Hiatus

Right now, part of my teaching load includes a brand new, theory-heavy seminar in modern and contemporary rhetorics (exciting but demanding week in and week out). I'm also editing a collection whose drafts will be coming in over the next 8-14 weeks, revising an article for that collection, writing another article, preparing a conference presentation, putting together my third-year review file, and beginning a long-overdue workout regimen. Among other things.

In short, the next 2-3 months are looking so swamped that I think it best to take a short break from the blog (or, more accurately, to continue the de facto break that started in December). I'll be back after the semester has ended.

See you in the spring.

BG Idol Auditions

Because Lee and I share childcare responsibilities and use daycare and babysitters minimally (daycare two days a week, sitters on an ad hoc basis), we often break up the work day so that she gets to do academic stuff while the sun is out, and I get to do academic stuff when it's dark. (Yes, it's about that precise.) Consequently, I am frequently in my office when the maintenance staff of East Hall are hard at work, which means I am regularly treated to enthusiastic performances of whatever happens to be coursing through the earphones of the woman who usually works on the fourth floor.

What I couldn't have predicted is how difficult it is, even with my door closed, to concentrate on composing a simple email while listening to an uncaccompanied, atonal rendition of "Like a Virgin." Or, at least, I couldn't have predicted that I would have to try.

Still, though, this only seems new to me because, at Elon (where tuition is high and labor is cheap), they made the maintenance staff come in at, like, 5:00 a.m. Better for me, but I suspect much worse for the staff.

[Update: I'm going home now, to the (approximate) tune of "Don't Go Breakin' My Heart."]

Let's Make Some More Knowledge

You may have seen the following CFP in comp/rhet/English journals recently, but in case you haven't, I'm posting it here:

We invite proposals for essays for a collection that draws on the upcoming 25th anniversary of Stephen North’s The Making of Knowledge in Composition (MKC) as an occasion to assess the discipline of composition and its future. Because MKC remains one of composition’s monumental works, we invite retrospective accounts (rhetorical and critical analyses, reception histories, reflective narratives, and other scholarly treatments) of North’s unreservedly sweeping, undoubtedly important, and undeniably controversial book.

Rather than being merely retrospective, this collection seeks works that critically re-assess such things as MKC’s influence/impact, rhetoric, aims, and values--with an eye toward using such re-assessments to comment on the present and future of composition studies. By May 2007, please attach 500 word proposals to the editors, Lance Massey (lmassey@bgnet.bgsu.edu) and Richard Gebhardt (richgeb@bgnet.bgsu.edu).

We envision the collection containing a mix of established, up-and-coming, and brand new voices, and we welcome questions about proposals-in-process as well. We hope you'll consider submitting something.