Showing posts with label academic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label academic. Show all posts
Friday, October 03, 2008
"An Intellectual Christianity" by my friend Voz Nocturna
A fantastic post by my friend Voz Nocturna expressing a manifesto for an "intellectual" Christianity.
Monday, April 30, 2007
I am TOO wordy or A Tribute for a retiring professor
A tribute for one of my favourite professors who is retiring. I have spent far too long on this, and it just keeps getting wordier. Any suggestions between now and tomorrow on how to make this more active and less wordy--and any grammatical suggestions from those of you who speak Hausa will be much appreciated!
Malama,
Zan bud’e da karin magana: “bayan wuya, sai dad’i.” Kuma “bayan aiki, sai hutu.” Ko da yake bana son rabuwarmu, ina jin farin ciki da za ki iya ki huta daga yawan aiki, da tafiyar nan da can, daga Madison zuwa D.C., daga D.C. zuwa Madison, kaza, kaza, kaza!
You’ve often told the story about how you took your first Hausa class because you needed a language and it fit your schedule. Now you are retiring from a career spent building up studies of Hausa language, literature, and culture. In some ways your serendipitous encounter with Hausa was like mine. I started taking Hausa because I already knew “Yaya aiki?” and “nawa nawa ne?” I thought of Hausa as a requirement to fulfill so that I could get on to the bigger and more important task of writing about contemporary Nigerian writing in English... And perhaps that’s where it would have ended if I hadn’t been lucky enough to have you as my Hausa professor.
You have been the person who has encouraged me the most here at ***—advising me to take the FLAS to study Hausa at SCALI that first summer instead of going to Middlebury for French, encouraging me to apply for the second FLAS in Sokoto. I came back from Sokoto excited about Hausa, but it was your Verbal Stylistics class that gave me the theoretical tools to think seriously about Hausa literature and your Hausa Literature in Translation class that gave me the foundation to build upon. I learned more while TA-ing for that undergraduate class than I have in many graduate-level courses. (You were so generous in grading all the papers yourself and giving me the liberty to do what I wanted with my sections. It was more of weekly learning opportunity for me than a job!) You’ve taught me to look at layers of meaning, to plunge below the surface of a text to the metaphor beneath, a move that parallels my own encounters with Nigeria. Growing up there, I felt that I was floating on the surface of several indistinct cultures. I assumed that, as an expatriate, I would never be able to go much deeper than I already had. But learning Hausa revolutionized my experience of Nigeria. It was like tuning a radio: where I once heard static, I could now hear the jokes—understand the laughter.
Beyond the ways in which you helped me access Hausa, I will always remember your sensitive and calm advice; your irreverent asides; your invitation to give guest lectures in your classes and the encouraging feedback afterwards; the special practice session you set up before I presented at ASA; how you read through all my rough translations and figured out obscure references and proverbs; how you watched all those Hausa films with me, even when you were tired from a cross-country trip; those walks down **** after we discovered how close we lived together; and the bad-weather taxi rides (which you always paid for) with the chatty drivers who kept getting lost. I’ll also remember your diplomatic assistance with wahallar sashenmu and your amazing generosity in paying for the Graduate Student Colloquium pizzas for an entire semester. Every time I open a book from the incredible library you’ve bestowed upon me, I will miss you.
I’ve loved reading through the tributes alumni have sent in because it puts into perspective the layers of scholarship you have impacted—how the kind of influence you’ve had on my life has been multiplied many times over. Dr. Maikud’i Karaye in Kano said that they used to call you mutuniyar kirki, and wallahi, gaskiya yake magana. Ke mace mai kirki ce. Kina da gasikya da amana da karamci da hakuri da hankali da kunya da ladabi da mutunci. Hausawa suke cewa: abin da babba ya hango yana zaune, yaro ko ya taka tsani ba zai hango shi ba. Na yarda. You have guided so many of us so wisely. You have been more than a professor, a TA supervisor, or a language instructor; you are the person on whom we will model our own future scholarship and teaching. I will miss you very much
Allah ya yi miki albarka. Ki huta lafiya,
Ni ce,
Talatu
Zan bud’e da karin magana: “bayan wuya, sai dad’i.” Kuma “bayan aiki, sai hutu.” Ko da yake bana son rabuwarmu, ina jin farin ciki da za ki iya ki huta daga yawan aiki, da tafiyar nan da can, daga Madison zuwa D.C., daga D.C. zuwa Madison, kaza, kaza, kaza!
You’ve often told the story about how you took your first Hausa class because you needed a language and it fit your schedule. Now you are retiring from a career spent building up studies of Hausa language, literature, and culture. In some ways your serendipitous encounter with Hausa was like mine. I started taking Hausa because I already knew “Yaya aiki?” and “nawa nawa ne?” I thought of Hausa as a requirement to fulfill so that I could get on to the bigger and more important task of writing about contemporary Nigerian writing in English... And perhaps that’s where it would have ended if I hadn’t been lucky enough to have you as my Hausa professor.
You have been the person who has encouraged me the most here at ***—advising me to take the FLAS to study Hausa at SCALI that first summer instead of going to Middlebury for French, encouraging me to apply for the second FLAS in Sokoto. I came back from Sokoto excited about Hausa, but it was your Verbal Stylistics class that gave me the theoretical tools to think seriously about Hausa literature and your Hausa Literature in Translation class that gave me the foundation to build upon. I learned more while TA-ing for that undergraduate class than I have in many graduate-level courses. (You were so generous in grading all the papers yourself and giving me the liberty to do what I wanted with my sections. It was more of weekly learning opportunity for me than a job!) You’ve taught me to look at layers of meaning, to plunge below the surface of a text to the metaphor beneath, a move that parallels my own encounters with Nigeria. Growing up there, I felt that I was floating on the surface of several indistinct cultures. I assumed that, as an expatriate, I would never be able to go much deeper than I already had. But learning Hausa revolutionized my experience of Nigeria. It was like tuning a radio: where I once heard static, I could now hear the jokes—understand the laughter.
Beyond the ways in which you helped me access Hausa, I will always remember your sensitive and calm advice; your irreverent asides; your invitation to give guest lectures in your classes and the encouraging feedback afterwards; the special practice session you set up before I presented at ASA; how you read through all my rough translations and figured out obscure references and proverbs; how you watched all those Hausa films with me, even when you were tired from a cross-country trip; those walks down **** after we discovered how close we lived together; and the bad-weather taxi rides (which you always paid for) with the chatty drivers who kept getting lost. I’ll also remember your diplomatic assistance with wahallar sashenmu and your amazing generosity in paying for the Graduate Student Colloquium pizzas for an entire semester. Every time I open a book from the incredible library you’ve bestowed upon me, I will miss you.
I’ve loved reading through the tributes alumni have sent in because it puts into perspective the layers of scholarship you have impacted—how the kind of influence you’ve had on my life has been multiplied many times over. Dr. Maikud’i Karaye in Kano said that they used to call you mutuniyar kirki, and wallahi, gaskiya yake magana. Ke mace mai kirki ce. Kina da gasikya da amana da karamci da hakuri da hankali da kunya da ladabi da mutunci. Hausawa suke cewa: abin da babba ya hango yana zaune, yaro ko ya taka tsani ba zai hango shi ba. Na yarda. You have guided so many of us so wisely. You have been more than a professor, a TA supervisor, or a language instructor; you are the person on whom we will model our own future scholarship and teaching. I will miss you very much
Allah ya yi miki albarka. Ki huta lafiya,
Ni ce,
Talatu
Friday, April 13, 2007
MA defense (and off to my cousin's wedding
so, now i've lost the momentum to write about my MA defense. It all went fine. My committee asked me a few scary questions that I don't think I answered very well, they basically said that I wasn't really doing anything original, that my theory seemed a bit muddled, and that my title was too descriptive. But most of the discussion seemed to be less about the actual thesis than "lessons to learn for your future career in scholarship."Despite my best efforts at being zen, that all disappeared with the first question--after which I was fighting back tears the whole time--not that I was especially surprised or hurt by anything they were saying--but somehow my body physically reacts to situations in which I am having to defend myself to authority figures--and unfortunately it reacts in that way. I was so GLAD I had preceeded myself by bringing in a bottle of water which I would take a big swig from everytime I felt my mouth trembling too much. One of the committee members said that "surprisingly, I seemed to hardly deal with the idea of the postcolonial at all." This observation also surprised me because i kind of thought i had. And my advisor said his signature harsh comment of the day, "Reading this, you would think this novel was the only piece of African literature Carmen has read... although I know Carmen and I know that's not the case...." This bemused me as I had written a whole chapter on intertextuality with other works of African literature in the novel. But their overall point was right: the most polished part of the paper was the most unoriginal stuff.... the stuff that excited me I didn't articulate as well.
All that to say, it was a surprisingly short process, and despite some of the harsh things they said specifically about the thesis, they said it was perfectly fine for an MA thesis, and they were very encouraging about my overall work as a student. The discussion seemed mostly about general things to know in the field and in scholarship and had very little to do with what I had actually written. In addition to his one or two token harsh comments, my advisor (talking to the committee and not me) gave me several wonderfully backhanded compliments: 1) Sometimes we have students who struggle with writing; Carmen obviously does not have this problem. 2) For class (we have a class listserve we post to every week), she will write these long but extremely provocative and eloquent posts, and she does it on the spur of the moment--that's what you need more of here, the combining of the close reading with the broader theoretical.
So, basically... I needed to write my thesis a little more like I write class posts... or perhaps blogs? Finally, they sent me out of the room, and called me back about two minutes later, and there my intimidating advisor is standing there, with the warrant in his hands, grinning and shaking my hand. And another committee member hugs me, the other one pats my back and hands me two tickets to the South African film U-Carmen, which is playing at a film festival this afternoon, and which I've been wanting to see for ages. I felt horrible telling him I wouldn't be here this weekend, because I'm going to a cousin's wedding.So, they signed the warrant, and said, of course you are continuing in the PhD programme, right? And of course I am. I FINALLY feel like I've caught up to mys
elf. For the past two years, I've cringed everytime someone has asked me where I am in the programme. Since I've been doing PhD research for the past year and a half, I hated to tell people I was still an MA student. I felt like such a loser. There are reasons this has taken over three and a half years--a strange culture of long MAs in my dept, me being gone doing language training or research every summer, long lags in communication with those in charge. I finally feel like I'm at the right level, and it's such a huge relief.
elf. For the past two years, I've cringed everytime someone has asked me where I am in the programme. Since I've been doing PhD research for the past year and a half, I hated to tell people I was still an MA student. I felt like such a loser. There are reasons this has taken over three and a half years--a strange culture of long MAs in my dept, me being gone doing language training or research every summer, long lags in communication with those in charge. I finally feel like I'm at the right level, and it's such a huge relief. 
Anyway, enough blather. I'm off to Atlanta tomorrow for a cousin's wedding this weekend. I took her engagement photos over Christmas. We had planned to do it outside, but it ended up raining most of the day, so they decided they wanted me to take pictures of them shopping in bookstores and Trader Joes and video game stores. I had so much fun trailing them around and photographing them that I thought that the job of a "documentary 'wedding' photographer" might not be a bad fall back plan.... I'm sure I'd get sick of it very quickly, but I do love an excuse to take lots of photos.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Introducing... Introducing... introducing
Monday, April 09, 2007
D-Day tomorrow....
pray for me. my defense is tomorrow. i've re-read my thesis, and it is not the horrible thing i thought it was when i handed it in. i argue very intelligently in some of the chapters and there are occasionally (to quote my advisor on his last comments) "flashes of brilliant close reading." It, however, is not a masterpiece. There are passages that feel out of place, the organization is sometimes iffy, there are moments when I don't follow through on a thought. It starts out well and then gets a bit scattered at the end. I feel like I say very intelligent things in it, but that I don't always say them as well as I could. What worries me the most is that I have a scandelously small bibliography (ie. in the secondary sources/theoretical works... I have quite a few creative works that I've cited.) I also sort of made up my own theory and didn't quote any one theorist at length. I, personally, think that is ok, but I know the MA thesis is supposed to prove that you've grasped how to use theory, and nowhere in my thesis did I say anything like "in this thesis, I am following a poststructural feminist paradigm"... I'm just praying that my close reading is close enough, that there are enough of them, and that I the theory that I made up works consistently(I use poststructuralism without actually citing any poststructuralist thinkers, although I do quote Foucault all of one time [somewhere along the line my Derrida got axed], I cite Soyinka and Ngugi a lot but have cut out most of my quotes of their theory, and I argue that the theoretical foundation comes from within the novel itself, ala Harold Scheub and the "mythic centre.")
I defend at 10am tomorrow. I know one of my committee members will just smile at me, ask me easy questions and defend me against the others. The other one will be mildly critical, will ask me questions that relate to his research interests, and will give me a page long list of recommended reading of other people I can cite and refer to. And my advisor will rip me to pieces. I know him. And I've heard what he's done at other people's defenses. Everything he will say will be brilliant and right on point, and I will wonder why i didn't see all of that before. Just pray that I make it through without crying. I have this HORRIBLE habit of getting a twisty-cry-ey face in the middle of situations where it will be sheer mortification if I cry... these are the times I cry, unfortunately. I'm trying to calm myself down tonight so that I am a calm, confident, prepared epitomy of zen tomorrow. (ohm...ohm...) This probably means I should go to bed soon. But first I need to at least write up my intro. Here are my three imagined scenarios:
1) Dream world scenario: My advisor tells me that it is a brilliant, sophisticated, and elegantly written masterpiece of an MA thesis and that I should start revising it to turn into a series of journal articles.
2) Nightmare scenario: My advisor tells me it is the worst thing he has ever read, and that he can't believe that it has taken me so long to write such rubbish. That now that I have proven how simplistic my argumentation abilities are and how sloppy my research skills are that it is clear I am not cut out to be an academic and that he does not recommend that I continue in the PhD programme.
3) Probably what will happen: My advisor will pick my argument to pieces. Tell me my titles are bad and that my work is very unorganized and that he couldn't figure out what I was saying and how it related to my overall argument in at least three of the six chapters. He will also tell me that I clearly am a fan of the book, but as critics, we are called to take apart the book, and that I have clearly not been critical enough of Habila's shortcomings. And that where I was critical, it is obviously a straw-man argument. He will grumble about me having cited online editions of books (which I will be able to respond to by saying that I've fixed it since I turned in the draft), and he will kvetch about my wordiness. He will say that my work is not very original--it's not clear why I'm making such a big deal over Habila's novel when plenty of other novels use similar form. Furthermore he will say that when he told me to cut out the theoretical works in my first chapter, he didn't mean that I should cut them out all together (as i did in some cases) but that I shouldn't lean on them as if I had no thoughts of my own. He will say that this risks looking a lightweight because of my short bibliography and my writing on one novel. He will continue on in this vein for about 20 minutes until the gentle, smiling professor intervenes and says that afterall, this is just a masters thesis, and it is fine work for what it is, and that I've now gotten good practice for the disseration. And my advisor will say that, well, if this were a dissertation, I would have many years ahead of me, but since he knows that it is just an MA, and since it has improved a lot from the initial draft he read, he will pass me, but that I need to make sure I make these revisions before I turn it in. And I will humbly nod my head and say that they are all right in what they have said and that I will work on it. And then they will sign the paper, and I will be a MASTER OF ARTS degree holder. This is what I think will happen... it is what I hope will happen. The nightmare always lurks until it is over...
I defend at 10am tomorrow. I know one of my committee members will just smile at me, ask me easy questions and defend me against the others. The other one will be mildly critical, will ask me questions that relate to his research interests, and will give me a page long list of recommended reading of other people I can cite and refer to. And my advisor will rip me to pieces. I know him. And I've heard what he's done at other people's defenses. Everything he will say will be brilliant and right on point, and I will wonder why i didn't see all of that before. Just pray that I make it through without crying. I have this HORRIBLE habit of getting a twisty-cry-ey face in the middle of situations where it will be sheer mortification if I cry... these are the times I cry, unfortunately. I'm trying to calm myself down tonight so that I am a calm, confident, prepared epitomy of zen tomorrow. (ohm...ohm...) This probably means I should go to bed soon. But first I need to at least write up my intro. Here are my three imagined scenarios:
1) Dream world scenario: My advisor tells me that it is a brilliant, sophisticated, and elegantly written masterpiece of an MA thesis and that I should start revising it to turn into a series of journal articles.
2) Nightmare scenario: My advisor tells me it is the worst thing he has ever read, and that he can't believe that it has taken me so long to write such rubbish. That now that I have proven how simplistic my argumentation abilities are and how sloppy my research skills are that it is clear I am not cut out to be an academic and that he does not recommend that I continue in the PhD programme.
3) Probably what will happen: My advisor will pick my argument to pieces. Tell me my titles are bad and that my work is very unorganized and that he couldn't figure out what I was saying and how it related to my overall argument in at least three of the six chapters. He will also tell me that I clearly am a fan of the book, but as critics, we are called to take apart the book, and that I have clearly not been critical enough of Habila's shortcomings. And that where I was critical, it is obviously a straw-man argument. He will grumble about me having cited online editions of books (which I will be able to respond to by saying that I've fixed it since I turned in the draft), and he will kvetch about my wordiness. He will say that my work is not very original--it's not clear why I'm making such a big deal over Habila's novel when plenty of other novels use similar form. Furthermore he will say that when he told me to cut out the theoretical works in my first chapter, he didn't mean that I should cut them out all together (as i did in some cases) but that I shouldn't lean on them as if I had no thoughts of my own. He will say that this risks looking a lightweight because of my short bibliography and my writing on one novel. He will continue on in this vein for about 20 minutes until the gentle, smiling professor intervenes and says that afterall, this is just a masters thesis, and it is fine work for what it is, and that I've now gotten good practice for the disseration. And my advisor will say that, well, if this were a dissertation, I would have many years ahead of me, but since he knows that it is just an MA, and since it has improved a lot from the initial draft he read, he will pass me, but that I need to make sure I make these revisions before I turn it in. And I will humbly nod my head and say that they are all right in what they have said and that I will work on it. And then they will sign the paper, and I will be a MASTER OF ARTS degree holder. This is what I think will happen... it is what I hope will happen. The nightmare always lurks until it is over...
Thursday, April 05, 2007
spring break....
I have been terribly lethargic about blogging lately, and I'm not too upset about it because blogging sucks up a lot of my time which should otherwise be spent writing papers etc. etc. so I welcome these periods when I don't feel like writing anything. Anyway, the conference was fabulous. I presented my paper on Saturday and was thinking the session would be really tough because they had squeezed 6 of us into an hour and a half panel, which meant we each had 10 minutes each. Annoyed though I was, I pared my paper down a little more. I was going to cut out my film clips, but then I decided to keep a few of the shortest ones and just fast forward through the middle of my long one. Well, even though I ended up having to cut off my elegant little conclusion at the last minute because i was out of time, it turned out to be (I think) my best presentation ever. (In fact, it was good that my powerpoint was not working because that meant I had more control over my video clips.) I got excellent feedback, especially from the one I was the most "looking forward to/nervous about" hearing me: Prof. K. Harrow. (I'm abbreviating so that google searches won't find this blog.) He really rattled me with his final question, but I got to talk to him for about 20 minutes afterwards and he was EXTREMELY encouraging. Then for the rest of the evening (I left the next morning at 4am) people kept coming up to me and telling me how much they liked my paper. (Granted a couple of them were drunk when they told me this... ie "Your paper warsh the Beeeeeesht. ") I realized that I love these conferences because you're with like minded people, who are interested in the same things. I go to conferences because I get the sort of affirmation that I rarely get in my own department. Of course, part of it is just that is is really fun to present on film--especially video-film. I was armed with handouts and film clips, and I think the key to a good presentation is keeping people amused... There's nothing like a long dry paper full of theory to put people to sleep.
Now back in [my little college town], it is spring break here, with temperatures in the 20s F. sigh. I have gotten very few items on my t0-do list done. I keep wanting to go to sleep.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Off to a conference in Texas
I'm off to a conference on Popular Culture in Africa at the University of Texas, Austin, tomorrow. Here is the handout I have prepared for my presentation on the video-film Albashi, directed by Abbas Sadiq and produced by Zainab Idris. Unfortunately, when I did the print screen and converted to a jpg file, the image is not clear enough to be able to see the subtitles for the film stills, but it gives you an idea of what I'm doing in my paper anyway.
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