Buzzards

Continuing with the "Animal Encounters" section of the course, we're reading a longish article, "Buzzards" by Lee Zacharias. Zacharias actually used to teach at UNCG but she's retired now. Anyway, this is a wonderful piece: the most moving thing you'll read about ugly birds.

Thoughts on "Buzzards"

Quiz 5 mins

I was attracted to this piece because it employs "non-fiction" writing about buzzards in a very unique way, by placing these factual / experiential paragraphs that go into the entire scientific description of vultures as well as how these birds have been regarded by culture / human history, next to the author's meditations / remembrances of her deceased father.

Structurally – there are three "time" frames going on. 1. Zacharias is in an empty parking lot in the Everglades 2. There are the scientific / cultural / literary : encyclopedic references to the vultures 3. Memories of her father.

Overall interpretation: (5 mins)

Why does Zacharias do this? Why "pair" her exploration of vultures with father?

Stylistic analysis (15 mins)

Group discussion [Assign passage pairs]
Each passage contains a paragraph dealing with the vulture (from some perspective) and then with her father.
How are the passages on the vultures stylistically different from the parts describing the father? In terms of content, do they connect or not connect? Are they simply placed randomly next to each other or can you discern a pattern in the structure? Do they reinforce or challenge each other in terms of meaning?
As they share findings (15 min), introduce some of the vocabulary for discussion from the rhetorical reading: such as DICTION / SYNTAX / METAPHOR / SYMBOL. Read closely at the sentence level for examples.

Final paragraph (5 mins) – becoming-vulture: studying the vulture becomes a way of expressing herself / of engaging her feelings toward her father. [Transitional object]

Tell them that this piece should be a model for assignment one.

For next lesson: we will practice more 30 sec words.

Thoughts on the Feast of Tongues

Structure of the Fable – repetitive in two parts.
Seems to be a fool – but really ends up using the occasion to engineer a clever rhetorical discourse: Theme – appearance / reality / foolishness – deeper wisdom
So – using the strangeness of the tongues- Aesop – a slave – gains a "voice" in a community where he wouldn't otherwise have the power or right to speak. In this sense, the animal tongues, dead and prepared – afford him a voice.

The communion of the meal – a gathering that isn't as "formal" as a philosophical discourse or a scholarly gathering (like class). The meal symbolizes hospitality / communion / fellowship / the opportunity for Exantus to show his wealth – and thus, Exantus is able to dictate the terms of the feast – first order the "best meat" and then the "worst meat". Yet this gathering turns into a philosophical discourse- where questions of value "what is good" and who gets to evaluate – a slave in this case – comes to the fore. So food, is used, as the site for discussion about abstract values: and indeed, we often evaluate food and build systems of value around food.

Yet what of the animals? In all this speaking, the most prominent symbol – the disembodied tonges that are themselves mute symbols that are interpreted BY Aesop (to his own gain), that cannot speak because they are dead, that cannot be EXPECTED to speak because they are "animal" force their way into the tale. They are the strange centerpiece of a fable that features animal (parts) without giving the animal voice. And in this tale about speech, and how speech is itself slippery and creative, the silent animal tongues appear to be mute witnesses to the cleverness of human speech. In speaking about the tongues, does Aesop speak on behalf of animals? For it is HUMAN nobility and mischief that he speaks about. How can an animal tongue, sold as meat in the market represent the human tongue, which is, in Aesop's own speech so demonstrably different from the mute tongue that IS meat. Indeed, Aesop never "bites his tongue" while presenting these animal tongues for food (the scholars commend or condemn the tongues but do they eat it?) – the occasion to consume meat allows him to transform these animal tongues into metaphors for human tongues.

LOGOS – Aesop's "cleverness" – his "logic" on display.
ETHOS – the "fable" – does it show us a deeper moral truth? Does it refer to something culturally identifiable and significant?
PATHOS – do we find it in how Aesop the slave, becomes the protagonist? Or can we find it in the disembodied tongues of silent animals – does that move us?

Some post lesson thoughts: While most students seemed to understand the main thrust of the fable, very few were willing to venture thoughts about how animal tongues feature in complicated ways in the passage. I had to do some heavy-handed explication given this unwillingness, although my leading questions did, on a few occasions open up the text a little for the kids. It occurred to me that while we often speak about food from a "human" perspective - ie does this taste good etc, or if you're Guy Fieri, "This is money!" - the "Feast of Tongues" suggests how food can become the basis for philosophical speculation, without departing too far from the embodied presence of the dead animal parts in front of you.  Anyway, while I'm not sure what the intellectual impact of all this was, they kids certainly were enthusiastic about the speaking activity.

Speaking of Tongues

In the fluctuating world of adjunct teaching, I may get a class cut in the Spring semester. Classes start on Tuesday and I'll only know on Monday whether or not the class is on.  Of course, this really is no big deal as I'm teaching several sections of the class, so it's not as if I've spent the past months prepping in vain. But in lieu of that class, here begins the blog version of "Arguing with Animals."

I decided to begin the first lesson (after laying out the syllabus in the first first lesson) of my Animals course with this little excerpt. It's a (free) translation of a late fifteenth C. English "Life of Aesop" that was printed by Thomas Caxton. It's about Aesop being smart alecky, serving tongues when his master asks for him to buy the "best" meat and cleverly explaining why, and then serving tongues (again) when his master tells him to go out for the worst meat, and justifying himself. I came across this piece during a medieval retreat where this passage was explicated in brilliant terms by Peter Travis. It inspired me to see whether freshmen would have interesting things to say about this odd little fable that demonstrates how philosophical argument and the embodiedness of meat come together in a most unexpected way.

Job Searching

I've been rather busy the past month or so getting all my job search materials ready and sending them out. I've sent out the bulk of my applications and still have a few more to go. The challenge of finding places to teach where both Edna and I can work (and live in the same house) has been quite great. I've been on googlemaps a lot, and at this point in the game, I think it's really down to whether we get simultaneously lucky, or whether my strategy of applying to every place where I have even the remotest chance of qualifying will work out.

Here's the list of the places that I'm applying to, divided up by geographical area:

There's the NIE, SIngapore of course. Not in my field of expertise but there are possibilities for both of us here.

Southern California: UC Irvine (most research oriented school in my list), Claremont McKenna College (most selective school on my list - and the most selective liberal arts college in the U.S.), and Cal State, Long Beach (I think I have a fair shot there, and it's by the beach ... )

Bay Area, Californa: Cal State Sacramento. It seems like a nice place to work, but due to California 's uncertainty with the state budget, the position nearby (ok within 100 miles) that Edna was going to apply for is now in limbo!

Wisconsin: Marian U of Fond du Lac, U of Wisconsin Colleges: Baraboo/Sauk & Waukesha (2 year colleges). None of these positions are for medievalists. But they want people who are generalists and who can teach composition, so I'm giving these a shot. Edna's top choice is for a position at Wisconsin-Madison, so these would be near enough.

Chicago: St Xavier University. A medieval position that would be nice. Possibly drivable to Wisconsin Mad - but we'd have to live in-between and still drive A LOT.

Texas: U of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio. (Another non-Medievalist position - but there's an opening at UT Austin for Edna).

Pennsylvania / Maryland: Franklin and Marshall College. Another highly selective liberal arts college that would be nice to teach at. Cecil College - a two-year college that wants a generalist.

U of New Hampshire: this is the latest posting on the job list. It's an ideal medieval position for me, but I'm sure competition will be very tough since it's in the heart of New England!

Some (possibly irrelevant) things that I've learnt: 1. Texas is a really really big state. I clicked on every Community College website in the state of Texas looking for jobs near Austin. No luck: the closet I came was for a position in the Spring of next year, and another that wanted someone to teach English and Journalism 2. It's easier to find a "Job Opportunities" link on a 2-year college website (in contrast to four year schools). 3. the U of Wisconsin has the most organized and attractive 2-year college websites ...

Conference Time

It's that time of the year where I desperately send out paper proposals for medieval conference presentations. Here are two of my latest offerings that I've submitted. Hopefully they'll be accepted!

A paper proposal for a panel on Kings and Kingship in the Middle Ages. I hope this one gets accepted so that I get to go to Boston.

All the King's Bodies: Embodying Authority in Havelok the Dane and King Horn

The Middle English romances Havelok the Dane and King Horn both feature protagonists whose right to rule is stolen early on in the romance. In this paper, I suggest that both protagonists learn that the manipulation of their own bodies is key to regaining royal authority. Even though the thrones of Denmark and Suddene are theirs by birth, Havelok and Horn must allow their bodies to mature and be transformed in order to regain what is theirs. Havelok's exceptional physical appetites and strength becomes subordinated to a more symbolic and rhetorical conception of his body. From being trapped by a body that only experiences the immediacy of hunger and cold, Havelok re-conceptualizes his body as a symbol of the nation before the marks of kingship on his body can be publicly identified and rallied around. Similarly, Horn's unmatched physical attractiveness is disguised both literally and through his careful speech en route to the throne. Instead of thinking of the protagonist as the solitary hero who proves himself worthy of the throne, locating their right to rule in the body considers the various forces of association and nurture that come into play. Specifically, Havelok's and Horn's bodies are shaped by their contact with a host of surrogate fathers who take the place of their dead fathers. These older male figures protect and guide the protagonists on their quests and enable the protagonists to adopt conceptions of the body that are more readily used for political ends than the abstract ideals of kingship represented by their dead fathers. I end the paper by suggesting how these romances connect with Ernst Kantorowicz's work on the genesis and development of the notion of the "King's Two Bodies" and argue that the presentation of the malleable body in both romances respond to the challenges to the king's position in the body politic that occurred in thirteenth-century England.

... and here's another one. I'm trying something slightly different from my 'usual' work. It's for a panel on Animals and Ethics at Kalamazoo! (I owe the title to a memory of Al Pacino 'dying' in "Looking for Richard")

"A Horse, a Horse, my Kingdom for a Horse!": Valuing Arondel in Bevis of Hampton

The Middle English Bevis of Hampton does not conclude with Bevis ruling England or Armenia, the principal kingdoms of the romance. Curiously, Bevis ends up ruling over Mombraunt, a kingdom with a relatively minor role in the narrative. To explain this state of affairs, I turn to Bevis's relationship with his horse, Arondel. In this paper, I attempt to describe Bevis's special relationship with Arondel, arguing that this relationship cannot really be equated to anthropocentric concepts such as "friendship" or "loyalty". Inspired by Donna Haraway's exploration of the dense networks of biocapital and commodification that connect people and animals "in the naturecultures of lively capital," the paper traces how the narrative struggles and fails to find a fixed value for Arondel. Like the dogs that Donna Haraway writes about, Arondel is variously treated as a commodity, labor, as well as a consumer through his connections with Bevis and other humans. At the same time, the people that come into contact with Arondel have their identities as stable human subjects challenged and the multi-faceted nature of these bonds make it impossible to reduce the description of Arondel to that of the 'loyal beast'. Unlike other animal companions of romance, whose only reward for loyalty is human companionship, Arondel receives much more: fame, a castle, Bevis's willingness to go into exile, and prayers said on his behalf. In a romance in which the protagonist's own worth is challenged by his biological and surrogate human families, in which he needs to prove himself by battling non-human creatures, Bevis responds to something in Arondel that lies outside the rubric of social estimations of animal worth: Perhaps Bevis does give up kingdoms in exchange for an existence with a horse.


"A horse, a horse ..."