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I wrote most of my master's thesis to Annie Lennox's Medusa and Tori Amos' Strange Little Girls. So I think it is not a coincidence that Patti Smith’s new all-cover CD, Twelve, arrived in my mailbox today, when I've been writing the second conference proposal that features dissertation material.
I also suspect the diss-writing will feature copious replays of everything Lucinda Williams ever recorded. Lucky, lucky Mr. Husband, whose study is directly adjacent to mine through an open door.
People I work with wonder about us when we leave and drive for weeks on end. Walking the streets of St. Paul with G. on Friday, he asked, “But what is it that you do when you’re in the car all that time?” He’s not the first to ask.
We talk and we don’t talk. We listen to music. For the first day, I am antsy and agitated and I pick fights. But then the miles begin to sweep my mind clean and I want nothing more than to keep moving. It’s not ambition, it’s just go. I won’t want to drive for less than ten hours at a stretch, following the prairies down into swamps, tracing the yellow lines. The other day, I tried to explain that the point is to drive until your head is utterly empty and then stop somewhere interesting and strange. Fill up your mind, give it lots to chew on, and then drive until it empties out again. Repeat. Repeat. Spend time with your companion, and then spend time apart. Repeat. Drive.
We’ll leave next month, as soon as grades are submitted and my prospectus is defended. And I won’t come back until someone makes me.
The 2007 Feminism(s) & Rhetoric(s) conference invites proposals on civic discourse, feminisms, and rhetorics. The conference draws inspiration from the 50th anniversary of Little Rock’s Central High School integration, the Clinton Presidential Library, Heifer Project International & the Clinton School for Public Service.
For conference information, go to http://femrhet.cwshrc.org
NEW EXTENDED DEADLINE: April 27, 2007
Submit your abstracts online—http://femrhet.cwshrc.org/submissions.php
Register for the conference online—http://femrhet.cwshrc.org and click Conference Registration
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Confirmed Keynote Speaker: Krista Ratcliffe
Invitation Pending Keynote Speaker/not confirmed: Senator Hilary Rodham Clinton
Featured Speakers: Hui Wu, Shirley Wilson Logan, Malea Powell, Carol Mattingly, Jessica Reyman, and more.
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This conference asks us to explore civic discourse and how civic discourse, feminism(s) and rhetoric(s) interact with, for, and against each other.
What is civic discourse? What counts as civic discourse?
How has civic discourse changed over the years for women? For feminism?
How can we expand the definition of civic discourse?
What does it mean to participate in civic discourse in the 21st century?
How do women participate in civic discourse?
How has the internet/electronic discourse affected civic discourse?
How has civic discourse become corporatized?
How has globalization impacted civic discourse?
What does it mean to be a feminist and/or rhetorician participating in civic discourse?
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We look forward to reading proposals from a wide variety of disciplines, including, but not limited to, history, ethics, new media, political science, social justice, pedagogy, law, literature, art and art theory, queer theory, international studies, cultural studies, race studies, economics, environmental studies, science, social activism, communication studies, technical communication, visual design, philosophy, and engineering.
Questions--contact Barbara L’Eplattenier (bleplatt@ualr.edu) or Marcia Smith (mmsmith@ualr.edu).
Compatriot G and I conducted Very Solemn Research at the Science Museum of Minnesota this morning. When we were done, I wandered around and made a bunch of other photos for the heck of it.
The Bakerina has bestowed five questions upon me.
1. What brought you to the study of rhetoric?
Coincidence. Luck. Good advice.
When I went back to school at 21, I was an English major. The English and Rhetoric Departments had split about five years before that in a division not unlike a Southern Baptist church split. In other words, the twain rarely met. But I needed to declare a minor, and since I did a lot of technical writing in my job it made sense to pick Professional and Technical Writing. That program was housed in Rhetoric. I took some classes, and at one point Barry Maid asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I said I wanted to teach literature at the college level. He asked me if I wanted to ever actually have a job or make any money, and explained the state of the Literature job market to me.
The next year I met with Rich Raymond, who did all the undergrad advising even though he also bore all the duties of Department Chair, and he pointed out that I had enough hours left in my degree to do a double major. So I did. And at some point along the line, I figured out that I was more inclined toward the study of Rhetoric than Literature. I adore novels and poems and plays and short stories, but I much prefer to enjoy them and put them back on the shelf rather than pull them apart to see how all the parts work. On the other hand, there's nothing I like better than dissecting everyday texts and the problems that surround them, and that eventually led me to graduate school and a specialty in intellectual property issues. And now here I am.
2. Which of Mister Husband's signature dishes is your favorite?
Well, the spicy beef is definitely a favorite, but I already blogged it the other day. So, having eliminated that... Mister Husband makes two things that I adore and do not cook myself. One involves flinging things together, but the flinging must done correctly: tacos. He makes proper, hardcore tacos pollo and tacos cerdo. These consist of lightly griddled corn tortillas, spicy meat, roughly chopped onion and cilantro, and salsa verde. The second dish is the opposite of flinging. He makes amazing ice cream using a process that involves beakers, metric measures and darkroom thermometers.
3. What is the most satisfying moment you've ever had as a teacher?
The ones who stay in touch are pretty satisfying. Those times when everyone is actually fully engaged in a discussion are awesome. Watching my Internet Tools & Issues students study IP issues this semester and seeing the light bulbs click on has been a lot of fun. But this still ranks as one of the all-time most satisfying moments in my short career.
4. Obligatory Music Nerd Question: If you could only have one Minutemen song on your music device of choice, would you pick "Have You Ever Seen the Rain?", "Courage" or "I Felt Like a Gringo"?
One Minutemen song??? OK. “Have You Ever Seen the Rain” is a default song around the house, but I’ve been put off my feed since I just saw a TV ad that featured Rod Stewart singing it. I can’t listen to “I Feel Like a Gringo” every day for the rest of my life, because it would depress me too much. So out of that list, it would have to be “Courage.” Unless it was “Jesus and Tequila.” Or “History Lesson Pt. 2.”
If the device is a video iPod, then it would be the video for “This Ain’t No Picnic.”
Unless it was one of the extras from We Jam Econo. Specifically, one of the songs from the Acoustic Blowout set, which is so gorgeous and tight.
My dear Jen, this is an entirely impossible question for me, even though you thoughtfully limited the variables.
5. You once wrote a post in which you compared the tag end of the long Minnesota winter to The Shining, with highly-strung, excruciatingly polite people being just one step away from unleashing rivers of blood at the supermarket; if you were given the opportunity to make this movie, complete with unlimited, Gilliam-esque budget, who would you cast in the starring roles?
I think this would be a short film that has one central character, and everyone else is an extra who’s a gonna die. Like One Hour Photo, only way more so, with no objects of fixation, and about one-quarter as long, which would be not at all like One Hour Photo, but perhaps you get my drift. If the lead was a guy, it’d have to be Philip Seymour Hoffman. I think he could do a polite, contained, secretly murderous Swede very well. His sort of face is fairly common around here. If the central character was a woman — which might be much more interesting— then, hmmm.... Claire Danes? (The Hours Claire Danes mixed with some Terminator 3 Claire Danes, not My So-Called Life Claire Danes.) Her facial features are also fairly common in the parts, and she does contained well. I’d say Frances McDormand, but there’s the whole Fargo thing. (Although what would happen if Marge Gunderson finally did lose her shit?)
Also, Steve Buscemi would have to cameo, because there’s a law that says Steve Buscemi has to be in every movie about the upper midwest, especially if they’re creepy. Seriously.
If you want to play, let me know in the comments. I’ll send you five questions to be answered at your leisure.
Lotsa chiles.
We woke up to snow this morning. Accumulated snow, not like the wussy snow from last Monday. And it was still snowing heavily when I drove to campus at noon.
I blogged the first snow of the winter on October 11, so today marks six months of winter weather. I remember reading Garrison Keillor’s description of long Minnesota winters and brutal, muddy, pollen-ridden, downright rude Minnesota springs when I was a kid. The concept completely boggled me. Where I grew up, winter started around Thanksgiving and was done by late January — sometimes mid-February, if it was really hanging on. But here I am, and I rather like it. As long as it keeps being winter, then it can’t progress to Minnesota spring. We’ll start traveling in mid-May, so I’m (probably pointlessly) hoping to miss most of spring here and just come back to lovely, lovely summer in early June.
— Wallace Stevens
The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings.
None of them are strange,
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches tigers
In red weather.
What do the few read for? “The nearest I have yet got to an answer is that we seek an enlargement of our being. We want to be more than ourselves. … We want to see with other eyes, to imagine with other imaginations, to feel with other hearts, as well as with our own. … One of the things we feel after reading a great work is ‘I have got out.’ … Not only nor chiefly in order to see what they are like but in order to see what they see, to occupy, for a while, their seat in the great theatre.” Here, for Lewis, is the vital center of reading: “Literary experience heals the wound, without undermining the privilege, of individuality. There are mass emotions which heal the wound; but they destroy the privilege … But in reading great literature I become a thousand men, and yet remain myself.”
Mostly C.S. Lewis, qtd in Lanham, The Economics of Attention, 149
Tonight, I finally ran into a piece of sushi I didn’t like: korikori, or cuttlefish. It came as part of a sashimi sampler. The taste is sort of indescribable — I remember bitterness and a sort of old onion sensation. I like eel and octopus, but found the texture of cuttlefish unpleasantly tough and yet somehow crisp.
Then lo and behold, a Nova special on cuttlefish was on when we came home. It’s surprisingly fascinating.
So now I know that I ate something whose brain was bigger than mine; that was likely more intelligent than an octopus, which are very smart; and that could camouflage itself and conjure a living strobe effect. I’m even sorrier that I ate it.
I found the desktop meme through What the Hell is Wrong With You?. I’ve become much less enthusiastic about memes in the past few years, but this one doesn’t bug me — maybe because it’s vaguely similar to the images inspired by Johndan’s workspace project.
Until I took shots of these, I never really noticed that I have an affinity for using Internet art as backgrounds, particularly if it involves animals.
April Fool’s Day seems like a good day to seriously commence a dissertation, doesn’t it? It worked really well the last time I bought a car. Seriously.
(For those who wonder: no, I haven’t defended the proposal yet. But I’ve been told not to wait around in the meantime.)