Publication update

I noticed that the Pastor and I are both in Volume 11 of eHumanista. Hopefully the links will be active soon.

Consensus: Speak mostly Spanish; write only in Spanish

Thanks for ya'll's thoughts on this issue. This is the first time I've given students the option of writing and presenting their work in either Spanish or English. I've had mixed results in the past but the majors and minors have done it. I think I will strongly encourage the majors to write and present in Spanish. I'm not sure what to do with the minors. Reviewing my original post I have succumbed to a false dichotomy that I have identified on this blog but have obviously yet to overcome. Why can't learning to express subtle or even basic ideas, themes, etc. in Spanish be part of a student's intellectual development? Why separate the two skills? I think I need to have more faith in my students abilities and be more comfortable with silence. But I can also imagine myself getting very exhausted and impatient as I try to help them find words to express what they really want to say in Spanish (circumlocution?). But I suppose that is part of my job here.

I think it is correct to point out that language skills or fluency is a minimum requirement for graduate school. I can't recall anywhere on an application asking for my ability to speak Spanish. I guess it is assumed. At the undergraduate level it probably needs to be a priority.

On another note, how is everyone's writing coming along this semester? I'm making good progress on my revision, slowly but surely, which is due 12/1. I also sent off an abstract Friday for a conference next April in Kentucky.

English or Spanish?

In my upper division course this semester I have given the students the option of using either Spanish or English for their final paper and oral presentation. My new division chair opposes the move. She prefers to use only the "target" language in her upper division courses. (She also loves to speak in education-ese, often talking about learning "outcomes," a term that sounds to me as if she were speaking of excrement.)

My lectures are all in Spanish as are most of the films. (The others are in French). All have English or Spanish subtitles. I encourage my students to speak Spanish, but when they can't, I don't mind at all if they speak English to make their points. I am mainly concerned with their intellectual development, and if language becomes an obstacle for them, I remove it. I'm sure most will write in English and present in English.

Have any of you had similar concerns?

My Newest Tool

No, it's not an iPhone. Have any of you used this? It seems to have what I have been looking for. I have been using RefWorks recently, but this seems a lot more flexible.

Marginalia in DQ

I just happened to notice this quote from Chapter IX of Part I. The fictional author has just found Cide Hamete Benengeli's manuscript. Is this Cervantes making fun of early modern reading practices?

...anduve mirando si parecía por allí algún morisco aljamiado que los leyese; y no fue muy dificultoso hallar intérprete semejante, pues aunque le buscara de otra mejor y más antigua lengua le hallara. En fin, la suerte me deparó uno, que diciéndole mi deseo, y poniéndole el libro en las manos le abrió por medio, y leyendo un poco en él se comenzó a reír: preguntéle que de qué se reía, y respondióme que de una cosa que tenía aquel libro escrita en la margen por anotación. Díjele que me la dijese, y él sin dejar la risa dijo: está, como he dicho, aquí en el margen escrito esto: esta Dulcinea del Toboso, tantas veces, en esta historia referida, dicen que tuvo la mejor mano para salar puercos que otra mujer de toda la Mancha.

Or is "mano para salar puercos" a double-entendre?

Women Poets

I'm teaching a course in Golden Age lyric this semester, and I've come to the conclusion that it is shockingly lacking in women poets. Anyone have any names for me? Other than Sor Juana.

A good buy

I, too, picked up an interesting find at a library book sale recently. Leather bound, published in 1875, written by one O.S. Fowler. Here's the title:
Creative and Sexual Science: Manhood, Womanhood, and Their Mutual Interrelations; Love, its Laws, Power, Etc.; Selection, or Mutual Adaptation; Courtship, Married Life, and Perfect Children; Their Generations, Endowment, Paternity, Maternity, Bearing, Nursing and Rearing; Together with Puberty, Boyhood, Girlhood, Etc.; Sexual Impairments Restored, Male Vigor and Female Health and Beauty Perpetuated and Augmented, Etc., as taught by Phrenology and Physiology.
Apparently mutually applied friction is very important in the generative function.

Small Pleasures in a Bad Economy

Today I happened across a book sale at the Santa Clara University Library and came away with a couple of steals. The first was Volume I of Fernand Braudel's The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (I already own Vol. II). This work is a broad-ranging classic -- sorry for the dirty word -- reference for anyone interested in the Spanish Empire and its context from cultural, geopolitical and economic standpoints. I also found a hardcover edition of The Collected Dialogues of Plato (Bollingen Series). Not the greatest translations in the world, but, once again, a solid reference work, since it contains ALL of Plato's dialogues.
Total amount spent: $3.00.

Going negative

Anyone feel their job is in jeopardy in these uncertain times? This totally sucks, and I hope you'll forgive me if I'm not up to my usual eloquence (¿?) when I express myself that way. Not only is the "Compact" not being honored, though by now that's old news, but California is borrowing 7 billion dollars or it won't make payroll. What the hell? I thought this was supposed to be a safe and sane career where the only adventure was of the intellectual kind. We eschewed business for a reason, at least I did, only to find myself a) not reaping the pecuniary benefits of a business career, b) thrust all the same into a financial cesspool created by greedy, unprincipled boors who, as I read recently, were the guys you rarely talked to in college, but occasionally did step over on sunday mornings sleeping in a pool of their own vomit, and c) doing a mediocre bureaucratic shuffle exactly the opposite of the life of the mind. How to maintain some optimism under such circumstances is the question I'm grappling with.

What to Make of Student Evaluations

See article in the NY Times mAgazine.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/magazine/21wwln-evaluations-t.html?scp=3&sq=student%20evaluations&st=cse

Near the end, the writer, reflecting on the viability of these evaluations wonders something I myself have been wondering: "After all, when students report having learned a lot, how do we know to trust them?"

The seeds of a new study abroad idea

I’m currently reading a book called Bastard Tongues: A Trailblazing Linguist Finds Clues to Our Common Humanity in the World’s Lowliest Languages. The author, Derek Bickerton, studies creole languages. In defending his bar-hopping field research technique, he describes how he learned Spanish:

“Most of the Spanish I speak was learned from drunks in bars. In fact, drunks are the world’s most underrated language teaching resource. The stereotypic drunk speaker slurs his speech to the point of unintelligibility, but in real life this happens only in the final, immediate-pre-collapse phase of drunkenness. Prior to that, drunks speak slowly and with exaggerated care, because they know they are drunk but don’t want other people to know. Moreover, since they’re already too drunk to remember what they just said, they repeat themselves over and over, and don’t mind if you do the same. If you’re gregarious and a drinker, it’s by far the easiest way to learn a new language” (p. 29).

Not that I approve, or anything, but I think I smell the kernel of a new study abroad program.