Category Archives: Scholarly Musings

Studio

Posted on by under Agential Realism, Artefact, Coronavirus, COVID-19, Dissertation League, Material, Pedagogical Documentation, Posthumanist Praxis, Scholarly Musings, Slice of Life, Spacetimemattering, Teaching, Teaching From Home

In the move online this semester during the COVID-19 event, all of us had to make do with a makeshift workspace. For many of us, this included needing a space to record videos for our students. The first video I did, I randomly sat in front of this bookshelf in my home office instead of staying at my desk, and that was that: it’s been my “studio” ever since. Throw in a lighting kit I got a while back when I fancied taking my #bookstagram game to the next level (still working on that) and you’ve got yourself a bright corner of the world. It occurs to me, in writing this post, that I desperately needed such a corner and that, considering things were just plain hard(er) in those early days, this makeshift studio’s agency in helping me get necessary work done on a consistent and timely basis was/is very real and should be acknowledged. I mean, the shelf edges are blackboard paint with fields and categories chalked on them–wouldn’t you feel like a boss sitting in front of that level of awesome?

  • Behind the magic
  • The Dissertation League
Continue reading →

Flashback: Coursework

Posted on by under Academia, Artefact, As Is, Coursework, Curate, Flashback, Remembering, Scholarly Musings, Writing Through All the Things

It’s kind of sad that a lot (for me, most) of coursework doesn’t really find a second home, whether because of the direction your scholarship goes or just the structure/nature of the original writing. I was searching for a word in the hopes of finding a file I’d obviously not named well-enough to find it again years later, and this paper popped up. A throwback to Science Fiction and Posthumanism in the Anthropocene–one of my favorite classes. I enjoyed reading it again four years later (yikes!). I sound quite important 😉

Continue reading →

Dissed: That Self-Congratulatory Anecdote from MLA

Posted on by under As Is, Conference, Cut, Dissed, Dissertating, Excerpts, Scholarly Musings

Dissed are excerpts from the dissertation that have been cut, killed, excised, burned on the altar of common sense and distance before being left here to not die…

At the 2017 MLA conference I was set to talk about this very project in a roundtable called ‘Teaching as Theoretical Practice.”* There were four papers on the panel—the first and second papers were co-authored and, therefore, got a few extra minutes. I went last and had been, along with the other single author, allotted a shorter-than-usual twelve minutes. I admitted defeat before I even got up to the mic. You saw the length of the last chapter. You’re looking at the length of this one. It wasn’t going to happen. But a funny thing happened while I was listening to my fellow panelists go before me and scribbling notes on their talks in my ever-present journal. Another talk emerged. And tapped me on the shoulder. And said, “Hey, do you mind sharing me with the group?”

So I did.

Continue reading →

Acts of Being

Posted on by under Dissertating, Scholarly Musings, Writing Is, Writing Through All the Things
golf

I love a perfect drive. In golf, at least for amateurs (and I’m a level even below that), you hit the ball, one shot at a time down the fairway, each shot a means to the green. But there are, at least for me, some shots, some moments that are perfection. Sweet. Unreal in how incredible it is that I took this club and hit this tiny ball and it went right where I wanted it to go. Hundreds of yards away. And when I played regularly those were the moments I played for. The drive that sailed, that landed right where I wanted it to go. It always amazed me how I came out of those swings not able to describe what went right. There was either in the swing or out of the swing. And once out of the swing, there was no way to recreate in words the seamlessness, the perfection, the resonance of that moment.

Continue reading →