False Cognates

No doubt there are plenty of lists of false cognates out there, but I thought I'd ask in this venue: what are some that you find way overused by your students (of any level)?

One that immediately comes to mind is "actualmente."

Fun with Budgets

Good news is our upper level bureaucracy had its wages frozen (although in bureaucracy speak, that probably only means they will receive a reduction of their anticipated wage increase). Bad news is our three-year library reconstruction project, which finally got underway last semester, has been frozen. Ironically, a move that was intended to save money will end up costing the university money, since it's going to have to pay off the contractors to avoid a lawsuit.

Meanwhile, a mischievous colleague, who is usually wrong anyway, wondered aloud whether wage freezes would have an effect on tenure and promotion. Not a pleasant thought to contemplate.

So how are things outside of the lamentably goldless Golden State?

On the (not-so-good) Outlook for our Profession

See Stanley Fish's editorial on /review of his former student's new book, The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities.

Speaking of film: El método

I just watched a film called El método, which was pretty weird. Think of a cross between Survivor and The Game, with a little Twelve Angry Men thrown in. The idea is a bunch of job applicants in Madrid are locked in a room together where they undergo various psychological tests until they are winnowed down to the one who will actually receive the job. This method of choosing a job finalist is where the movie gets its name.

On a psychological level, the film calls to mind those studies you read about that attempt to gauge how far ordinary, rational and supposedly moral people are willing to go in order to appease a supposed authority. In this case, how far are corporate drones willing to go in order to climb the ladder in a multinational company? All sorts of moral and social comprises are justified as just a part of the game; as a study of human behavior the film is at times revealing.

This leads to political aspect of the film that I find more troublesome. The whole episode is set against the backdrop of anti-WTO riots in Madrid. While the rioting of the masses shuts down the streets, the job applicants play their mind games far above in their high rise bubble. They are elevated above and alienated from the masses that they exploit, ultimately to be exploited themselves and spit back out. The job applicants are victims of a perverse method that dehumanizes them, a process paralleled by what is happening in the streets below. The film closes with a broken woman walking through the broken streets, both destroyed by multinational corporatism.

So in my view, whatever strengths the film has as a psychological study of human behavior are undercut by the heavy-handed and cliché-ridden message (not to mention a completely gratuitous sex scene). Still, possibly worth checking out.

DQ secondary sources

What are the best books by way of a reader's guide to DQ for someone who may be teaching it and may not have absolute confidence in his knowledge of the text and the critical tradition?

More youth and sardines

I believe this was the image to which Kent was referring.

Youth and sardines

I know this is a public forum, but I can't help commenting here on some photos that a certain medievalist posted in another blog, whose name I don't want to remember, of individuals who post here with some frequency. They were taken on a trip to Death Valley perhaps slightly more then ten years ago. What immediately strikes one on seeing these photographs again after long years is our apparent youth and the scruffy, beat-like air with which we carried it off. We look like construction worker amateur botanists on a 5 month pilgrimage to Santiago. There are 99 cent tins of sardines in evidence, if I'm not mistaken, and perhaps even a can of Vienna sausages.

More fecopoetics?

From an ad for suppositories meant to cure "intestinal torpor and kindred evils," such as constipation and piles, written sometime in the 1860s:

"As Sancho Panza said of sleep, so say I of your Gluten Suppositories: God bless the man who invented them!"

I think a whole paper could be written on the reception of Don Quixote by 19th-century popular culture.

Writing your journal article in 12 weeks

As some of you may know, I’ve been receiving a free monthly micro-newsletter on how to be a more productive scholarly writer from Wendy Belcher, now a professor at Princeton, and formerly editor of Aztlan published at UCLA. Her book on academic publishing, largely based on the class she taught on the same subject at UCLA, is finally coming out. I thought you might like to know. I took her class and thought it was very helpful. I can't imagine a better guide out there for scholarly writers in the humanities. She really demystifies what can be an obscure and frustrating process for many of us. You can look into it at www.sagepub.com Here's the full title:

Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success by Wendy Laura Belcher. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. January 2009. 376 pages. $29.95. ISBN: 9781412957014.

AP Reading

Anybody planning on going to Cincinnati in June?

Movies again

My colleague in English sets up her film class as a four hour course so the class watches the film together say on Monday for a couple of hours and then comes back on Wednesday for another two hours to discuss. The students must watch the film together. In a foreign language class I think you could justify taking class time to watch the film as if you were working through a difficult literary passage in class together. Watching, like reading, becomes the objective of the time spent in class with the film.

Rico's edition of _DQ_

FYI, Rico's edition of the Quixote (with copious prefatory essays, notes, and every other critical apparatus you can imagine) is now available gratis at CVC.

Favorite Student

If you recall, a student of mine submitted a paper that had been cribbed verbatim from an article by a well-known scholar in our field. I gave her a chance to submit an acceptable paper to me, but after several email exchanges it became apparent to me that she wasn't getting the message. I wrote a blunter message indicating why I couldn't accept what she had given me, and what I expected from a resubmitted paper, and she wrote back telling me that "su maldad de usted me hizo vomitar," that she is disgusted with me now that I have revealed my true face, that she never wants to see my face again. But it looks like she still might want to take me up on my offer to submit a new paper. Since I made the offer, I guess I still have to honor it, but I wonder how sympathetic a hearing she thinks she's going to get after this.

Movies in Class

I don't know if we've covered this yet, but I was wondering how you guys handle films in class. In the past, for the most part, I've avoided showing full-length films in class, because in general I see that as a waste of class time. I usually put movies on reserve in the library, and then just show clips in class.

For my culture class, I'm thinking of showing Alatriste, which I bought in Spain, and is unavailable here, because it does a nice job of recreating Golden Age Madrid, and Ay Carmela, which is set in the Civil War.

So, do you guys ever show films over several class periods? If so, do you provide a study guide, or some sort of pedagogical apparatus?

The Latest in Fecopoetics

Since Mike and I plan to present at Kalamazoo this year, I thought you might to check out this blog post on the cutting edge of Medieval Studies.