Welcome Valveteers; or, One Thing You Might Not Have Known About Bill Benzon

Bill Benzon just passed along my little plug for Marc Bousquet's How the University Works, so I'll let all you Valveteers (as in Rocketeers, Musketeers...) in on a little open secret: quiet as it's kept, Bill writes fantastic (in all senses of the word) children's literature.

For what it's worth, this post is rated PG (for procrastinatory gratitude).

Racialization Matters: Notes toward a Global History of Race

Later today I'll be part of a panel discussion on race on my campus--one of those "sum up the history of the race concept in 10 minutes" deals. Given how much I overprepared for my Big Read talk--and totally stepped on my co-panelist's time (sorry, Dustin!)--and given how many student conferences I have over the next week, starting in a few hours (it's final project time!), I'm pretty much only going to try to do two things in this talk:

1. Summarize the consensus view on the history of race in North America (Fredrickson, Gossett, Horsman, Jacobson, Morgan, Omi and Winant, Smedley), the Atlantic world (Allen, Berlin, Forbes, Gilroy, Hall, Linebaugh and Rediker) and the West (Balibar, Fredrickson, Hannaford, Malik, Snowden, Stepan, Zizek);
2. Introduce a few new angles on this consensus that a global perspective (Bender, Dikotter, Dower, Mamdani, Marger, Prashad) can offer.

Too bad it's too late to check out recent studies by Ramán Grosfoguel and Denise Ferreira da Silva, as well as Racialization and Racism: A Global Reader, but that would just lead to the overpreparing problem again, right?

The Dunkirk/Fredonia Big Read: Fahrenheit 451

My university is participating in the Chautauqua/Cattaraugus counties' version of The Big Read, with their focus on Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. As the last person in the department to teach our Science Fiction course, I'll be contributing to a panel discussion on "Fahrenheit 451 as Novel" with my colleague Dustin Parsons early this afternoon. The goal is to get the audience thinking and talking, so I'm aiming for short and sweet.

Here's my talk's outline (with page numbers keyed to the 50th Anniversary Edition):

I. Where It Comes From

• A. History: Fascism, McCarthyism, The Great Depression (132, 150-154), the Bomb (158-162)
  
• B. Literature: Dystopias, American Pastoralism (140-145, 157), World Literature (150-153), The Martian Chronicles (Grand Master Edition 31, 108, 180)
  

II. How It Is Relevant Today

• A. Postmodernism and New Media: Entertainment (81-82, 84, 87), Information (61), Knowledge (105-108), Wisdom (75, 82-86, 163-165)
  
• B. Democracy and Capitalism: Mass Culture (54-55, 89, 108), Diversity (57-60), War (73-74, 87, 158-162)
  

Here are some suggestions for further reading. First, a few novels:

• Samuel R. Delany, The Einstein Intersection (1967)
  
• William Gibson, Neuromancer (1984)
  
• Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale (1985)
  
• Leslie Marmon Silko, Almanac of the Dead (1991)
  
• Octavia Butler, Parable of the Sower (1993)
  

Then, a few links:

• Paul Brians from Washington State University on Bradbury and the dystopian tradition;
  
• Amy E. Boyle Johnston in LA Weekly on misinterpretations of Fahrenheit 451;
  
• Cory Doctorow responds to Bradbury's comments on winning the Pulitzer, as reported by Johnston;
  
• Anthony Lappe reports on a tough question he asked Bradbury at a recent Comic-Con;
  
• Bradbury biographer Sam Weller weighs in on the controversy;
  
• Robert Blechman looks at Bradbury's statements from another angle;
  
• Karen Stearns explains why she and a colleague at SUNY Cortland organized their Big Read event around Fahrenheit 451;
  
• My colleague Chris Taverna is planning to blog Fahrenheit 451, at least when his newborn allows him to [Update: like today!];
  
• And of course check out The Big Read Blog.
  

Mentoring Rules

We have three new tenure-track faculty in the department this year and it's my responsibility as associate chair to mentor them. This involves classroom observations (at least two over the course of the first semester), orienting them to department culture, answering any questions they may have, and especially adding department-specific information to the university-wide orientation that's spread out over the entire first semester (and maybe year). Oh, and presenting their reappointment files to the rest of the tenured faculty at the end of the first semester. (Yes, we have a crazy schedule. Doesn't everyone?)

Because I was away last year, I had nothing to do with the searches on which these new colleagues were hired and knew nothing about them when I arrived back in the States. So mentoring them has been a great way to get to know them, and, through their questions, reacquaint myself with everything I managed to forget about the department and university during my Fulbright year. I'm pleased to report that from my conversations with them about their teaching and research, our institution, and the profession, as well as my first observations of their classes, I've come to the conclusion that once again my colleagues made wise choices during the hiring process. Each of the new hires brings a very different set of interests and approaches to the department while contributing to our existing strengths. I'm not going to go into specifics here or now, but the best thing about the mentoring relationships we've already established from my perspective--someone whose first semester here is still quite fresh in my mind and who is in the middle of transitioning back to a familiar place after being on quite unfamiliar grounds for the past year--is the chance to see our institution through a variety of fresh sets of eyes. I'm at a place in my career where I can actually look back and note patterns in it, and so be relatively dispassionate about the costs and benefits of some of the choices I've made. So I can provide some context and perspective on choices my new colleagues are currently facing--and see where their situations and issues differ from the ones facing me when I first arrived here.

Sure, it's a lot of time and a lot of responsibility, but I can't recommend it highly enough, particularly to other newly tenured professors at teaching institutions.

Hump Day

We've switched our monthly department meetings to Wednesdays from noon to one, away from the usual Friday from three to whenever slot. Today's our second meeting and I can already report that I'm liking it. Somehow the week seems more than halfway over already.

On Classroom Observations

As associate chair of my department, I'm responsible for mentoring new hires during their first semester on campus, which includes writing an observation letter on their teaching. The way we usually handle this in my department is to give our new professors as much choice in the process as possible: among the classes I am free to attend, they are free to choose which course I will observe and when my two visits will take place (usually toward the beginning and toward the end of the semester). No pre-observation or post-observation meetings are required, but they can of course request them, and since we're meeting as needed to discuss any questions and problems they may have over the course of the semester, it's easy to discuss their classes and students along the way. All I ask for before my first visit is a syllabus. Since they go up for renewal for the second year sometime late in the fall semester, thanks to our nutty renewal and promotions schedule, I'll be writing up the letters over Thanksgiving Break so they can get them right after it and decide whether to include them in their files or not.

The point of these visits is to give useful feedback on their course design, pedagogy, classroom management, and so on. What I usually try to do while observing a class is figure out how the lesson is structured and why, how it relates to the overall course goals, and how the students are responding to it and to the professor. Obviously my being there changes the classroom dynamic to some extent, which is why only about a third of my overall focus is on their responses, especially during that first visit. But that doesn't mean I don't do a lot of student-watching. I like to come to a class early and watch/listen as the students come into the classroom, so I can see how they change as the professor enters the room. If there are any group or team discussions or activities, I like to place myself in a location where I can listen in on several teams (while appearing to be focused on taking notes). The great thing about students at my university is that from their words and body language it's very clear what they're thinking and how engaged they are with a lesson plan.

Still, especially for new faculty, that's not the be-all and end-all of an observation, particularly the first one. I've been here long enough (it's the start of my 10th year, if you count the year away) to have realized that it's how the students change over the four (or more) years they're here that matters most, so you have to think in semester-long arcs as well as shorter ones. If a particular class doesn't go as planned, you still have many more chances (and many many more than in Japan, where they meet only once a week for half the overall contact hours as in U.S. universities) to meet your goals for the semester. Of course, in my second visit, I'm looking to see whether/how the class atmosphere has changed, along with the quality of student engagement and discussion, particularly if the professor wasn't happy with how the first class went. But like I said, how the students respond to a new professor before any word-of-mouth has gotten around the student grapevines, which helps students self-select professors who match their own goals and learning styles, is not the biggest of deals to me.

What is is seeing how the professors are adjusting to the students in their class. Coming to a new institution, it's difficult to anticipate what student expectations and habits are with respect to reading load, in-class participation, individual and team assignments, taking responsibility for their own learning, and so on. In your first semester at a new place, you're basically gathering intel for the future--the next class, the next week, the next unit, the next semester--and looking for patterns in student thought and behavior. What can you expect from English majors? from English Adolescence Education majors? from Early Childhood Education English Concentrators? from students from the arts? humanities? social sciences? sciences? What about the mix of first- through fourth-years in your classes? What are their (often different and conflicting) expectations for this course? And so on. The goal is to figure out what the assumptions about them that you might be making that could be getting in the way of teaching them better, as well as what assumptions they seem to be making that they need to be disabused of or lead away from.

By adjusting to the students, then, I don't mean pandering to them, patronizing them, or catering to their every whim. I mean figuring out what are reasonable challenges to be presenting them with at what time in the semester, figuring out what you need to do to prepare them to do as well as possible on the assignments you've laid out for them, figuring out how to get and keep the group of students in front of you (or around you) motivated to push and challenge themselves. I mean thinking realistically and pragmatically about how to achieve your goals in the course. And maybe rethinking your goals and methods for the next time around.

Not all this shows up in my observation letter, of course. A good part of the letter is simply describing what I saw, in as much detail as I can muster from my notes and memories. Along the way or at the end, I usually include a mix of interpretations and assessments and suggestions. In doing this I tend to be more about options and roads not taken (but might be in the future) than about armchair quarterbacking or backseat driving; I consider alternate ways of achieving the apparent goals for the class meeting or adjusting them in light of the course goals. I try to convey to the professor and to anyone else who might happen to read the letter someday the complexities of and subtleties in teaching well.

Which means these things take a long time to write. But I usually learn a lot about teaching from visiting my colleagues' classes and writing up my observations, so I figure I should only return the favor with a letter they may be able to learn from.

Early Semester Rush Over?

So far this semester, the chair and I have hired two new TAs after a pair of returning ones got job offers elsewhere the week before classes started, run our first department meeting, gotten the wording on our two upcoming tenure-track searches approved and sent out to MLA, gotten all the department committees set up, gotten the Spring 2008 schedule out for administrative approval, hired a Visiting Assistant Professor for the spring, and begun mentoring our three new tenure-track hires. And that's just the stuff I remember. Next week: getting together a committee to evaluate everyone's cases for a discretionary salary increase (it has to be made up of people not going for this "extra" raise). Bright side: we checked with the dean and reread the department handbook and it appears I'll be eligible to apply this year, despite being away on leave last year. Other good news: next semester I get to teach two courses I've been waiting my entire time here to get a shot at: Black Women Writers and Non-Western Literature. OK, time to finally finish the minutes from that department meeting!

Deer in the Headlights

That's what I've felt like during my many hours in the office the past week and a half. There are a lot of benefits to being associate chair--a course release each semester, a small stipend (even smaller for me since I'm only doing it for the fall), a get-out-of-other-departmental-committee-work-free card), and let's not forget the soul-corrupting power (bwaa ha ha!)--but parking your computer and a few books in one of the rooms in the departmental office complex is most definitely not one of them.

Back in Fukuoka, my office time was my own. Even though I invited students to visit me every class, I didn't have to post any office hours, most of my students were loath to visit another campus (or university), and my 21st Century Program students were hesitant to intrude on me. Not so in Fredonia. Even though I've kept my office hours to a minimum for me (an hour and a half a day for the first four days of the week), I'm actually spending closer to 12-16 hours a week in that room, for the first month of the semester at least. There's just too much that needs to get done--new faculty need mentoring, advisees need advice, internship seekers need coordinating, students appealing various things need to be heard out and referred to the appropriate people, the spring 2008 schedule needs to be compiled, job ad language needs to be approved, committees need to be formed, minutes for the first department meeting need to be typed up, a colleague's teaching evaluations from last semester need to be summarized, a new dean needs to be consulted, and e-correspondence needs to be maintained. And that's just for starters. Between the departmental secretary and the chair, very little of this is my responsibility alone, but I have my hand in to a greater or lesser degree on just about all of it. The upshot is, very little time is left over for, say, getting my course web pages in shape, learning my students' names, tweaking my lesson plans, getting some reading for my courses in, or surfing the MLA bibliography. You know, the kinds of things I use my time in the office for when I'm not associate chair. It's gotten so bad at times the past two weeks I've found myself bouncing from task to task without finishing any of them. And when I actually get a chance to focus on, say, my own teaching, well, my focus is shot.

I know this, too, will pass, and I'll someday figure out how to be more efficient in the office at Fredonia--just as I eventually adjusted to my commute in Fukuoka and became a champion subway reader. But I'll tell you: a year away from service of any kind sure leaves you rusty. And wondering how you did so much more of it before your leave....

The Rip Van Winkle Effect

I did everything I could to avoid becoming Associate Chair of my department upon my return to the States from my Fulbright year in Japan, but had to settle for a one-semester gig in the end. If the position didn't give me +10 in boringness and -8 in cleverness, I'd write a witty riff on the above title to convey what a year leave does to my competence at and motivation for departmental service, but I think you get the picture.

In case, you don't, here's a random list of actual Rip Van Winkle moments in the English department office:

• "Why isn't this computer connecting to the internet? Ah, great, someone from AIT can come Friday afternoon to fix it--wonderful!" [Fast forward to Sunday morning, the first chance I have to get into the office that weekend.] "What?! How can this key not be working? Am I cursed?" [Result: plan to get to the office bright and early Monday morning, but don't actually make it in until the late afternoon.]
  
• "How could I have forgotten both my user ID and password for the key portal into everything I do as a teacher, advisor, and mentor?!" [Result: a series of increasingly-desperate calls to the Help Desk.]
  
• "Where is that damn page on the department's contributions to general education? I could have sworn it was easier to find in the old site design!" [Result: cranky email to department listserv, fortunately blocked by the listserv program, which no longer recognizes my address.]
  
• "I used to be able to use this program to update my home page and course web sites. Why can't I download the upgrade? What the heck do I use instead?!" [Result: More pestering of the Help Desk, followed by a call to the University Web Coordinator, who had fielded a similar panicked question from Fukuoka when the university changed its web security protocols on me. Turns out the correct program had been on my Mac's control strip all along; nobody ever told me that was pretty much the same secure FTP program that I had downloaded for my Japanese PC laptop. Live and learn.]
  
• "Yeah, it does sound like that course ought to count for that requirement. I wonder why it doesn't. Just what is our procedure for appealing transfer credit assignations these days? And what's the latest articulation agreement with that particular community college?" [Result: Sent the student to the new chair, to whom he would have eventually had to talk, anyway.]
  
• "I have a vague idea of what our policy on college credits for AP English scores used to be. I wonder what it is now? Time to send another student to the chair!"
  
• "Yeah, I think you'd better give me extra advisees, so that the new hires don't have to deal with more than 10 advisees their first semester on the job. And how about giving the other extras to a, b, c, and d? What?!--a and b are on leave?! Oh no!"
  
• "Well, I'm really going to have to talk to my wife before I agree to [that particular potential service commitment I shouldn't blog about]. She's starting a MLS program and all, so we have to see how this semester works out before I decide."
  
• "I'm sorry I didn't run for any union positions this election cycle. By the time the forms got to me in Japan, I had missed the key deadlines."
  

And this is just in my first two weeks back in the time zone and first week in the office.