Still more link dumping: Publishing Edition

1) What to make of this news from the University of Michigan Press? It will "shift its scholarly publishing from being primarily a traditional print operation to one that is primarily digital." As someone who one day hopes to publish a book through a university press, I like anything that makes that process easier. A significant passage:

Because digital publishing is so much less expensive -- with savings both in printing and distribution -- the press expects to be able to publish more books, and to distribute them electronically to a much broader audience. Michigan officials said that they don't plan to cut the budget of the press -- but to devote resources to peer review and other costs of publishing that won't change with the new model. Significantly, they said, the press would no longer have to reject books deemed worthy from a scholarly perspective, but viewed as unable to sell.

2) Speaking of academic writing, there were lots of sessions at this past 4Cs that I wish I had attended, but after reading this piece at Insiderhighered.com, I am really regretting missing “Empty Rhetoric and Academic Bullshit: Strategies for Composition’s Self-Representation in National Arenas.”

Since my 4Cs presentation was on teaching working-class students and our whole panel, in fact, was about shifting classroom demographics, this section really caught my eye:

Bauerlein started by noting that many of the reports issued by the composition group and panels at the meeting deal with issues of race, class, gender and so forth, and he said that this would make no sense to the “man in the street.” Such a person would say “it’s just writing” and wonder why “politically charged subjects” capture such attention.

While Bauerlein is critical of what he sees as a political one-sidedness on humanities faculties, he was careful to say that he was not arguing that the man in the street was “right” and that in fact this man might have a “simplistic” view of teaching writing. But Bauerlein said that the gap between the public understanding of what composition is about and the discipline’s understanding of itself is “not healthy for anyone.”

A key source of this problem, Bauerlein said, is the “publish or perish” system of academic advancement. The “extraordinary burden” on scholars in composition and rhetoric to come up with something new to say, he said, results in work becoming more specialized, with “every narrower niches,” language that can only be understood by other experts, and a “progressive departure from popular understandings” of what writing is about.

3) Finally, a bit about my own current attempts to make further contributions to the over-crowded, uber-competitive world of academic publishing.: Some of you might remember that I am working on project on the idea of pet-keeping (and domesticity) in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Black Cat." One of my main goals for this summer is to take that paper from conference-length to article-length and send it out. Anyway, I'll be doing lots more research on the history of pet-keeping and that's why this blog post caught my eye: See One of the World's Oldest Pet Portraits.

San Francisco, Part III

Saturday was another great day. We did attend the conference a bit, but also hit some more highlights in the city.


Again, we rode a cable car down to Fisherman's Wharf. When we got off, the driver offered to take our picture. Then he said that because we were the last off, he'd take it from two angles. By the way, check out Kari's pose in this picture. Like she's a professional model or something!



Here's the second shot the driver took. Too bad my hair is in my face!

Our main destination at the Wharf was Ghirardelli Square. Vogel had been telling us that if you went to Ghirardelli Chocolate, you could tour the place and get a free piece of chocolate. She insisted that this was true, and it sounded pretty darn awesome to Kari and me. But then the woman at the information booth looked at us like we were crazy. She told us that there hadn't been any factory there since the 60s. (True: you can read about it here.) "But you get a free piece of chocolate!" Vogel kept insisting. She even kept holding out one hand and tapping it with the other. "They put it in your hand!" Kari and I told her she must have been confusing this place with Hershey Park. From personal experience, I know that's true about Hershey. The information booth lady did tell us that in the ice-cream parlor, you could see some of the old machines. We decided that was good enough and set off to the parlor.

Imagine our surprise, then, when at the door of the store, a worker handed us a piece of chocolate. And then imagine our further surprise when, in the parlor, the old machines weren't just on display, but actually working, making batches of delicious chocolate. So--much to her delight--Vogel was vindicated. The information booth lady, meanwhile, should be more well, informed about the place where she works.


Vogel and Kari pointing to the chocolate machines.

Kari studying a pool of chocolate. We wanted to ask the workers if they ever felt the urge to jump in, but they looked pretty busy.

A happy Kari waiting for our order to arrive.

And here it is--a hot fudge sundae that we split. Yummy.

After our ice-cream, we walked down to the water. Along this way, I took this picture of Alcatraz. Kari and I really wanted to visit the Rock, but it turns out you have to reserve your spot in advance, and we hadn't done that. Maybe next time...

Looking back towards Ghirardelli Square.

Kari and I down by the water.

Later that night, after some conferencing and such, we went to North Beach and walked around a bit before having dinner at this yummy Italian place. We were sure to visit City Lights Books, where I picked up this book and a couple of postcards.

The next day, sadly, it was time to head home. But all in all, an awesome trip!

San Francisco, Part II

On Friday, we gave our presentation, and like I previously noted, we were awesome.


Here we are afterwards. We asked a nice guy in the audience to take our picture.

Once that was done, we felt the need to celebrate, so we headed to this Irish bar down the road from our hotel. Kari and I had beers, while Vogel picked something different...


...this HUGE Bloody Mary. Apparently, this bar is famous for them.



The fun really got started when a group of strong and attractive men sat down next to us. What made them even more attractive? They were firemen from Limerick, Ireland, in town for the parade. I mean really, Irish firemen? Swoon. (Btw, Limerick is where my dad's family is from, so that was extra cool.)


We had a lot of fun with them, especially the young guy on the right, who was their captain. (So young!) They got a kick out of the fact that we were English teachers and made us scold them in English accents. (Don't ask.) We also tried (unsuccessfully) to teach them that most women don't like the term "hooters." Oh well.

Eventually, we parted ways with the firemen. That night, we went to Chinatown for dinner, which was quite yummy. Despite some bravado earlier in the evening about getting a bit crazy, we burned out early and were asleep relatively early.

San Francisco, Part I

So 4Cs in San Francisco was a blast. Even though Team Awesome found itself one man (well, woman) down since Bethany couldn't make it, we still managed to rock the conference presentation hardcore. And yeah, we had some fun, too.

On Thursday, once the three of us (Kari, Vogel, and I) got together, we took a cable car down to Fisherman's Wharf to look around a bit and meet up with Joel, one of Vogel's good friends from back when she lived in San Francisco.

Vogel on the cable car. We were standing/hanging on the outside. It was pretty awesome--kind of thrilling for a non-risk-taker like myself.

Vogel and Joel at lunch. Don't they look like siblings?

After lunch, we waited for another cable car to take us back to the hotel. I snapped a couple pics of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Another pic of the bridge.

It's pretty hard to get these two to focus for a picture.

Much better!

Something I didn't know: when the cable cars reach the end of the tracks, they have to turn them around manually. I thought that was pretty cool and took a couple of pictures of the process.


Spinning it around.

All done!

More to come...

New Orleans Part 4: Washboard Playin'!

One of the highlights of the trip for everyone was when we saw the Bourbon Street Cajuns play at Tropical Isle in the French Quarter. They are this super-fun zydeco trio that includes a guy named Timmy who plays the washboard. He also takes lots of folks from the audience and lets them play a washboard, too. So imagine our delight when he selects our very own Vogel to play with him. Awesome.

I let Kari take the camera and she went to town, capturing lots of priceless moments of Vogel workin' those spoons.


Vogel and Timmy.


Side shot!


I left this one relatively un-cropped so you can get a bit of local flavor. Check out the dude on the far left and the hair on the woman next to him.


Well, now she's just showing off a bit. Also take notice of the woman in green in the back right of the picture. She was non-so-affectionately dubbed "Butt Sweat" by our group because, well, her shorts showed a nasty big, old wet spot on her bum.


Butt Sweat was also a washboard hogger, folks. She kept trying to get another turn to play it. She literally took it off one woman and insisted she get another turn. You could tell Timmy and the band didn't like her. Once Vogel took over, Butt Sweat was not happy and shot some real daggers at our Vogsie. Kari tried to sneak a shot or two of the unhappy woman, but didn't have the greatest luck. Here she is, though, no doubt telling her group, "You see that? I have much better spoon playing ability than that bitch." But enough about her...


Hey now--whose hairy arms are those?


Is this some redneck flirting going on?


Afterwards, before we left, I snapped this photo of Waylon, the band's leader and fiddle player, Vogel, and Timmy. And you should know that right before I took this, Waylon asked if he could play "connect the dots" with Vogel's freckles. I feel icky just typing that.

Apparently, I am not the first to document fun encounters with these guys. Check out this youtube clip.

New Orleans Part 3: The Food

In honor of Amber, who creates the best "food porn" posts, I'll put together this mini-post on some of the food we enjoyed in New Orleans.

We had breakfast one morning at the famous Cafe Du Monde and enjoyed, of course, beignets and coffee.


Now I had the best of intentions to take pictures of the beignets, but what can I say? They disappeared quickly and all that was left was this huge pile of sugar.


Vogel and I each ordered a really yummy cafe au lait.

That same day, we had lunch at Drago's, a restaurant in our hotel. Someone gave us the tip to try the charbroiled oysters, so we did.


Awesome. The best thing we ordered that day, I think.

We did make a mistake at Drago's though, by not realizing just how big their po boys are.


Here's mine: a portobello mushroom sandwich with sweet potato fries. It was pretty good, but could have fed two people and then some. And each of us ordered a sandwich. You think the waitress would have warned us...

I don't have any more food pictures, but can tell you that we had dinner one night at NOLA, thanks to a recommendation from Amber's husband, Mike. It was awesome! Thanks, Mike!

UPDATE: While we're on the subject of food porn, check out this lovely blog all about lunch (and I am quite serious when I use that adjective--check out the quality of the pictures).

New Orleans Part 2: Sight-seeing

Sorry this has taken me so long, but I am finally going to create a couple more posts with pictures from New Orleans. (You can find Part I here, although it's a really short post.) I didn't take too many pictures that would fall in the sight-seeing genre, but here are a few:


The cathedral in Jackson Square. (This is a pretty typical tourist photo of New Orleans, I think.)


Another shot of Jackson Square.


Some houses/stores in the French Quarter.


A stop that really excited us as literature nerds: Faulkner House Books, a store located in the house where Faulker wrote Soldier's Pay. Of course, we did a bit of shopping there, too. I bought this book, which I am dying to read, although I haven't had the chance to start it yet. Maybe this summer?


Here's the sign on the outside of the building.


Here's Vogel posing in front of a weird statue down by the river front.


Pose Part Two: Where she displays the modesty she wishes the statue was showing. (The statue is called "Old Man River" and you can read a bit about it here.)

4Cs Panel

Just a preview of a longer post to come: here's a picture of our panel, taken right after our presentation. We look happy, right? (Well, Rita doesn't look happy, but pregnancy is doing a real number on her digestive system and we had quite a few "Hold on, I need to run to the bathroom" moments, so maybe that explains the look on her face.)


Left to right: Kari, Rita, Vogel, and Heidi.

Rhet/Comp PhDs...

An interesting article from insidehighered.com about a discussion at last week's 4Cs. (No, I didn't attend the session they are talking about in the piece.)