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It has helped to publicize the apparently fully dastardly termination by the Arden Shakespeare of Patricia Parker as editor of the third series Midsummer Night’s Dream, an edition I am not alone in anticipating with the greatest eagerness.
The list of names on the petition to reverse this termination, perpetrated by the private firm Cengage, which now manages the publication of the Ardens, reads as a who’s-who in early modern studies. (Most amusingly, Gary Taylor writes succinctly that he has “written to the editors” at Cengage — how genuinely, and yet humorously, menacing!) As well it should read: Parker is a scholar of the highest order, and I can only imagine that her work on this edition meets, if not excels, the high standards of intelligence, creativity, precision, and integrity she has set throughout her career. I sincerely hope she will be reinstated, and that the Cengage brass will hang their faces in shame as they offer her their most profound apologies.
If Parker’s account of her relationship with the editors at Cengage is accurate, and I can’t believe we have any reason to doubt it, her termination not only smacks of poor ethics but casts doubt on the integrity of the entire enterprise of the Arden Shakespeare — which, as anyone who has ever taught from one of their editions or used one for research knows, constitutes a serious blow to the field of Shakespeare studies.
The scandal further raises a number of questions about the state of academic publishing, most of which I am not remotely prepared to address – I do hope it will raise those questions to a visible level of broad discussion. Meanwhile, assess the thing for yourself using the links above, and then sign the petition.
[I am amazed to find that I already have a "misadventures in editorship" tag -- how convenient.]
I am a complete fool for believing that crises of faith should be recompensed by moments of grace.
And yet… and yet… and yet…
Today, Barack Obama gave the keynote address at my little alma mater’s commencement ceremony. I, of course, on my peculiar piece of English earth, could not attend. So my Victorianist and I wired ourselves into the webcast and prepared ourselves for a healthy dose of Hope, Audacity, and other such forms of inspiration.
He was, of course, inspiring. Aside from a bit of vaguely offensive stumping, his speech on the value of investing in small changes in the interest of creating bigger ones, was, yes, inspiring, luminous, et caetera.
But you know what? Michael S. Roth, my little alma mater’s new president, was more inspiring, more luminous. Michael Roth was the one who made me cry. Michael Roth was the one who made me proud to be an alumna of this institution, who reminded me why I value as deeply as I do the lessons that I learned there, who reminded me of the urgent need for me to take those lessons with me into the world.
His words, in part:
Being in the company of students as gifted and energetic as Wesleyan’s class of 2008, gives me faith that we may well be able to reject the status quo, to build a politics and a culture of hope and community rather than of fear and divisiveness. Your thoughtfulness and courage, your questioning and your exuberance keeps me from becoming cynical and pessimistic. If you engage in the serious politics of change, if you participate in the struggle for social justice and sustainable economic growth, I believe we can change course. Now, it would be easier for you to use your smarts, your sophisticated learning, to be funny and hip, to be smart and ironic. But you don’t have to take this path of least resistance. You have the moral and intellectual capacity to take the path of actually making real progressive change, of becoming productive idealists.
For many generations of students, Wesleyan University has stood for the opportunity to connect serious intellectual and aesthetic work with making a difference in the world. Wesleyan students have the talent, the capacity and the drive to create something new. This year’s graduates, like Wesleyan alumni before you, will contribute to shaping our culture in the future, because otherwise it will be shaped by people for whom creativity and change, freedom and equality, diversity and tolerance, are much too threatening. We are counting on you to help shape our culture, so that it will not be shaped by forces of oppression and violence.
Violence remains one of the sad, disturbing parts of our lives. It is the loud noise that keeps us from hearing the music of the world. Violence not only destroys meaning, but it has the potential to disrupt our very capacity to make future meaning. Wesleyan University resists that violence [...] As scholars and artists, as scientists and as writers, you also set an example against the de-meaning that is violence.
You will hear people tell you that the greatest protection against violence is surveillance, that greater security is developed with higher fences to keep out the foreigners, or that we must project violence on distant shores to keep our homes safe. DO NOT BELIEVE THESE MESSAGES. Please remember that your education stands in opposition to non-sense and cruelty; please recall your capacity to create when others around you call for destruction.
This “education” is an investment in the fate of the universe. I wonder, sometimes, what my choice to pursue a career in what we quaintly call “higher education” actually means. Today, Michael Roth reminded me that to be an educator, and to do it well, is to insert one’s entire being into the fabric of the universe and shake it as hard as one can.
That is what the best among faculty of my alma mater do every time they step into a classroom. That is what makes them shapers of the minds of a body of students known for their commitment to meaningful change. My fellow graduates are all, in one way or another, teachers. They teach every day of their lives. They are invested in transmitting their commitments and their passions. My alma mater is a community of committed teachers, and I am feeling very powerfully at this moment my connection to that community.
We don’t have to be rabble-rousers (though some of us are, and brilliantly). The material we teach doesn’t have to be “topical,” or whatever, for it to be useful. The men and women whose student I have been blessed to be have taught me many things in many ways, but all of them have taught me mindfulness. They have taught me to respect the complexity of the universe, and to engage it with all my intellectual might. They have taught me that this is what resistance means — that to engage, to refuse stasis, to create, is to shake the fabric of the universe.
That work will be mine to carry forward, one day — rather soon, really. I look forward to it more than I can possibly say. Today, a quirky young intellectual who by some miracle has got his hands on the presidency of my little alma mater reminded me that I owe it to myself to rise to the challenge of that work, and that I will be damned lucky if I can live up to the example my teachers have set me.
Grad students especially, but also everyone else: go now — now — to this new blog, The Economical Academic. Kermit’s post today about taxes made my heart sing — not because I’m afraid of taxes, but because it’s refreshing to see useful, clear information get disseminated with a view to actually helping people. Other posts on budgeting, debt, and so on promise that this blog will continue to be a productive, practical place. Huzzah.
Updating the blogroll to add:
Servetus, of (Almost) Without Footnotes. I have no idea what her deal is, really. And that’s what I like.
Margaret Soltan, of University Diaries. If deity were an elected office, I would quit my job to get her on the ballot.
Cardinal Wolsey, of Cardinal Wolsey’s Today in History. Tudory goodness.
Kathy G., of The G-Spot. Great new cultural-political blog by a poli sci Ph.D. student. No idea where she gets the time for all those posts.
And please also go check out Luz, a lovely little web comic about sustainable living in urban environments, narrated by the very charming Luz, who puts me completely to shame.
Poetry to follow.
[This blog has not lost its politics. They are simply in hiding. Someday when they're a little less shell-shocked they'll come out to play.]
I went to bed over an hour ago. I have been lying awake thinking about this:
We all take ourselves way too fucking seriously.*
Where is there room for play in the academy?
And who will help me find it, and nourish it?
*With the exception of squadratomagico, who is my hero in this regard. I nominate her to lead the Vanguard of Play.
Notice: this is going to be one of those long, self-indulgent, narcissistic posts that usually drive me insane when I read them, but of which I tend to write more than I probably should. You’ve been warned.
I mentioned a few posts ago that until the middle of my junior year in college, I fully intended to become a scholar of post-colonial francophone literatures. You see, reader, a smart, Academe-bound undergrad tends to study straight from the gut: she trips over something that sets her passions ablaze, and writes about that. It very swiftly becomes her dream. If it’s full of heady, new (to her) ideas with fancy jargonistic names, so much the brighter the blaze. She can’t see far enough ahead, or deeply enough into her subject-matter, to determine the real value of her work, or of her potential place within it. She is not, in other words, by any means prepared to make the career-shaping decision of which area to enter — that decision makes itself for her. And a lot of it is accident.
Assia Djebar, Leila Sebbar, Tahar Ben-Jelloun — they set me ablaze. They still do. But in the middle of that year, the year I was twenty-one, circumstances aligned (conspired?) to kick me across four hundred years, where I landed on my ass in the middle of the English Renaissance. (If we wanted to stretch the metaphor farther than would be wise, we could say that I have since stood up and scraped the horse-shit off my breeches, found a tavern, ordered up a bottle of sack, and got so drunk I couldn’t contemplate leaving if I wanted to.)
The benign circumstance: by a stroke of (more or less) divine luck, I found myself in Professor Wry’s classroom in the fall. I remained glued to my francophones for that feminist theory seminar, but felt so well-served by Wry’s steady-minded brand of pedagogy, and was fond enough of Shakespeare, that there was no question of not signing up for her seminar on race and early modern drama the following semester.
The malign circumstance: that same fall began the unnecessarily long process that became the single most humiliating, disgusting, self-disintegrating series of events ever to disrupt my young, otherwise blessed life. Details are immaterial, but this involved: multiple layers of betrayal — others’ betrayal of me, and much worse, my betrayal of others; sexual humiliation; nasty social factionalism; and the loss at my own cruelly inept hands of a very valuable friendship. What does this have to do with early modern studies? Nothing. Which is precisely the point. (See above, “accidence.”)
In the second or third week of the spring term, having got through the first phase of the Events by means of a cunning system of repression, denial, and grin-and-bear-it-tude, I was happily mucking around the early-seventeenth-century public theatres for term paper topics. When I went to Wry’s office with an idea about Desdemona, she (rightly) laughed at me. She then tossed Jonson’s Masque of Blackness into my lap, along with Mary Floyd-Wilson’s brilliant essay on it. A few wide-eyed library hours later, I was hooked.
The following week, Phase Two of the Events swung into full gear. The teetering protective barriers established between me and the Yuck by repression and denial crashed down and left me staring blankly at the wall for hours and hours every day. The only class I made it to was Wry’s. Something about her coldness, her exacting professorial demeanor, her refusal to admit anything other than rigor and attentiveness into the space of discussion — something about her classroom promised solace, and delivered it. I had scheduled a meeting with her for the following week. After class, I croaked meekly, “Can we make it Thursday instead?”
I tottered into her office, blankness in my eyes and rings under them, schlumped down in a chair and said, somewhat involuntarily, “Well. That was the most fucked-up week ever.” Now, Wry is not exactly a cuddly bundle of motherly comfort. But she mustered up enough empathy to ask, with sincere concern, what had happened.
Something clicked. “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Let’s get to work.”
So we did. I don’t remember what we talked about, or looked at, except that it involved a lot of geeking out over stuff on EEBO. At the end of the hour, I was smiling. You know it, reader — that smile that comes from a very profound source, the smile you can’t help smiling, the smile of recognition of something valuable to be worked on, the smile of inspiration at the inception of a new project. I think this was the first time I ever smiled that smile. It came out of the work, and it came out of the closeness of work with another person, of that kind of trust that only a mentorship can foster.
Meanwhile, nothing around me made sense. I couldn’t talk to my friends or my family; I certainly didn’t care about what went on in my other courses. I couldn’t handle being inside my own brain with myself, with my pathetic guilt.
The only things that made sense (and this is insane) were Jonson’s texts and the histories I was beginning to build around them. I read about clothing, stage-craft, nationhood, the humoral body, gender, race, proto-colonialisms, architectural design, you name it.
I loved what I read, and it sheltered me. I dove into work in order to shunt away everything else, until everything else could be dealt with in due course. I created a small burrow of comfort and sanity in that work. Two weeks after that Thursday meeting, I asked Wry to advise my thesis.
I stayed on campus over spring break to work on that paper. With the library to myself, with all its huge spaces and its brightness, I began to lay the groundwork – without knowing it, really – for the first piece of original academic work I would ever do. I applied for – and won – my first fellowships. I spent long, quiet hours for the first time in a special collections reading room.
I was building a (teetering, weird, ill-written) argument, yes, but more than that, I was building solace; I was building a world that I could inhabit safely, where I could safely be myself, where I could be alone and be happy.
As for the Events, well. Whatever. Time passes; drama works its shit out; you tot up the casualties, remind yourself Never To Do That Again, and you heal. You cover your scars, or sometimes you show them off, but they’re scars, and That’s All Over Now. Et puis voilà.
But remnants do often remain, and to my great surprise, the remnant of the Events was, well, beautiful. There I was with this gift, with this beautiful gift, the gift of an entire historical period, an academic field, the gift of ambition and love for my work. (I do tend to run screaming from Jonson these days, but that’s got a lot more to do with him than with me.) I don’t think I could have come to this period by any path other than the one that brought me here. I came to this period because I found nothing in it that I could identify with — I needed the distance, the lesson in cold critique, that Wry’s approach to research-advising and work on early periods both demanded. During the course of the Events, work on, say, Virginia Woolf would likely have destroyed what remained of my psyche and left me chattering inanely to the pigeons in Dishtown’s main street for the rest of my life.
I still value this aspect of this work — and, for that matter, of my relationship to Professor Wry. That relationship could, really, only be called “purely professional” – we rarely talk about anything but early-moderny, academicky things, and while I usually wear my heart on my sleeve with mentor-types, I never feel the urge to confide in her. And yet there is a warmth and a closeness to this relationship, this professional friendship — the comfort I derive from that closeness is exactly analogous to the comfort I derive from the work itself.
Today, I woke up with a case of what my father calls the creeping blue woozies (near kin, like as not, to the howling fantods). I moped for a bit. Then: “Fuck this.” I glanced over some articles, some notes, realized I’m ready to write on my Welsh paper. So I wrote. Back the woozies crept to wherever woozies come from. And here I am with a really stunning start — nothing revolutionary, naturally, but strong sentences smartly in step with the ranks of the ruling regime.
The bottom line? Not only do I love this work, reader; most of the time, it loves me back.
The application road has just come to an end, reader. And you may delight in never getting another of these posts, ever again.
Remember my huge enormous like totally embarrassing crush on the coolest kid in school?*
Well, reader, the coolest kid in school just asked me out on a date.
Scratch that. The coolest kid in school just asked me to fucking marry hir. I think ze’s the one, reader. I really think ze’s the one.
*Umm, I hereby rescind any tasteless jokes I may or may not have made comparing graduate education to sexual assault. However, coming from an anti-marriage queer, engagement is really only half a step up. Shall we think of it as a civil union, then? Perhaps a PACS? A friendly accord? Let’s go with friendly accord.
Cosy, cup of coffee, early Bloomsbury evening. Stunning sky. Smiling, occasionally, irrationally, to myself. Pop into Waterstones to pick up fresh Arden Merchant and Hamlet as I need them urgently, and I’m foolish enough to’ve left my overloved copies at home.
Sigh at the heft of the 3rd series Ham. Groan at thought of re-read.
Stroll slowly down Malet Street to Senate House, sipping coffee and reading the opening scene in the fast-fading light.
Stunning revelation:
Reader, Hamlet is a damned fine play.
I have re-had this revelation every single time I’ve re-read this play. And you know what? If everyone would just shut the fuck up about it, I wouldn’t forget to begin with!
If you know anything about me at all, reader, you know that my fondest ambition in life is to be crowned Queen of Discourse. My first act — my very first act, as Queen of All Discourse that Ever Was — will be to impose a 20-year moratorium on academic discussion of Shakespeare. That’s right. No books. No articles. No SAA (sorry guys, find something else to do with your beautiful spring weekend). No mandatory, or even voluntary, Shakespeare seminars, lectures, undergraduate-feeding-frenzies. No dissertations. No obnoxious letter-spats in the front pages of the TLS. Take every single volume with Shakespeare’s name in its title off the shelves of all academic libraries, everywhere. Lock up the early copies in a vault. Duct tape Brian Vickers’ mouth shut and take away his knighthood before someone gets hurt.
Let a new generation grow up unpoisoned. Let them write about Marlowe, or Kyd, or Fletcher, or whatsoever may please them. Let them come to Hamlet alone, unjaded, unfettered. Let them be awash in solitary, wordless, discourseless awe. And when, with a flourish, their Queen lifts her ban, let them, with bowed heads and pure hearts, begin to teach, begin to write, begin to read, afresh.
Because I love Hamlet. And I shouldn’t have to fight for that.
If it were up to me, reader, there would be no such thing as grades. I see where honors like “distinction” or, well, “honors” can be valuable, and can reward exceptional talent or skill, but regular-term grades? Nonsense. Useless nonsense.
Now, Brit Uni’s system is by far the worst I’ve ever encountered.
Bullshit item #1: Term papers are submitted “anonymously” to two “anonymous” examiners. Anonymous? My ass. One examiner is the tutor for the course, the other can only be one of two people currently teaching in my department, in my period. The course tutor will know which paper is mine, because, um, s/he helped me to develop it. Hello. And there aren’t that many students on my M.A. In one case, there were only two of us in the class, and our styles are totally different. It will be easy to tell which paper belongs to whom. Aside from “anonymous” commentary sent back through official channels, examiners (and thus tutors) are not officially allowed to discuss a student’s work with her. [!!!!!!!!!!!!!!]
Bullshit item #2: The earliest (earliest) possible return date for marks and commentary is one month into the new term. Which is only two months long. Most students tell stories of having gotten their marks only at the end of the following term, and of never having gotten any comments at all. Now, how is this supposed to be useful? (Again. Very few students on this M.A. If my undergrad profs could turn around twenty or more twenty-page papers in a week, surely these folks can handle less than ten in a month?) At the risk of sounding like a snowflake, how the hell am I supposed to learn from last term’s experience if I don’t get feedback, or if I don’t get it in time to implement it in the next round of papers?
Bullshit item #3: These papers are treated more or less as unseen exams, with access to books. Faculty are not allowed to read drafts of their students’ papers, or to give feedback on anything more substantive than a “plan.” Students are not, in fact, allowed to have their drafts read by anyone who is not an official Uni writing-center worker. If one of my tutors or one of my classmates reads a draft of my paper, it is said to give me an “advantage.” Um, well. Yes. That’s correct. It would be pretty bloody fucking advantageous if I could have a conversation with my mentors and my cohort about my work. I might even, well, learn something. And write a better paper! Please explain to me what’s unfair about that.
The system, I’m guessing, was designed in part to protect students from faculty bias, and in part (mostly) to protect faculty from grade-grubbing students, and to reduce in general the risk of litigiousness that comes with any assessment arrangement. (The whole problem would be solved with many fewer person-hours and a lot less money and paper if you did away with grades entirely. Ahem.) I’m all for protection, and grub-prevention, but I think this is extreme.
The other side of that coin is that this not only impedes a student’s learning process, it also impairs her ability to develop a close relationship with her mentors through work. It forces her to operate more or less in a void. Worst of all, it puts the entire emphasis on product, and none at all on process. I couldn’t give two shits about grades, as long as they’re not awful enough to hurt me later. What I care very, very deeply about is… well, learning. Is that so ridiculous? What shows up on my transcript is so astonishingly much less valuable to me than even a half-hour’s conversation with one of my teachers. If that conversation could, just once, be about my written work, it would teach me more than I will ever learn from the number spat out by a big, unwieldy, “anonymous” bureaucratic assessment-machine.
This goes back to something that never ceases to bother me: the academy is a community, not a machine. Yet institutions, especially big ones, so often refuse to recognize that. A university should be based on human relationships, to the greatest extent possible. That sounds so idealistic. But really? All I want is to hand my work directly to the person who fostered it, and have her hand it directly back to me, with her near-illegible scribbled marginalia decorating it. That is human. It’s also, apparently, too much to ask.
Fall term papers: complete; submitted. Minimally sufficient in one case; totally disastrous in the other. The process of the former taught me a great deal, enough that I don’t mind the mediocre product; the lack of process, as well as the poor product, of the latter will stand as a lesson. (Namely, Do Not Ever Do That Again.)
Ph.D. applications: complete; submitted. I’m feeling optimistic, triumphant, and frantic, all at the same time (think 3rd movement of Beethoven’s sixth symphony).
New Year’s Resolution: to be more careful. Not to involve myself in debacles of the sort that the term papers devolved into. To pace myself, forgive myself little gaffes in the interest of not committing big ones. To approach my academic world with more professionalism, more maturity. More on this, likely, later.
New term: one week old. Fresh, exhilarated. Dealing with my reservations (and resolutions) as responsibly as I am able. Ideas percolating, forward momentum gathering. Too much fracking Shakespeare.
Dissertation: the idea has been conceived. I’ll not name it for fear of jinxing it before it develops into a full-fledged diss-fetus, but, you know. Zygote. (Which, in some circles, counts as a life, so I’m already halfway there!) With any luck, three hours from now it will have an advisor (a midwife? a grandparent? a baby-daddy? this metaphor is taking me in unfortunate directions).
Holiday, tremendous need of: mounting. Paris next weekend? Yes.
