72 Hours in San Francisco

Dec 27
Noon. Coming into the city after flying across two thousand miles and three time zones, I think about leaving winter behind in all that landscape that has passed below me. 23-F wasn't a particularly comfortable window seat and I had to go to the loo three times during the flight, which might have irritated the big white men who were in my row (though they ended up taking my toilet going as opportunities to go themselves).
This was definitely the MLA flight. No one was ready "Home and Living" or "Vogue," and there was a big party of academics who were obviously from the same school (U of M?). Already getting nervous about the interviews because there are also some really smart (and confident) looking people who are obviously grad students on the job search as well.

Noon plus. The BART is fantastic. It's clear, clean, carpeted and quick. My phone rings and it's the chair of one of the departments I'm interviewing with. It's noisy on the train but I scramble for a pen and paper because I don't want to have to call her back. The interview location has changed to another hotel.

25 minutes later. Getting off a Powell street and emerging I feel as if I've been here before. This is the touristy heart of the city and I guess the deja vu might be connected to how I used to come out on 34th street and Broadway and get caught in a web of tourists. I wish I were on holiday.

15 minutes later. I'm puffing up Mason street with two bags. This is one steep hill. I later learn that it's THE steep hill of the city. This is probably why the hotel I'm staying at is the cheapest of the conference hotels even though it's really swanky. And this probably explains why one of the interview locations got changed—the committee members probably didn't want to have to make this climb.

5 minutes more. I check in and the guy runs through the motions of telling me about the award winning dining facilities and making reservations for Sunday Brunch because the hotel's full up. I just nod and perspire. I get up into the room and become the ultimate suaku. Four years of staying in cheap hotels has primed me to be shocked by the opulence of the room. The minibar (and food drawer) are stocked with really interesting snacks and a walk-in closet that's larger than the one at home. I get a great view, being perched on Nob Hill, of the Bay. I immediately recognize the fact that I'm also overlooking Chinatown. But it's really expensive to be here. Internet service is 13.95 a day and even local calls are charged on the phone. I determine to hunt for free Internet in the city.

2 plus. I call Steve who has just checked into the city and has kindly agreed to meet with me to talk about tomorrow's interviews. I take a quick shower (the long luxurious bath will have to wait) and head back down Mason street and bump into Steven and Glenn at an intersection. Their hotel room isn't ready, so we sit in an alcove in the lobby. Steve is really great and reassuring about the interviews. He gives specific tips about what to expect and primes me to think of myself as competent and smart. Glenn chimes too, and I leave feeling a little less nervous and a little more hopeful.

3 plus. The New Shoes Bought for the Interview are beginning to take their toil on my feet. My right foot's got a bad abrasion and there's a blood stain on brown leather. Walgreens and bandages help. I walk back up the hill and decide that I should make a go at getting something to eat in Chinatown. Not having Internet access is a bummer because I don't really know where to look for good eats. I walk down Stockton street looking for a non-dim sum place that doesn't have any ang mohs eating in it. From across the street I spot a BBQ noodle shop and head across. It doesn't look good but the shop next door is promising. It's pseudo vietnamese-chinese and I don't mind a nice beef pho. The shop has the ubiquitous "Singapore Noodles" (which I understand is an Australian invention) but it also has great stuff like a stir-fried bitter gourd dish. I end up with a big bowl of pho with tripe, beef balls, and meat, which is perfect. They have a flat screen monitor that runs pictures of the food on the menu and that keeps me company.

The rest of the day and night. I stay in the hotel room doing more prep, taking a long shower, and trying not to get too nervous. I'm tempted to explore the city a bit or attend a night session but decide not to; I consciously decide to avoid the mock interview demo that apparently draws huge crowds of jobseekers. I'm tired from the time zone changes and from getting to the airport at five so I decide to sleep early. Which of course doesn't work very well and I doze and wake up repeatedly and run through my notes for the interviews over and over, talking through my responses aloud. I note that I'm getting obsessive as I run though different versions of the answers as if I'm making a record and these are different takes from which I'll assemble a great track, so I stop. I don't try to go back to sleep and I work a little on the dissertation chapter, and hope that the adrenaline pumping through my system will keep me alert during the interviews.

Dec 28.
6 in the morning. I'm hungry despite yesterday's huge bowl of pho so I head for the Pinewood Diner, a place that I noticed on my walk up the hill yesterday. There are three other MLA types (ie, white balding caucasian men in tweed jackets) already there, reading the newspapers and lingering over breakfast. I get some corned beef hash, over medium eggs, rye toast, and I eat hungrily. I think to myself that I should have brought my note-cards but decide that forgetting was a sign that I've had enough. Heading back up to the hotel I'm passed by runners who obviously make running up this impossible steepness part of their masochistic routine.

8ish. I get ready for interview one. It's at nine in the morning at a hotel down the street. I'm a little relieved that the two schools I'm interviewing with are conducting the session in hotel rooms rather than the huge job areas in the hotels where you speak with the search committee separated from other interviews by flimsy curtains. I reach the interview hotel early, head up, and notice that my hand is trembling while I knock on the door.

9.45. I step out of my first MLA interview. It went really smoothly. I'm surprised at how well it went and how relaxed and enthusiastic the search committee was. There was no grilling and they seemed genuinely interested in what I would bring to the department. It ended up being a great conversation, mainly about teaching and courses I'd be able to develop. I start thinking that I might have a shot at this.

11ish. I attend a session that on marriage in the Canterbury Tales that Glenn is presiding over. There are some heavy hitters presenting papers in this one. I talk to Steve a little about how well the interview went and he shows me his new iphone. I see the room populated with medievalist faces that I recognize from other conferences, which is a nice thing even if I don't know them personally, in a big conference like the MLA.

Two. My second and final interview. At first, I was a little deflated about not making the interview round for more schools, but I know that there are a lot of really accomplished people out there and all I need is one offer. Both the schools that I'm interviewing at will be excellent 'fits' for me anyway, I think, as they serve a diverse student population who haven't had the most academically privileged preparation. I make it to the hotel on time and head up to the room, except that room 644 doesn't appear to be accessible from the elevator I took. I quickly figure out that I need to find a connecting bridge on a lower level—shades of the maze leading to the Scriptorium in the Name of the Rose, which I take as a good sign—and make it to the room on time. Three quick knocks and the head of the search committee answers the door and apologizing, asks me to wait outside for a while. Have I walked in on someone else's interview? At least I'll get to see the competition. I get invited into the room but no one comes out. Hmmm. Maybe they flush you down the toilet if they don't like you. Ah no they were trying to adjust the temperature in the room.

2.45. I'm done with the interview. It was another pleasant one, if not as spontaneous as the first. There was more discussion of my research (a nice thing) after which they placed at list of courses in front of me—a list of about 10—and asked me how I might teach some of them. Good thing I came prepared with a good stack of sample syllabi, which I promptly hand out and start talking about. They ask me about teaching Old English and since I've practiced my responses, I manage to give what appears to be a convincing (at least to me) reply. There are a few strange questions that follow my discussion of teaching, which I feel are probably questions that the university rather than the department wants responses to. (Is anyone going to say "NO!" to a question on being involved in study abroad programs? Am I supposed to make the groundless offer of becoming a liaison for exchange programs to Singapore universities ...?) I blather a little while buying some time on one of them but I manage to draw on some personal experiences to cobble together what I think is (from the nodding head and encouraging smiles) a coherent a response.

3 plus. I head to the Grad Center Suite that is conveniently located one floor above my room at the Fairmont. I talk to Steve about how well the interview went and we discuss next steps. He also tells me about his own MLA interviewing experiences, twenty years ago ("to the day") as well as how the job market has changed drastically ("in 1988 there were probably more jobs than people applying ... "). More people come to the Suite (inauspiciously named "Dresden") and the wine is broken out. I see lots of familiar faces but no one that I really know very well. I end up talking to a few fellow jobseekers and realize that I've actually come out very well on my applied to / interview granted ratio (Apparently 1 out of 20 is much more common than my 1 out of 6). I figure this: it's a discontinuous distribution. Most of us will get low ratios and a very small, select number of future academic superstars have 1:1 application to interview offers. I don't think I'll be the first choice on anyone's list but my best bet would to be a finalist and have the top candidates reject the offer for a job in a more high-powered department.

6 plus. I leave the reception and head out for dinner. I intend a reward myself for the day's modest but momentous accomplishments. Even if I don't make a job this year, I'm definitely more prepared for next year's job search, and I know what I'll have to do to make myself a more viable candidate: the job search is the final initiation rite into the profession. I go to Straits, a swanky Singaporean-fusion restaurant. I glance over the menu at the door and decide that fourteen bucks for Char Kway Teow is an indulgence that I'm willing to pay for today. It's a hip up scale joint, with very classy interiors and furniture. It's noisy too as there's a bar area. There's an obviously Singaporean couple with their young child sitting near to me, and I spend the rest of the meal eavesdropping. I figure that the husband works (or studies) in California or some part of the U.S.—probably works and rakes in big bucks or they wouldn't be ordering what they do—and that they're visiting San Francisco. He has trouble conveying to the waiter that he doesn't want white meat in his Chicken Rice, his request—"without chili"—is flagrantly ignored, and the chicken comes drenched in chili sauce (which is a strange way to serve chicken rice, but then again, what kind of Singporean eats chicken rice without chili sauce... ). He ends up dipping the pieces of chicken in his glass of water: The indignities we are willing to put up with in response to the white man's incomprehension are innumerable. I feel like suggesting that he should just send it back; after all, he's paying 15 bucks for a plate of chicken rice and he should get it any way he wants. His wife makes the same suggestion but he says "Never mind," (exactly what I would do ... thankfully I love my chili ...), continues dipping the chicken in his glass of water, and ends up ordering another plate of overpriced, over-chilied (but this time he gets his order through someone higher up on the wait-staff hierarchy after a confused Latino busboy conveys his request ... ) chicken rice. I finish my own plate of over priced Char Kway Teow (I do a better job even without a Prima pack ... there was too much garlic in this one, and not enough Kechup Manis) and leave before witnessing what comes of my fellow Singaporean's quest for "chicken rice with the drumstick only without chili." I should have stuck with the Chinatown shop.

Dec 29
8.30. I intend to be a good conference participant and attend lots of sessions today. I get into an early one on immigrant lit and I'm pleasantly surprised that one of the presenters is talking about Junot Diaz's Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. I loved Drown (and I put it on one of my sample syllabi) and I'd been intending to read Oscar Wao: perhaps I'll pick up an overpriced copy from the airport bookstore and have something less Lacanian for the flight back. The two papers ("One of our presenters can't be at the MLA because of departmental budget cuts ... ") are good but there's the typical member of the audience who makes a comment to show off their knowledge by pretending to ask a question.

More of the morning. I end up hanging around the hotel lobby, and finally get free internet access. This hotel allows 24 hours without charge, so I quickly log in, check my email (which consists of just deleting junk mail, so much for pretending that email matters ....) and quickly google a map of Berkeley. I've decided to head out across the bay and do my pilgrimage to the Mecca of English Lit after the afternoon sessions. I also want to check out Amoeba Music and a local microbrewery.

Rest of the day. I attend a few more sessions. One of them is a Chaucer session on beasts in Chaucer, which ends up being a panel made up solely of grad students writing theses (ie "The Competition"). They're really smart sounding, come from brand-name schools, and I could easily see them in a job ahead of me. In typical grad student fashion, the papers are extremely writerly and somewhat hard to follow, with long citations from other critics. A strange dynamic emerges in the question and answer because the leading critic in the field is present and she points out things about the papers that she liked and didn't like, but she's nice about it and gracious in her comments. I momentarily panic because I'll be doing a paper on Bevis's horse, Arundel, in May: hopefully she isn't in the room when that happens. Maybe it'll be an impetus to work hard at making sure I write a good paper. I pick up useful tips on how to answer questions when you don't know the answer without sounding too defensive or utterly incompetent (i.e. acknowledge how smart the question is and say "that's certainly something I'd like to look into"). The last session I attend is one where Steve gives a talk about surveillance in medieval accounts of Jewish conversions to Christianity, which is an elaboration ("I had underestimated the implications of surveillance in my earlier work ... ") of his work.

Evening. I head out to Berkeley, a trip that takes me longer than I expect because of train delays. I only end up having dinner and downing a couple of pints at the microbrewery that I later learn is the oldest one still in operation in the U.S. Cool. I don't bother with going to Amoeba records since I'm sure that I won't be buying anything anyway and it'll be nice to have something to do the next time that I'm in San Francisco. I'm definitely not one of the those sorts who makes full use of a trip in a foreign city, though San Francisco has certainly been more inviting than other places where I've been stuck at for conferences.

"Love Actually" is about the Impossible Desire of the Other

This being the start of the holiday season (not that it means we have less work to do), we watched "Love Actually" for the 521st time, after friends that we lent the DVD to returned it to us. ("It's just gotten back, why don't we watch it ....)

I've always had a vague notion about the racist constructions of desire in the film, but this watching crystallized my ideas. And since the film plays ad nauseam during the holiday seasons, here's to ruining everyone's favorite romantic comedy.

My analysis begins with Salvoj Žižek. Not an idea, but a Youtube video where he magically uncovers "The Sound of Music" as an unexpected space where Fascist fantasies live and thrive. Žižek's argument is simple. And while its extremely reductive, it's fun if you don't take it too seriously. (But how many of us DO take The Sound of Music and Love Actually much too seriously ...?) He argues that the Austrians, the Von Trapps included I assume, even though representing the anti-Fascist Austrian resistance, are figured along the lines of Fascist ideals: the children in uniform, marching, hierarchized according to age, all disciplined to sing and display their talent. (Of course for the sake for argument he conveniently omits the inconsistencies of this generalization.) On the other hand, the Fascist elements within the film are represented as sophisticated genteel, glove wearing, cigarette holder smoking figures, or as Žižek puts it, by displaced stereotypes of Jewish decadence. So, he says that The Sound of Music appeals because it is able to represent an official ideological construction that we have all been taught to embrace—anti-Fascism—while indulging our secret fantasies for Fascism.

So, Love Actually is about the impossible desire of the Other, simultaneously constructing a politically correct film depicting race as irrelevant to relationships but still nurturing racist attitudes unconsciously. Its constructions of black/brownness appear to embrace a post-racial cosmopolitan sexuality, where skin color is no boundary to love. But in its representations of inter-racial couples, especially of the black figures in the film, it indulges our secret racist fantasies while preserving the specter of miscegenation.

"No Surprises?"


The interracial marriage between Mark and Juliet (pictured above left) that opens the movie is the clearest example of this doubled construction of race. Even though Mark's best-friend, Peter (lurking in the background), is infatuated with Juliet, no love triagle ensues. Instead, Peter's repressed desire finally gets communicated to Juliet, first against his will when she watches the video he makes of the wedding, and later when he does his silent card messages. We're left to wonder about what might have happened between Juliet and Peter, and yet that possibility never becomes threatening because Juliet and Peter are both faithful and loyal as wife and friend to Mark. Yet it is precisely [a favorite word of Žižek's, often imprecisely used] because no love-triangle develops that we see how the racial construction proceeds. Even though Peter and Juliet never go beyond a kiss, their story arc is presented as the one that we should be interested in. Untainted by physicality, their (non)relationship becomes the distillation of what 'true love' is. Juliet shares intimate moments with Peter, realizing that he loves her when she watches the video, pretending that its "just carolers" so that he can 'speak' her of his desire. Desire can be kept covert but also be expressed because the mediation of art and technology makes Peter's desire, and Juliet's assent, non-threatening. Even so, the film's representation of these stolen moments constructs their relationship as the 'true' one. Mark, husband and black man, is cuckolded, even though 'nothing happens.'

"You'll Come Back a Broken Man"

Another story line: this time, the black man is marginalized and his status as desiring subject degraded. This story line features John and Judy, who are shy, reserved, but decent individuals even though they work as actor stand-ins in the explicit film industry. Their director, Tony, is black, and nameless until the end of the film.(1) He issues instructions for them to mimic physical intimacy, and he instructs them to perform smutty acts as he watches. He is the black man on the margins, the voyeur whose perverse pleasure is in watching, who can never become fully human in the way John and Judy do through the mundane conversations that develops between them despite their line of work.

Tony is also involved in the film's farcical plot, involving Colin Frisell's fantasies about American women. Believing that gorgeous babes will swoon over his cute British accent, he hatches a hare-brained scheme to go to some bar in America and work his charm. His Tony is the voice of reason, constantly telling Colin that he's totally out of his mind. Colin's crazy scheme actually works, and he beds a bevy of beauties on his first night in America. The black man, as movie director and Colin's friend, remains outside the orbit of desire. Even this farcical British swipe at America is constructed with a clear eye towards the racial taboos that police desire. Consider this: Is not a reversal of roles unimaginable? What if Colin the Brit were also Colin the black man, landing in Milwaukee and trying to pick up white women in a bar in Wisconsin with his cute British accent ... ?

"And they call it Puppy Love ..."

Finally, the possibility of the desires of the Other being taken seriously is undermined by the depiction of prepubescent love. Sam and Joanna's fledgling attraction for each other may be cute, but it's not to be taken seriously. Of course, there is the distinct barrier of geography with Joanna's return to America the very night that Sam expresses his interest in her, but this is merely a convenient 'out' for the film. In a movie where even the 'serious' adult relationships are somewhat suspicious fantasies about the possibilities of love bridging class and personality barriers, the novelty of the interracial union is made even more pronounced by this coupling. What is interesting is the fact that Joanna's black identity is withheld from the audience throughout the movie. Only at the end of the film do we learn that she is black, not only physically but culturally as she wows the crowd with her soulful Mariah Carey number even though Sam has agonized about her throughout. Her blackness, which appears momentarily, and then disappears on a jet-plane, is a key strategy by which the paradoxical racist–politically correct ideological fantasies of the film are sustained.

"All You Need is Love"


Does the film offer any possibilities of serious interracial relationships? One possibility is the romance between Jaime and Aurelia (above left). Even though Jaime is thoroughly English and Aurelia begins the film as a non-English speaking Portuguese immigrant working in France, they do end up together at the end of the film. Their attraction for each other, which blossoms despite their inability to speak to each other in the same language, seems to suggest an aspect of love that manages to transcend the barriers of culture and race.(2) Interestingly, Jaime's (and Aurelia's) sincerity is figured by their willingness to learn the other person's language, and the triumphal scene where Jaime proposes to Aurelia in ungrammatical Portuguese suggests that love can dismantle cultural and racial barriers. But, suspending for the moment the question of social class, is Aurelia all that other? She isn't caucasian, but she is not black either. Perhaps she represents a kind of limit, an acceptable difference that can be overcome through language classes on tape ....

By now, it should be obvious why I've put up the picture on the right, which is a snapshot of the movie's other triumphant relationship. Blackness is acceptable in positions of political achievement, but a romance between the Prime Minister and his tea-girl is much more acceptable as fantasy ....

In sum, I think it's possible to argue that while Love Actually promotes a politically correct view of interracial relationships, its success also depends on the way that it constructs an underlying racist fantasy that upholds the belief that 'true love' can only be found within the boundaries that govern Whiteness.

(1) - He only becomes "Tony" when one of the American babes Colin brings back, a cameo by Denise Richards, names him. He gains nominal identity only as part of the fantastical construct of American female desire.

(2) Another possible trans-racial coupling that I considered was the one between the characters played by Laura Linney and Brazilian superbod Rodrigo Santoro. But on consultation with the resident Love Actually expert (Edna), we agreed that the film doesn't really construct Karl as non-White.

Cold's Coming

Cold's coming marks the
Distance between the places
I call "home" on my body,
As if miles could be etched
By falling degrees.
My body, encapsulated in layered
Warmth, is sedimented geography.

I always wear a Land's End sweater—
Strictly American, catalog shopped—
A Singaporean gift before I
Returned it to the land
Of its merchandising,
Label so faded, its sweatshop past
In another clime unfathomable.

On top of that, an orange hoodie—
"Wild Rivers, Tasmania"—
A tourist buy against
The unexpected cold
At the world's other end.

Or, if my nose doesn't itch,
A black Canterbury
Fleece, that recalls
Another pilgrimage
Medieval souls undertook,
First worn eighteen years ago
When as elite high school
Students we made a study trip
To the Soviet Empire in
Its winter,
Shivering beneath uniform
Black sweaters.

Then, a gray discount
Down overcoat, larger than
It's warm,
And red quilted gloves,
Women's, the only pair from
The remainder bin fitting
My Asian hands.
Bogg boots and knitted
Beanie cap accent
My uncoordination.

Frayed cuffs, torn seams,
Loose elastic, rickety zippers:
Over-worn.
I don't toss them out,
These maps of peregrination.

Unlike our forebears in
Climate controlled Eden,
We wear the fig-leaves
Of our wandering.

How to Lose Your Accent in 28 Days

Concerned about how
My half-breed
Post-colonial tongue
Sounded to non
Non-White ears,
Tired of people inquiring
If I'd come from
Jamaica,
And provoked by
The bemusement caused
When I asked the Home
Depot Guy where
The sink augers were,

I embraced the insult
To identity, searched
Online, and found
"The Accent Reduction
Institute of
Ann Arbor."

"People are going to laugh,"
Edna said, "at an English
Ph.D., going for speech
Classes. All you have
To do is pretend to
Be uppity when you
Speak."

But I didn't want
To sound British or
Posh. I wanted
Words ending
In curled Rs,
Sentences blended
With softened Ts,
Nasalized vowels
On my breath.

I wanted speech to
Defy skin.

Eight hours
Of intensive work to
Straighten out the
Kinks of my tongue,
Would set me back
575 bucks and
I wondered if
I could write a check
Against the white
Man's debt to my people.

I went cheap and put in
A request at the Public
Library for a book
And CD that promised
"952 Ways to
Lose Your Accent
In 28 Days."

The next day, I received
The message:
"Your request is canceled
Because the owning
Library cannot fulfill it."

Instead of turning my
Tongue, perhaps I should
Work on getting it
Canceled.

For Friends Recently Wronged

People who turn to words
Remain indifferent to how
Hypocrites misuse them—
Like decorative party
Wrap around empty boxes,
Or ornamental bows on
Thoughtless trinkets—
By dismissing
The weight, gravity, resistance
Brought by words.

People who stand on words
Can't help but be bemused
When bureaucrats manipulate them—
Like future profit
On short sold shares,
Or bonds
Endlessly derived—
By exaggerating
The hope, power, promise
Contained in words.

People who rest in words
Die a little each time
Hurtful words are spoken—
Like daggers in the back
Suddenly stuck
Or a booby trap's
Deceitful death—
By those who never feel
The peace, healing, wholeness
Secured by words.

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 ...

Why this Blog is "locked"

This is just a brief post to let readers that I've invited know why the blog requires a log in. I'm applying for jobs both in the U.S. and back home, and I'd rather not have prospective employers snooping around the internet and forming skewed impressions. I'm pretty sure that googling a job applicant is a practice that is extremely common now, even though I really doubt the value of a google search unless an individual is extremely prominent. Coupled with incidents where individuals have been threatened by their employers or dropped from a job search because of the their online personas, I think it's a wise move on my part to just password protect the blog.

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 ..."

Too Many Errors

I managed to cause this screen to pop up yesterday on the latest chapter of my dissertation. It's the first time that I've seen this error message. It came up on page 76 at the 21 659 word mark. I guess this chapter DOES have lots of strangely spelled early Middle English words!

On Reading

Given that I spend much of the day reading, this recent article on reading in the NYT caught my eye. It's rather long but well worth the time. Of course, I was also rather interested in it because it deals with whether or not the Internet has had a negative impact on the ability of children and adults to think. Reading, of course, is the site of contention in all this. The tussle is over whether interacting with non-traditional texts via the Internet is compromising our ability to store and analyze information. I guess that a high level of competence in traditional literacies has always been a gold-standard of sorts when it comes with academic and intellectual success, and whether being literate in the new media of the Internet promotes a similar form of intellectual growth, retards our ability to think, or complements a more traditional view of literacy and intelligence, is really an interesting debate. Of course, it smacks of the "Is TV Bad For You?" debate, but just as the cloning controversy is a more interesting variation of the abortion debate, the Internet offers more complicated options than TV.

From a personal perspective, I could easily see myself as a proponent of either camp. Given that I've plowed through my fair share of heavy going novels, it would serve my sense of moral indignation to condemn YouTube, Facebook, and yes, blogs. And I think a certain amount of this is clear from the article. Those who speak in defense of more traditional literacies seem motivated to hold off what they see as a decay civilization, as they've defined it of course. I suppose there's a bit of a conservative streak in me that suggests that everyone should avail themselves to the same modes of suffering (as well as pleasure) that I've associated with reading. I get the sense that it's more than "academic outcomes" or "intellectual achievement" that's at stake: It's also about how we define our cultural technologies and who manages to dictate how subjectivities are formed (and controlled) vis a vis these.

I also do my fair share of "new media" perusing. I haven't read a traditional newspaper in years, love YouTube, and when the mood strikes me, could be up there with the most fanatical of users of chat programs (Ok, the last claim is probably untrue, and unlike a real savvy Internet multi-tasker, I really can't do much else except chat when I chat). I often think about how I'd probably wouldn't have done well in the O- and A- Levels or University exams if I had had the Internet access which we all now take for granted. Even now, I get endlessly interrupted (ok, distracted) with all the measureless and meandering paths to procrastination that the Internet has to offer. Surely the time and pleasure one spends surfing has to count for some expansion of one's intellectual powers? So I get it when the hordes of academics cited by the NYT article put up a doughty defense for the new literacies that are so different from traditional reading that new measures and definitions of literacy are called for. At the same time, I wonder if a lot of this has to do with make a big ballyhoo out of very little. I'm really cynical about endless academic claims in support of Internet literacies because they really does come off as cultivating niche areas of research that don't really tell us anything profound about how we think or process information. (I should be honest about this and state that I did write a Masters thesis on how Electronic Message Boards promote critical literacy and empower students .... Hah!) Still, if an academic wins acclaim (and tenure, promotion, and the good life) by defending web-surfing habits, more power to him (and her).

In one sense, the conflict over reading literacy and Internet literacy recalls medieval debates over the growth of writing. With the growth of writing as a technology of the mind, medieval thinkers were afraid that people would lose the arts of memory, and eventually lose both knowledge and the ability to reason because they'd become to dependent on marks on a page. The way that the Internet is becoming everybody's prosthetic memory (and perhaps brain) parallels this medieval anxiety about the loss of knowledge. This article that is in the Atlantic (which the NYT article refers to) discusses the issue quite nicely. I've never really had a good memory (and no, just because I'm a Lit student does not mean I can quote from the Western canon at will, though if I could it would be really cool ...), so I can't really tell if the Internet has made me dumber. I will, however, say that accumulating information does give one the sense that one has processed and thought about the stuff. So, clicking through links and quickly browsing Wikipedia does often cause me to think that I'm learning stuff that I'm probably not. But this isn't new. I remember how we (while in JC and Uni) would photocopy reams of articles from journals and books and feel as if we'd done a whole lot of studying. It's a good thing that photocopying is so expensive here, it forces me to sit in the library and take notes by hand, and I think I tend to process the information more diligently than if I were to mindlessly underline sections and merely make marginal comments.

I return to this post after a bit of a break.

A book that I finished about a week ago, and had begun when I first started out this post, deals with the relationship between knowing stuff and being smart, and the relevance of factoids in life, involving issues, I guess, that are tangentially touched upon by the articles I refer to above. It's by A.J. Jacobs, who is quite a character (in a preppy, nerdy, "everyone-graduated-from-Harvard-or-Yale, I-only-went-to-Brown" kind of way), and it's called "The Know It All". It's really quite an intriguing feat that he undertakes. Jacobs decides to read the entire Encycleopedia Britannica. Yup, from A to Z. It's pretty amazing that he manages to do it, all 44 million words within a year, WHILE keeping his day job as an editor at Esquire. It's an easy and entertaining read (Jacobs's book, I mean) but his chatty writing style doesn't obscure the greatness of his achievement or the his enthusiasm for knowledge. Another more recently published book by Ammon Shea, recounts his experience reading the entire OED.

So what do these epic reading enterprises, undertaken in an age of media proliferation tell us about how knowledge is valued in a world where technology appears to be muscling out traditional literacies? I guess reading has become, from a certain perspective, a vast undertaking. There is now a certain novelty attached to reading, and reading what appears to be dry as dust material for pleasure is an oddity of sorts. I also think that the participatory effect of reading, which is still valued at a really young age, is somehow pushed aside by the richness of the new media. No one reads out loud nowadays, at least it takes a conscious effort to do so; and, people don't read that much to each other anymore. The private experience of reading has been made an even more exclusive and exclusionary practice, since the ease with which one can respond through writing or performing on new media texts makes the performance of the traditional text laborious and time-consuming.

I know all this sounds nostalgic for a past where we spent a little more time feeling the rustle of pages between our fingers, and spending entire days with books rather than blogs, and it is, in part. But I'm just not exactly ready to trumpet the wholesale triumph of the new media over my books, if only because books still look great all lined up on the shelf.