I have been moving out of my office in preparation to moving south next week. One thing I have learned is that there will always, always be more library books, often in the most unexpected of places. This is the result of the long loan-period for faculty, lecturers and grad students -- you get the books for an entire academic year. So, things pile up. I had one of my colleagues, on my last trip to the library, offer to loan me the red wagon (belonging to her daughter) that she had in her office this week, but it was the last trip, and there were only four more books, so I said no.

Some of these books I even forget why I checked them out in the first place. Others, I would prefer not to remember. Still others I would like to keep, but that is unfortunately not the way libraries work.

I have discovered the key to productivity: controlled fidgeting.

I finished a chunk of my first draft of my book proposal today, and the hackey sack was an enormous help. I need to get two more, so I can juggle. (I used to have four, but I gave three to my younger brother when he went off to college in 03, and I never replaced them.)

Possibly I will take up juggling, in general. This could be a breakthrough.

Also, book orders are in and that is an end to it! I decided to assign The Tempest after all, although teaching Shakespeare sort of gives me the willies. I also ordered, for the reading pleasure of the students in the history methods class, a work called History and Historians: A Historiographical Introduction.

I cannot write the thing. I cannot do it. Three or four pages about a project I am intimately familiar with, having written all of it myself, and I keep putting it off. I have never had trouble writing anything before this year. But suddenly, I can't write the book proposal.

However, I have to do this this summer. I have to write this proposal and get it out, I have to revise the mss a little, mainly for lenth, and then I have to write one (1) conference paper from scratch, write one (another) paper in article form, and then prepare a conference version of it, and prepare two syllabi.

Did I mention that I am on a ten month contract, so I do not get paid in July or August? I am good at managing my money, so I have plenty to live on, but not getting paid makes me disinclined to work.

Also, it's warm outside, and I could be on the couch reading fantasy novels.

p.s. To the Pennsylvania Historical Society: Please quit sending me email reminders to join the Pennsylvania Historical Society. I AM NOT GOING TO JOIN THE PENNSYLVANIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY.

That is all.

I think I'm going to assign The Tempest for part of the reading for my Atlantic world course. I've never taught Shakespeare to undergraduates before and the thought makes me hesitate, because it's a very different kind of text to what I normally teach. The students will read it along side texts about early settlements, encounters with others, and similar topics. I think I can make it work, although it's more complex as a text to what I normally work with. Also, the language tends to throw some of the students -- I'm doubtful I can assign the whole thing for a single week's reading, although ideally I'd like to.

Must consider further about this.

The main reading/reference room in our library has one large window on which are stenciled in gray the names of all the university's trustees and presidents back to the university's founding. It is, I will reiterate, quite a large window. This window faces south, so the reading room becomes pleasantly warm in the afternoons. This is in contrast with much of the rest of the library, which is underheated in the winter and overcooled in the summer, because the books require it, evidently. When I was studying for my comprehensive exams (examinations that PhD students take after the second or sometimes the third year of graduate study, after the coursework but before writing the dissertation) in the history reading room three floors down, my toenails would often turn blue. It was cold down there.

But the Trustees Reading Room, as it is called, is far from cold, due to that lovely big window. I fell asleep there this afternoon, deep enough to dream. Somewhat embarrassing, particularly since I'd fallen asleep with my head on my rolled-up sweater and my upper arms against the edge of the table, so that I had marks across my shoulders that suggested I'd spent the afternoon tied to something. (They're gone now.) I'm getting close to the age where falling asleep in public ceases to elicit the "hey, how charming, a sleepy student" response and begins to elict the "ma'am, do you need help?" response. I haven't gotten the second yet but I'm unwilling to risk it. Maybe once I turn thirty I won't take naps in the library anymore.

Also, because I am leaving this place at the end of the month, the ID office has seen fit to deactivate my ID card. Or, they have seen fit to partially deactivate my ID card. I can't get into the gym, but I can still prox myself into the building my office is in. Also, since the history department is old school, I still have my outer door and faculty lounge keys. Must remember to return those.

I am utterly stuck with the English Atlantic course. I think I want to assign Aphra Behn's Oroonoko and I have a few short scholarly articles in mind, but I need more primary readings. And I have one week to figure this out. Argh. But the way these things usually work for me is that I'll stare at my computer for two hours, and then give up and go to the record store, and while I'm pawing through the classical new arrivals bin, THE BEST BOOK EVER will occur to me.

Perhaps I will now go to the record store.

Favorite thing about my job: I AM UTTERLY UNSUPERVISED.

Woot!

I have been in Tennessee for the past week. I had to find an apartment for this fall, and my buddy Jay the physicist and I both needed a vacation, so we went to Nashville for a week. Neither of us know anything about country music, so we were entirely unaware that there was a big country music awards festival going on -- total pandemonium downtown. Lots of sunburned people taking pictures of the Grand Old Opry, and a long, long line for ice cream. (It was weird, though -- most of the noise and crowds were right on the main drag. Walk a few streets back and it's dead quiet.)

Several things about Nashville. One, it is hot. I mean, my god, it's June, and it's 90 degrees. There are already fireflies. And humid as all hell. (Jay, whose feet are immune to violent swings in temperature, bought cowboy boots, and wore them the whole time.)

Two, bluegrass bars are fun. The beer tends to be cheap, too.

Three, I am the one with the accent. This is actually sort of fun, as normally I have a fairly straightforward nondescript American accent that now and then -- when I get mad, or excited -- has some little regional tweaks to it. (I was on a bus in London once, with an Aussie friend, and an old guy in the seat in front of me turned around and asked where I was from. I explained, and he said I had a very nice accent. My first thought was that the Aussie friend and I were talking too loudly and he wanted me to be quiet, but the friend said she thought he was genuinely complimenting my accent. But whatever.) In Tennessee, however, I'm the one who's definitely from somewhere else.

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I figured out what books I'm going to use for the history methods course. I was racking my brains about this for several days. Basically, I need two books, a secondary source and a substantial and interesting primary source. Not just anything will do -- the secondary work has to be approachable for undergraduates, vivid, well written, with not just a cogent and interesting argument, but one that makes a clearly defined contribution to the field and has sources and methodological aspects that are worth discussing at length. Also, it has to be either short enough to read in a week, or long and meaty enough that it can be read over several weeks.

The book I picked was by Rhys Isaacs, and the title is The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790 (Williamsburg: Omohundro Institute for Early American History and Culture, 1999). It's a wonderful book about the structure of eighteenth-century Virginian society. To go along with it, I think I'm going to assign William Byrd II's histories of the trip to survey the line between Virginia and Carolina in the early 1700s. Byrd left two versions of this, a formal one, and an informal one, the latter very bawdy and gossipy and entertaining. I haven't quite worked out all the details of the course yet, but I think these two books will go well together.

Now, to figure out the readings and assignments for the English Atlantic course. More fun, but also more tricky.

(Designing courses is one of the great pleasures in life, I think.)

I checked my department mail this afternoon, and found something unexpected, but in a really nice way. One of my students had left me a thank-you card, and a pretty little glass paperweight. She had enjoyed the semester, and wanted to tell me so. This is the young woman who suffered two concussions playing rugby this spring, and for a while was struggling to get work done. She's very smart, and despite a fairly severe head injury turned in some of the best work in the course.

I've never had a student thank me like this before. I was really touched -- it was such a sweet gesture. All the more reason to keep trying to be a better teacher. Happiness!

I have found out what I will be teaching this fall in my new southern location. Two sections of History 200, which is the intro history methods course for majors, and History 243, which is the English Atlantic World, 1500-1688. History 243 is right exactly my kind of thing, and I get to design the course, and this is going to be awesome. History 200 is also kind of exciting too, because it's useful to have taught an undergraduate methods course in your field.

The only difficulty here is that I have to have at least the books picked out by June 30, because the book orders have to be in by July 1. My department (new department) will take care of the ordering for me, and even request my desk copies (note to self: must assign things I don't own yet) but I do have to decide what the books are, which means two new syllabi in about as many weeks. Gaak.

And I have an article to finish, a conference paper to write, and a book proposal to draft.

One of the great and terrible distractions of academic life is the departmental listserv. Ours is called Pythia, and on the whole, people tend to use it mostly to unload furniture. Everyone still remembers when our colleague John-Paul tried to sell his old mattress a few years ago, and to this day no one has forgotten the Great Flavia Coffee Machine Brouhaha of Fall Term 2005. I was in London that fall doing research, but I clearly recall the lengthy email scuffle over whether the coffee machine (which uses little plastic packets of coffee) was sufficiently environmentally friendly. It isn't really, compared to a drip coffee maker or even the old espresso machine it replaced, but the Flavia machine stayed. We compromised, environmentally -- there are no longer paper cups available in the lounge. Individual mugs are mandatory.

But you see what I mean about the listserv.

Anyhow, one thing that did turn up on the listserv recently was this article about gay men in early America. The author, Larry Kramer, is essentially saying that historians have historicized sexuality far too much, and as a result we have unfairly written a lot of gay relationships (and a lot of gay sex) out of history.

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The member of my erstwhile dissertation committee who friended me on Facebook has been taking little quizzes to see what people of Middle Earth he would belong to (humans, orcs, elves, hobbits, etc.). He ended up human and is quite pleased about this result.

Oddly enough, this just makes me like him more.

The term is over!!! All my essays are graded, the grades have been submitted, my seminar students have picked up their essays and other work, and I have no more pedagogical responsibilities until September!

I have two and a half uninterrupted months to work on my book and get another article out. I can work in my office, or I can work in my bed. Or at the coffee shop. Or at the library. I have no time commitments. I can do WHATEVER I WANT.

I love my job.

I got a phone call about an hour ago from a person named Dr. Murphy at what I think is a large university in the midwest. They're hiring for a one-year lectureship, the same kind of thing as the one I've pretty much got lined up in Tennessee, and they were calling to see whether I was interested. I had applied for the job several months ago, and since I don't have a firm offer from this place in Tennessee I am of course interested in the abstract, but we managed to get to that part of the conversation before I could go back and say -- wait, who are you and where are you calling from? So, I have agreed in theory that I am interested in interviewing for a job the nature and identity of which remain somewhat fuzzy to me.

I checked the area code of the number on my phone after the conversation, and the area code was Montana (Montana has only one, I have learned). I haven't applied to anything in Montana, so this is peculiar. However, the name Murphy matches up to a name on the faculty of one place that I applied to, so I think I've figured it out. However, I'm going to listen very carefully the next time they call me, which they promised to do next week when their dean approves bringing people for interviews.

This is one of those things, I suspect, that can lead to much embarrassment if allowed to develop too far. However, as I said, next time I will figure out first thing who it is that I am talking to.

I just got Facebook friended by one of the members of my erstwhile dissertation committee. As did one of my colleagues, a fellow early-Americanist. His worry is that this particular professor tends to have Joe Biden moments -- he'll just say things without thinking. For example, as a result of this particular professor, I now know that a certain tenured history professor at Yale had to take some time last year to get sexually re-acquainted with his wife, whatever that means. So, the issue will be the extent to which my colleague and I have to police ourselves on Facebook now.

But of course, shooting one's mouth off (shooting off one's mouth? Is there a difference? I hope one of these doesn't actually mean BANG no more mouth) is what LJ is for, after all.

I just finished grading a stack of 33 historiographical essays on various topics in pre-colonial African history. What struck me most about these was not any individual one, but how different they were from the first essay for this class, the one about the African epic poem Sunjata. Many more of these later essays are coherent, well-argued pieces of writing. Far more of them had theses. (Note to student X: the plural of words like thesis, analysis, parenthesis, etc. is not thesis', analysis' or parenthesis'. An apostrophe does not a plural make, dammit.) I don't think it's merely improvement in the students' skills over the semester, either, and it is certainly not attributable to my teaching.

The difference is in the essay prompt. The assignment description for the second essay was more specific than for the first; the trouble with the first was that it asked students to do five different things in the space of five to seven pages, and didn't given them a sense of which were the most important. These things were quite different, and it was not clear how they were meant to fit together. Moreover, not all the students were history majors, and as a result some of them simply had no idea what the conventions were for the type of essay they were being asked to write. As a result, only one student got an A on paper #1.

In contrast, the second essay prompt was much clearer about expectations. It explained what the students were expected to do, and what they would be evaluated on. It offered a little more direction, without too many limitations. The thing about college essay writing is that there is always going to be an element of artificiality to it. The question is how to manage that artificiality in such a way that students are able to do something that is interesting, and challenging, but not so far beyond their resources that they merely end up confused. It's a game of strategic limitations. (I suppose that one could argue that all intellectual work is a matter of strategic limitations, with some sets of constraints being more effective, or more productive of new ideas than others, but that is a subject for another day.)

* * *

Also, note to Catalina in my writing seminar: I find it utterly charming that you email me about typos in your essays and explain the necessary corrections, but most of the time I can figure out for myself that the footnote was supposed to go outside the quotation marks. Proofreading should be done before the essay is turned in, or not at all.

I have had an interesting week, the most interesting part of which is that I am very likely going to move to Tennessee. I have for all intents and purposes been offered a one-year lectureship at a large private university there, which means that I will be teaching history rather than history/writing -- bonus! Also, it pays more. The load is 3/3, which is a killer, but it's slightly higher in status than my current job.

It's not entirely certain yet. I talked to their department chair on the phone yesterday, and she says she foresees no difficulties, which means this will probably work -- but I am not renting the U-haul just yet.

I would like to live in Tennessee, though.

I just got an email from a student who wanted a three hour extension on a paper because the looming deadline was giving him writer's block.

The elegant circularity of this won me over -- I gave him until midnight.

From an otherwise gallopingly excellent paper about Indian slavery in early Virginia:

The English believed that they had a duty, as members of the Church of England, to convert the Powhatans to Puritanism.

Today is one of my favorite teaching days, because we are in the second class of week eleven, and that means . . . .INTERPRETIVE STANCE!!

The students have been working on research papers, but their last assignment, due in a few weeks, is an essay in which they read the documents from the Rousby murder (remember Rousby?) and put together a defense for the accused murderer, George Talbot. It's an exercise in close reading, source analysis, and persuasive writing, and it's also fun. Part of the challenge is not only coming up with an argument, but figuring out how to fine-tune it in terms of audience to make it most effective.

So, today we're doing audience and interpretive stance. The students are finishing up their research papers, so for this they use their arguments for those papers. What happens is this. They form into small groups, and among them choose whose argument will be presented. The groups are the same as their writing groups, the groups of three or four that I put them in a few weeks ago -- they meet outside class to exchange drafts, give commentary and criticism, etc (and they get graded for doing this, so they all usually do it.) So, the whole group is pretty familiar with the paper/argument that has been chosen.

Then, they select a card from a stack. On the card is an audience. They have to present the argument they chose to the rest of the class, as if the rest of us were that audience -- and we have to guess what audience we are.

Their choices are:

roomful of elderly British people
composers of 19th century light opera
Writing Center Fellows [these are undergrads who volunteer at the university writing center to help students with their papers]
a 7th grade social studies class
the President of the University
communists
beat poets
The university's class of 1976
tobacco company executives
Hollywood producers
hipsters

These presentations tend to be both profoundly funny, and good exercise in argument-framing. There was a beat-poets one from a semester or two back which I still remember fondly. (There was drumming.)