing up Rhetoric volume hanging out in the dark hallway at the top of the stairs. I've included a blurry i-phone image at right, with my hand to give you an idea of the scale. Given that Josh's piece, "Size Matters," is a direct response to the 2006 RSA conference which bore the same theme, we couldn't have asked for a better visual aid. So we lugged it downstairs to set up for our meeting.

The conversation ranged from taking risks in scholarship,  to exercising tenacity in the face of grim reviewers, to the difference gender makes in calling something privacy or calling it secrecy, to the distinction between play for play's sake and play mixed with a heavy shot of rigor (Josh's work, in my view is most definitely the latter). Josh played Led Zeppelin backwards on his portable phonograph to help explain how he started working on the occult, about his interest in secrecy, and forecasting his current interest in the affective quality of sound and projected meaning. (His current book project is on haunting voices and sonorous rhetoric, which I am very keen to read.)

The reading group had the best turnout we have had since we served free pizza and quite the cross-disciplinary section of grad students and faculty too. Thanks, Josh, for visiting our campus, for giving a talk to our undergraduates on love and rhetoric (I understand there was standing room only and that the talk made everyone want to transfer to Texas). Those who attended are invited, as always, to use the comments to reflect on various parts of the conversation. 

Dear people who like to call me "Deb,"

I don't want to sound like a jerk, but I really really hate to be called "Deb" by anyone except my dad. People in the field have taken to calling me this, though, and in the past several months, it has taken on a viral quality. There could be a number of reasons for why people have started this. I'm thinking here of Judith Butler's famous meditation on the faux-familiarity of "Judy," and I know there are other women in the field who go by Deb and probably likewise dislike being called Debbie, so this can lead to some confusion I suppose. Another likely reason is that I have two other names--Debra and Debbie--the former is my formal/legal name that I use professionally; the latter is what I've gone by all my life. Deb might be some sort of common denominator that people choose when they don't know what to call me. But it's not my name. In fact, I really don't like being called Deb for reasons that date back to awkward teenage years. When folks address me directly as "Deb," I tend to find a way to let them know, but it's harder when it's happening in conversations of which I'm not a part.

A friend who just returned from CCCC tells me that he heard lots of people referring to me as "Deb Hawhee" there, and I see it on the internets too.  I'm not sure if I can stop it, but I'm hoping that by posting here, I can at least spread the word beyond the people who know me pretty well: I loathe being called Deb.

I know I'm not the only one who experiences this--a good rule of thumb is to call people by their full/formal name until told otherwise. Thanks for understanding.

sincerely yours,
debbie

to a small handful of graduate students in my (English) department,

When I was a graduate student I did some dumb things. Like that email complaining about an administrator that I accidentally sent to the administrator. Oops! And a couple of snotty, haughty letters about hiring issues wherein I, who had not yet stepped foot on the job market, pretended I knew what I was talking about. Cringe.

I'm embarrassed about these now and am grateful that I was in a department where such mis-steps could be forgiven. This week I have had cause to remember those dumb things in part because a group of graduate students here has been acting in a manner that I find quite appalling. (None of these graduate students, for the record, is in my own field, though the controversy is swirling around that field.)

The controversy is about changes being implemented in the rhetoric program. I have no problem with people raising concerns--and any drastic change is going to draw attention, even pushback--but the manner with which concerns have gotten raised is what really bothers me. This department prides itself on a supportive environment for graduate students; what is more, faculty political views range pretty much from liberal to radical, and many colleagues would rather have their books wither at the hands of angry peer reviews than be deemed unsympathetic to graduate students.

For my part, though, that goodwill has been eroded after the behavior I have witnessed and heard about this week. The behavior runs the gamut from bullying other graduate students who offer alternative viewpoints or--worse--reducing them to tears with facebook tirades, to circulating anonymous biased surveys, to writing nasty, disrespectful letters of protest, to undermining departmental protocols for raising concerns, to trying to pit faculty members against each other. All because of some curricular reform that is in my view much needed and still very much in the works.

Graduate students, I urge you to learn collegiality early on. You are professionals, and professionals treat each other with respect, not derisive dismissal. I am deeply saddened about the behavior around here, and in response to that behavior I maybe haven't been the model of collegiality myself, in part because I felt like some rears needed some serious kicking. While the department is fortunate to have leaders who have stepped in to clear up the confusion and paranoia, I fear lasting damage has been done, and it spreads across your ranks (the graduate ranks) like a spilled bottle of toxins.

People, it's really not worth it. Try stepping outside of your own narrow interests to see a broader institutional picture, including (gasp!) the people who take these classes. Write your dissertations, teach your classes, and work on being collegial and navigating differences with respect. It will be good practice, and your future colleagues will be grateful.

sincerely yours,
debbie