b l o g o s

scattershot 10: not enough time to process

1. Daniel Gross's book, The Secret History of Emotion, is an important one. A few of us in my seminar felt like he beat up on science unnecessarily toward the beginning of the book, and that surely there is more to say about scientific accounts of emotion than that they are reductive, but others made a good case that he had to do that in order to make room for his intervention on behalf of the humanities. (By the way, having a class full of productive critics totally rocks.) The end of the book moves toward a much tempered critique of work about emotions that relies on scientific findings, but the imbalance is noticeable and off-putting. We did wonder how Gross might respond to recent work in rhetoric that makes use of some of the very scientific work he critiques without ever losing sight of what rhetoric brings (and must bring!) to the table (e.g., Crowley's Toward a Civil Discourse).

When a fellow Aristotle scholar saw Gross on my syllabus, he said "you know that book isn't really about Aristotle," I was all "I know!" But approaching it  from the depths of book II of A's Rhetoric makes it very difficult to read as a book about anything but Aristotle (despite its focus on 17th- and 18th-c rhetoric), because of its sustained case in favor of rhetoric's usefulness for conceiving the emotions as active energy that happens between people. My class has developed the parlance of "dispositions on dispositions," which is well supported by the first lines of Book II. Aristotle hangs with Judith Butler as Gross's heroes, a pairing that no doubt deserves its own post.

Since I don't have time to say more, I do welcome comments on this or other parts of the book--I know some of you have read it thoroughly (and this goes for people in my class who definitely have and other scholars who I believe have), so do post away. 

2. My visit to IU was fast, fun, and pretty intense. When I first started in this business, I was not all that good at thinking on my feet, but now I feel a lot better equipped for doing that, in part because I've had a lot of practice, and in part because I acknowledge that no answer will ever perfectly address a question because of the intractable problem of other minds and the inherent difficulty of knowing where a question is really coming from (and the strictures that prevent us from saying that on the spot). But/and so it's a good idea to check in with the questioner's nonverbal cues and to keep checking back in verbally (and nonverbally--with looks and gestures) with the questioner even in the midst of other answers in order to keep interesting lines of discussion alive.

3. I have only once been stumped silent by a question, and so was quite relieved when the questioner interrupted the silence and said something along the lines of "Oh! Did I ask about the implications this research holds for ethos? I meant pathos!!" (Those of you from Purdue probably remember this.)

4. Even though I have just finished an entire book about Kenneth Burke, I still find it difficult to sustain a conversation with someone who *only* uses Burkean terminology. Now, this might just be my problem, but I still think it's important to make an effort to break out of the terminology. (This problem is not of course confined to Burkeans, but also to Deleuzians.)

5. When you are doing a presentation of some sort, if you're lucky, there will be a question or two that will "stick" and end up moving the whole project (or the next one) in an unanticipated direction. You might not realize this for several months or years, but it is still very cool. As a scholar I chase that feeling.

6. As an audience member and a student, nodders sometimes bug me (I say this as a partially reformed nodder), but as a speaker and a teacher, oh lordie, nodding and its bodily partners--hastily writing something down, low rumbles of assent, even good eye contact--are oh, so welcome.

7. I had a good conversation with someone this week about how the best classes are often the ones you're least prepared for. It strikes me that this only works if you are not expecting the class to go well because you haven't prepared. It also strikes me that I might test this hypothesis this week, since I'm flying back on the day of my seminar meeting.

8. Moderating a long discussion (which I did for Tuesday's panel on the Media and the Election) is kind of awesome but also a teeny bit stressful because I don't want to play favorites, and it is impossible to tell whose hand goes up first when they all shoot straight into the air. 

9. If you have not seen David Sedaris on his current tour or had the good fortune of knowing people who have recounted to you the highlights, I suggest you read his piece in this week's New Yorker on undecided voters, like, right now.

10. Come on, November 4!!!! I America can't wait much longer.

something is very strange

At the beginning of the semester, I had a problem in my seminar. Everyone wanted to talk too much, and there wasn't enough time. Grad students started emailing me to see if we could meet longer (I checked; we couldn't). I blogged about that problem here. In my request for a seminar next year, I have tried to remedy the problem by following the advice of my sabbaticaling colleague who left a comment suggesting that I request a 2.5 hour seminar. I also set up a facebook group.

Last week, we actually got through most everything for the first time all semester, and I started thinking that the early enthusiasm might be settling a bit; everyone's tired. It is, after all, mid-term.

And then this morning I got this week's batch of response papers. A few people went over my (strict!) two page limit. I scolded them, sent emails asking them not to do that any more. And then I read the things, and damn, were they good. But still, this problem is kind of like the one we had with the duration of each seminar meeting--people's exuberance is making them spill past the limits. It's very strange.

Today's topic is Daniel Gross's The Secret History of Emotion, and he's got everybody--including me--all stirred up. I think I better show up early.

frenesis: duration and pace in graduate seminars

One of my departments (English) has shorter seminars than the other, by a full hour. Since I was originally appointed solely in English and therefore taught my first five or so seminars as 2 hour seminars (really 1 hour 50 minutes), I never really noticed. This was until I taught a seminar in Communication, where they are 2 hours, 50 minutes, which is by my sights more standard. Now that I'm in my first short seminar following my first long one, I feel quite pressed for time.

Last year when we were doing teaching requests, I noticed that the request form in English had the option to pop the seminar out to 3 hours. But knowing that this would cause logistical problems for the English grads--namely mine would overlap with the two hour seminar now slated for just before mine--and also asking myself "why would I work an extra hour? Why would the grad students want to sit there for an extra hour?" I opted not to do it. But I'm having some regrets.

Two hours might well be enough if the class had 7 or 8 medium talkers plus me. But this one has fifteen enrolled plus me, and I do believe that everyone said something yesterday, which is kind of awesome on its own, but we it also meant that we spent, like, an hour on the first line if the Rhetoric.

And then there's the problem of whether or not to break. Last week we motored right through the break, but yesterday we took a quick, four-minute break, even though we were kind of steaming ahead right about then. And a few students even stayed around during the break and we sort of continued having class, talking about the ancient legal system and how we need to give the sophists a little love (I promise! We will!), which was quite cool but also a little strange. Oh well. It's a good problem to have--too much interesting stuff to discuss, too many smart people to discuss it all, not enough time--but I'm definitely thinking that 3 hours might have been preferable.

I'd love to hear what folks think about the issue, including anyone who knows the institutional history of these seminar lengths, and especially grad student takes on one or the other, on class pacing, etc. Yesterday, it did seem a bit like conversational double dutch, which I find energizing, but I imagine it can be frustrating for others.

aristotle and the profane

Even though I was expecting it, because my roster told me so, it was still a little odd to walk into my Aristotle seminar today and have fifteen graduate students. That's a lot, especially for a class on one extremely dead dude. There are a couple of familiar faces from my bodies seminar and from rhetoric reading group, and several people I and my colleagues worked very hard to recruit in the past couple of years. A good mix of communication and writing studies folks, and even a literature person in the mix, and above all, quite good energy, I thought. The challenge will be to maintain that energy. Aside from the unexpected weirdness that I  kept wanting to swear (this was the only sign that I hadn't been in the classroom for over a year, and was wholly attributable to my enthusiasm), I thought things went swimmingly. I'm even toying with the idea of making a slide show for next week.

[Updated to add: the syllabus]

semester preparedness list

syllabus: check.
new pens: check.
converted from paper to iphone calendar: check.
calendar filling up: check.
TAs oriented: check.
RA task planned: check.
attended freshman convocation in full regalia: check.
met enthusiastic and charming new graduate students from one department: check.
half wondered if I'll ever meet all the new grad students in the other: check.
bought cheesy land of lincoln mug at a garage sale down the street: check.
returned canning paraphernalia to t: check.
finally answered all email from vacation: check (i think!)
house clean: check. (good enough)
laundry done: almost.
completed reading4others: never fully checkable.
tenure reviews finished: hm, nope.
journal reviews finished: not yet. one more to go.
prepared first class: oh, shit.

the month of the exam

In the midst of all this octobering, three of my advisees are doing their exams. The first exam was today, and K was great. The best moment for me was when a distinguished sr colleague raised a characteristically blunt objection, and K, who was taking notes, laid down her pen and said "I'm not sure I agree with you." And then she proceeded to lay out precisely why she disagreed with him in a really thoughtful, engaged, and respectful way.

My two departments do exams very differently, and both are pretty brutal. In Communication (that's right, I am effecting the name change) grad students respond in writing to three questions devised by committee members. The students are not given a designated place or time limit to answer the questions and so they labor over these answers for a few months to a year or longer. The answers end up being 30+ pages each and can often be worked directly into the dissertation. Students must then meet with the committee to discuss the exam, a kind of exam defense.

In English, students develop a reading list and a guiding rationale in consultation with the committee. And then they read for months (and months). And then they emerge for a two-hour oral exam.

I don't think either model is better, but I'd bet that the students doing it one way envy--just a little bit--the students doing it the other way.

As an advisor, I think the unbounded writing can be more challenging, but it might also ease the dissertation process. As a graduate student, though, I would have been pretty terrified of a 2-hour oral exam.

Okay, now I gotta get back to reading reviews. (Because we don't just write em, we read em too.)

this just in

My first perfect score on teaching evaluations! My rhetoric 108 this past semester was a terrific group of students, and I would have given them all 5.0s as well.

Of course we shouldn't let everything hinge on the evals--I'm fully aware I've not yet received the results for my upper division course on the Rhetorical Tradition--but since I know this rationally and still brood over student comments, I need to allow myself a little enjoyment here.

where there's a dissertation, there's a whippet, part 3 (of 3)

parts 1 and 2 .

etc.

Thanks again to everyone who offered encouragement re: the textbook revision. It's coming along, though it would be faster if I didn't have so much other stuff to do.

e.g.:

This is dissertation two of three for which defenses are scheduled during the last two weeks of May. This photo is part of a series called "where there's a dissertation, there's a whippet."


 

New Edition

This is new edition month! I used to love New Edition, especially that song where they spell the word s-c-h-o-o-l.

But I'm not talking about that New Edition. I'm talking about the new edition of the textbook. And I'm having revisor's anxiety, mostly because of a major change I've proposed.  I want to divide the progymnasmata (preliminary exercises) and imitation chapters and intersperse them as small interchapters every third or fourth chapter. There's sound theory behind this change. While the progymnasmata were a much later development than some of the material in earlier chapters which are more sophistic and Aristotelian, the exercises nevertheless follow through on an important belief about rhetorical education that endured from the 5th century bce on: no one ever gets any better at this stuff without practice. Lots of it.

Also, the progymnasmata are making something of a comeback, thanks to scholarship by folks like Christy Desmet,  David Fleming, and Ruth Webb. Last year I participated in a seminar on progymnasmata at RSA (sponsored by the International Society for the History of Rhetoric), and that renewed my interest in the tradition.

Making the imitation chapter more prominent involves a whole other risk in this age of anxiety about plagiarism. But I have learned a good deal from Rebecca Howard and figure as long as we're very clear about the differences between plagiarism and imitation, we should be okay. I do think that imitation as an educational practice has been one of the forgotten casualties of the ownership myth.

The way it's set up now, instructors probably don't have time to use the progymnasmata or imitation chapters, since they're the last in the book. This semester I made a conscious effort to have students dip into them and realized that it's the perfect thing for a class to work on in that lull between assignments or as a run-up to writing a paper.

But in the archival work I did for a handbook long ago, I learned that teachers of books frequently don't respond well to major changes, so I'm having a hard time finally making the change. (I'm also hoping users of ARCS are a little more flexible than handbook users in the 1950s.)

And so for a couple of weeks now I've been avoiding the slicing and dicing. In the meantime I've added new examples and made new (deep) cuts to the introduction, but now I'm to the point where I need to make this change and move on: otherwise the chapter on topoi won't get the attention it deserves.

I guess if our reviewers don't like it I can always change it back to the way it was. OK, here it goes. (deep intake of breath)

[UPDATE: Thanks so much for the comments this morning! They helped me to finally stop second-guessing and to focus on the main task. I made a new interchapter plan and have set to dividing, with Collin's new rendition of "Cool it Now" in the background.]