The Cranky Professor

March 14, 2010

Nothing like a disbound book of hours to attract medievalists

Like a moth to the candle flame. You see, when I visit a museum or library where a book is on display I usually get to see 2 pages - at whatever place the book happens to be open. But when they take a book apart for conservation there's the opportunity for a big show! Spread it out!

So, I'm headed to NYC the second half of the coming week. Look at this (deeply unimaginatively designed) web page of pages from the Belles Heures of Jean de France, duc de Berry.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:56 AM | Comments (0)

March 13, 2010

No School Left Behind

The dirty dark secret of NCLB is that we may know how to identify the worst performing schools, but no one (yet) knows how to turn them around in any consistent and reliable way. And I mean no one. Not the Gates Foundation to date. Not most charter programs. No one.

That's from a review of Diane Ravitch's new book renouncing No Child Left Behind and most of the data-driven approaches that created it. It's that "consistent and reliable way" that gets me. After all the money flung at the problem where are we? And if all we got from NCLB was a way to identify the worst-performing schools - I'll bet that a candid interview with the central staff of each school district in America could have done that in a year for a lot less - we've always known which were the worst schools in any system. I taught high school Latin part-time in two radically different districts in Georgia - Atlanta City and Cobb County - and there was certainly a clear idea of which middle schools that fed us were the worst.

Joanne Jacobs round up some reactions to the proposed national standards.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:16 AM | Comments (0)

March 11, 2010

For your Bible-quoting needs

For the medievalist in your life who has Bible-quoting needs - my favorite Douay-Rheims online!

I'm not a slave to the idea, but lots of medievalists prefer to quote the Douay-Rheims version because it is a translation of the Vulgate, close enough to the Vulgate version of Jerome that it is occasionally more representative of the versions medieval people would have known; however, there are all kinds of qualifiers, like which version of Psalms you use - and in my period there are still lots of copies of the Old Latin (the Vetus Latina - speaking of which here's a great site for that!) knocking around.

Really, the idea that there was one, standard version of scripture before the invention of printing is problematic. Printing standardized things a lot - though it opened other cans of worms.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:51 PM | Comments (1)

March 5, 2010

So is there grade inflation, or not?

Read this and wonder. It's always everyone ELSE who gives easy grades.

I don't worry about grade inflation so much as crankily fret about lowered expectations.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:03 AM | Comments (0)

Everyone gets it

I mean, they might protest the core business model, in which so many employees are effectively unfireable, meaning that everyone else has to take a disproportionate share of the cuts. But other than that, what is all this protesting going to accomplish? Telling the administration they're unhappy? Trust me, the administration is pretty unhappy too.

That's Megan McArdle on the California student protests. What we've heard ad infinitum this year on the Budget Advisory Task Force salary and benefits are 70% of the budget. Put the relative unfireability of people like me and 70% and there are eventually going to be some ugly decisions. The faculty got called "good Germans" in a listserve email after the monthly Fac Meeting on Monday - you know, "they came for the communists and I didn't stand up...." It seems an inappropriate analogy to me, who has been standing up (and sitting down at conference tables all year) discussing what can be done. I think there are worse alternatives than the ones we have chosen and are exploring. We've polled the place - faculty and staff - to try to find the least of the evils. But still - people will be hurt. No way around it.

This is a hard time to be an administrator. But calling them Nazis doesn't help - this does not rise to the level of expelling the Jews from the Universities.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:34 AM | Comments (0)

March 1, 2010

No Egyptology at Harvard since when? 1942?

This is a bit of a shock to read - Harvard is hiring its first full-time Egyptologist since 1942.

After years dedicated to shedding light on the work of the late Harvard Egyptology Professor George A. Reisner, Class of 1889, Peter D. Manuelian '81 will become the first egyptology professor at Harvard since his predecessor's death 68 years ago.

Manuelian, currently an egyptology lecturer at Tufts, will be the first person to fill the Philip J. King Professorship, which was established in the fall of 2006 to support the study of ancient civilizations.

. . .

Though Harvard offers the occasional course related to ancient Egyptian history, it has not had an egyptology professor since 1942, when Reisner died during an excavation in Giza, Egypt.

They are hiring an in-town alum, interestingly enough.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:17 AM | Comments (0)

February 28, 2010

Why Hobart is playing Cornell in the (Syracuse University) Carrier Dome today

The lacrosse season-opener got moved - and I'm sure the Buildings and Grounds staff is VERY grateful. McCooey Field is astroturf, but imagine cleaning this seating area over and over again all day Friday and Saturday to try and keep ahead of this!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:50 AM | Comments (0)

What? Boorish Canadians?

Heads are exploding all across Blue America - unless they're fast readers and figure out that these are boorish WESTERN Canadians. Surely this couldn't happen in Toronto! And anyway, if they fall down and hurt themselves, they have universal health care.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:57 AM | Comments (0)

February 27, 2010

Leave it to the Education Industry to take over the Census

"Here comes a prospect," she said as a student walked up. Ware explained that filling out the census form this spring could mean more money for the university and the surrounding neighborhood, one of the oldest and most diverse in the city. The student took some knickknacks and promised to fill out her form. Ware smiled.

"If we could get some more of that funding back, we could get some more services," said Ware, 48, a member of the commuter school's Student Senate who is among a group that has been pushing the census in classrooms, lobbies and hallways.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:22 PM | Comments (0)

February 25, 2010

If it's Thursday, my meeting must be about the Budget.

I go to too many meetings this semester - and Thursday is the depressing one. I ended up on the president's Budget Advisory Task Force to talk about ways in which we might work ourselves through the "current situation" without losing our minds, our staff, and whatever makes us our own snowflake of a Small Liberal Arts College.*

In case you, dear reader, live on another planet and haven't noticed, here's a nice summary with a local angle on what the fiscal crisis has done to higher education giving.

A recent report by the Council for Aid to Education shows how, nationwide, colleges have also been hurt by an almost 12 percent drop in donations last fiscal year, which for most colleges ended June 30.

Alumni and other individuals, corporations and foundations tightened their purse strings.

The 20 colleges receiving the most donations got a total of $7.3 billion -- 13 percent less than the top 20 reported the previous year.

No local college made the latest list, which Stanford University headed by raising $640 million.

Locally, the declines are more striking. The $120.8 million in donations received by 11 Rochester-area colleges for fiscal 2009 was 29 percent less than the $169.3 million recorded in fiscal 2008.

Suffering the biggest drop was the University of Rochester, which saw its contributions fall from almost $101 million in fiscal 2008 to about $64 million in fiscal 2009.

Alumni watching their pocketbooks were the biggest factor in the almost $7 million drop in donations received last fiscal year by Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva. That was the second-largest local dollar decline.

The news brightens by the end of the article: "But there is cause for optimism -- giving to Hobart and William Smith Colleges is 27 percent higher than a year ago." At the meeting today I'm going to be asking what that 27% is - 27% more money? 27% more gifts?

I have to admit that the mood has brightened as the meetings have gone on; there is indeed a feeling of milder pessimism (it's not really optimism - things are still hard!) in the room than when we started meeting, and markers like that 27% help. But really - if you know of any smart rich kids, send them my way. Admissions are the make or break in this game.

----------
*Make that TWO smaller, coordinate liberal arts collegeS, thank you very much. Hobart AND William Smith. We get touchy about that here. Remember that story about our Admissions folks sending out 3-d glasses? Go back and read the comments. There are even faculty who see the increasing use of our initials (HWS) instead of our full name as a devious way of flattening difference.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:01 AM | Comments (1)

February 22, 2010

I think it was the indignity of the three deltas that did it . . .

Funny, when I hear the name "Amon Carter" I think of a great museum of American art, not a drunken frat boy with Greek letters branded on his buttocks. There you go, though - takes all sorts.

via Prof. Soltan.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:48 AM | Comments (0)

February 20, 2010

Igloo Fail

My friend and neighbor Bruce Bennett wrote*

The poet asks
"If winter comes can spring be far behind?"
Where I live, yes.

*I hope I quote this accurately, but my copy is at the office.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:10 PM | Comments (1)

Funding Public Universities

Here's a thoughtful article about how to fund the University of Iowa in the hometown newspaper, the Iowa City Press-Citizen. The author explores all sorts of things - the local situation at the flagship campus, the problem of funding a system, the relation between state funding, tuition, and revenue-generating* activities. All in all a good piece to read.

*though it takes the idea that athletics generates revenue too seriously

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:52 AM | Comments (0)

February 17, 2010

Blue state permanent realignment?

Maybe not?

I heard a faculty current-research-lunch-talk that not only proclaimed that if Barack Obama won the Red Tide would be turned back for decades to come but ended with an altar call to join the speaker canvassing in Pennsylvania or Ohio that weekend. And I mean altar call - there wasn't the slightest doubt in the speaker's voice that everyone in the room agreed with him that the election of the Democratic candidate was a good thing.

Heh.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:24 PM | Comments (2)

Oh my - Michigan State to build a Zaha Hadid art center!

Big money from Eli Broad funds a new art museum for Michigan State. Here's the story with a picture.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:52 AM | Comments (0)

Tales of the Weird

Amy Bishop is one serial killer who isn't drawing out many of the "s/he was always so nice and quiet, we didn't see this coming" kind of comment. Read this story from the Boston Globe.

via Kathy Shaidle.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:19 AM | Comments (1)

February 15, 2010

Improvement!

Getting out of the weekly Committee on the Faculty meeting while there is still light in the sky is a good thing! It's good to be reminded that the days are getting noticeably longer -- and that I live in one of the most beautiful places in the world.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:59 PM | Comments (0)

February 14, 2010

Climate? Weather? History?

Well maybe the Medieval Climate Optimum --- really, that's what people used to call it --- wasn't so bad after all. And maybe, despite certain medievalists worrying about denialism, things are more complicated on the natural science side of things than humanists can see.

Except when it comes to analyzing motivation.

Where we're not so bad at spotting self-interest. And it turns out that carelessness and self-interest have driven terrifying conclusions that have had policy consequences already.

Don't believe me? Read this.

And this.

And this.

Not that I don't think things might be warmer....but I do NOT think that scientists are unmotivated, disinterested, or all that much more careful than anyone else.

I'm sure as hell going to ask questions about the Campus Climate Compact - and why in these times of fiscal difficulty we should go out of our fiscal way for polar bears. Because, you know, they slipped up and put me on the committee. I'm all for buildings that save us money over 20 years - but I'm not in favor of buildings that can't. And LEED standards are designed by people who are fallible.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:46 PM | Comments (0)

February 12, 2010

Our Admissions gimmick makes the New York Times (blog)

The viewbook we're sending out this year to high school juniors comes with 3-d glasses - so you can see us in three dimensions. Get it?

All admissions mailings are gimmicks, so I'm not ashamed (I go to sleep at night imploring God for an entering class of 600). This post on Jacques Steinberg's The Choice blog (and his commenters) go into the 3-d approach in some detail

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:39 AM | Comments (1)

February 10, 2010

NCAA vs. Real People

What do you think are the most popular sports in America that aren't part of NCAA intercollegiate athletics?

I'm voting for racquetball. Any others?

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:00 PM | Comments (1)

February 9, 2010

Dartmouth announces its budget solution

Yikes. $100 million. Layoffs. Financial aid changes. Read about it here.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:06 PM | Comments (0)

February 8, 2010

There's Visual Literacy and there's Legal Literacy. And you'd think a building full of lawyers would be legally literate.

In producing faux openness (look, we're all social media and we post photos!) the White House forgot that "no copyright for pictures produced by federal employees in the line of work" clause, didn't they? And they didn't HAVE to publish on Flickr!

Now they're scrambling - and it probably won't work.

I really should blog about the great Visual Literacy seminar our Library and NITLE put on right before classes started - I've been bogged down! Copyright and such were certainly topics. In fact, I set up a private Tumblr blog just this morning for my Islamic Art & Architecture students. Not only do I want this to be a comfortable class environment (cough cough) but I want it to be unsearchable when we start talking about images of the Prophet Muhammad.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:33 AM | Comments (0)

February 7, 2010

German pick up phrase a day?

I keep improving shining hours (which if you live in a place as gray as I do is important) - I bought a German-phrase-a-day calendar. Lately it seems to be stuck in a singles bar. Sind Sie verheiratet? Then earlier this week "Sind Sie single?" Yesterday, "Sind Sie in einer Beziehung?"

Today we've broken away from all that and I keep saying to myself (whenever I walk past the end of the kitchen counter, "Keine Sorge, mein Hund beißt nicht."

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:44 AM | Comments (2)

February 4, 2010

Sources and Documents

I had to buy a new copy of J.J. Pollitt's Art of Ancient Greece: Sources and Documents; I have no idea what I've done with mine, the library's is too fragile to xerox out of, and books like this are endlessly useful. I sometimes think of just ordering one of them as the primary textbook along with a history of a period and working through mainly the images (or kinds of images) referred to in the surviving texts. It would be an interesting way to run a course - but ultimately I probably wouldn't like it. We (or I) depend too much on the insights from archaeology, which this kind of textual evidence is not all that helpful at generating.

Here are some other ones I use all the time:
Cyril Mango: The Art of the Byzantine Empire 312-1453: Sources and Documents
Caecilia Davis-Weyer: Early Medieval Art 300-1150: Sources and Documents
Teresa Frisch: Gothic Art, 1140-c. 1450: Sources and Documents

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:46 AM | Comments (0)

February 3, 2010

Recruiting for Rome

Last night was the open information session for our Spring 2011 abroad programs. Nick and I and a student who went in 2009 did a quick presentation twice as students cycled through. We talked to about 35 last night - and expect maybe 70 applications eventually. Students turn in applications March 1. We have a month to evaluate, check references, look at transcripts, cross-check disciplinary records with the deans, and make our selection. We make offers on April 1. They pay a deposit by early May. So before the end of the semester we should have our Rome 2011 Crew lined up!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:25 AM | Comments (1)

January 29, 2010

Presidents of Harvard, Brown, Yale, etc., fly to Switzerland to save the environment

So they're all going to behave sustainably NOW. From now on. Only videoconferences? Because it seems to me that the transportation costs (in dollars and carbon) are pretty unsustainable between Providence, RI, and Davos, Switzerland.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:27 AM | Comments (1)

January 23, 2010

Um...just when we thought the endowments and college savings of America were recovering...

...we read things like this. I guess it's going to be another depressing meeting on Tuesday.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:12 PM | Comments (1)

January 20, 2010

Messianic Hopes Disappointed

Heh.

No, really, Hah!

What is it with people who actually put their hopes in politicians? You'd think that a social scientist might have shown a touch more skepticism - if you didn't actually know that almost all employed American social scientists were already registered members of only one party and therefore have their hearts broken over and over again by the sad fact that something like a minority of their countryfolk always ever with them.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:12 PM | Comments (1)

First Decision!

I just made my first actual decision as department chair - how much to pay a visiting artist who is actually doing a demonstration, not just a critique...! Drunk with power, I return to syllabus preparation.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:13 AM | Comments (0)

January 19, 2010

Science Fiction Query

I was talking to a friend tonight....she's interested in music and dissonance - and sound. She has a long-standing interest in science fiction and cyborgs.

So I am remembering a short story that couldn't have been published (given my life and my high school library) after 1975.

The mute-but-not-deaf protagonist works for a service that sweeps for left-behind sound. In this world sound keeps reverberating - and one client is a failed or retired opera (?) singer. And he can here the sounds that he's removing.

Any help?

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:14 PM

A new year is upon us...

Well, a new semester. We start up tomorrow, and just to greet the returning students - fresh snow! It was so warm here last week that everything melted off except in places where snow plows had pushed it into deep piles - everything was muddy, just like March. Not Geneva at its prettiest. But this morning we start with a nice inch of snow. I don't think we'll get much more than 2 or 3, but what do I know? I'm a Southerner!

I've been running around in circles getting this term started - I've already had enough meetings for my taste, and I have 3 more scheduled this week: Budget Advisory Task Force today and then a Review I committee and Library Committee tomorrow. Then Thursday both my classes have their first meetings. I am moderately ready - I think I could print the syllabi now, but I left them to marinate on my desk overnight and we'll see if I still feel happy about them later today.

Much to my horror I found out when I sat down at the computer that the last time I taught these two, Greek and Islamic, we were still mainly using slides. Neither course is just sitting there with usable lectures on the server. Of course i have the slide sheets from previous iterations, but it's a lot more work that I thought I wasn't going to have to do for daily class prep. The good part is that we've acquired a LOT of new images since 2007 in both areas, particularly of Islamic architecture, so I would have been integrating those anyway.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:16 AM | Comments (1)

January 7, 2010

So should you go to grad school in the humanities?

Same old song, though quite well sung.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:35 PM | Comments (2)

January 6, 2010

One of the greatest modern inventions - refrigeration!

Something I lived without for 44 hours.

So Monday I'm in the Fedex/Kinkos store shipping Christmas gifts back to myself and my phone rings. It's the landlord's son - and he's grateful that I'm alive and answering my phone.

You see, there's a horrible smell coming from my apartment.

NOT that he's opened the door to see if I'm lying there on the floor decaying, but still.

So I assure him that I'll be home by 9:30 p.m. When I walk in the smell is - um - like burned brussel sprouts. Despite the 14 degree outdoor temperature (welcome back to Upstate New York!) I open a few windows. I make 3 trips to the dumpster with the fridge/freezer contents (welcome back to Upstate New York!). There wasn't much in the fridge, but the freezer was packed with meat; I'm a good shopper! Luckily the Wegman's airtight packs hadn't burst - though they were all fully inflated and pillow-like. All the ziplock bags and plastic freezer boxes of leftovers, though, had popped open and spewed. And rotted in the heat.

You see, the machine wasn't dead and sitting there at ambient temperature - it was running hot.

I cleared the freezer and called Nick. He promised to have me a fridge the next day. The next day I called him. And again. And another time. Today I called again. And half an hour after the promised delivery time. And texted. And finally got a brand new Whirlpool at about 5:45.

And while I was in the hall watching Nick and his brother manhandle the fridge all the way down to Apartment Thirteen I checked my email - and found out that we have been approved for Rome 2011. Yay!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:52 PM | Comments (0)

January 5, 2010

Tales of the Deluge

University of Illinois - mandatory furlough for 11,000 employees.

Faculty and academic professional staff will take four furlough days - a temporary leave of absence without pay - between the four pay dates of Feb. 16 and May 16. Monthly pay will be reduced by one day for each of the four payroll periods. The president, chancellors and other senior administrators will take 10 furlough days between February and June pay dates. Their pay will be reduced by two days each month during the five-month period.

Why?

The University of Illinois has received only seven percent ($51 million) of its state appropriation since the start of the 2010 fiscal year in July 2009. The amount owed to the university is $436 million as of Dec. 31 and increasing each month

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:34 PM | Comments (1)

January 2, 2010

College Basketball leads to Pro Basketball

Because nothing much happens to players who do things like this on the college level, nothing much happens to players who do things like this on the pro level. At least I'll believe that UT does something about it when I see it.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:49 AM | Comments (0)

December 25, 2009

Why we blog...

Because blogging brings us into contact (indeed, even meeting for an early morning cup of tea or coffee, if we're lucky), with people who post things like this:

Some poets - Hopkins... Emily Dickinson comes to mind - have an insane concision and obliqueness, a madly packed brevity. Many of their poems have the compression of black hole events. The reader stands at the tongue of the event, leaning over gingerly, having a bit of a look, afraid of the pull.

Go read Professor Soltan on a Hopkins poem. Wish, like me, that you were signed up for one of her classes in the spring. Ah, well, I'll teach Greek vase painting. That's some consolation.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:59 PM | Comments (1)

December 18, 2009

And...OFF!

What an exam week! I just posted the grades for European Studies 101. I'm waiting for some last bits* of Early Medieval to trickle in, but I can do that via email.

I'm off to a wedding in Florida and then to Chattanooga!

*Saturday morning: Is it a bad sign that no one who said "I'll go right back to my dorm and send you..." sent me anything?

*Monday morning: Well, two out of three delinquents turning stuff in isn't bad. Final grades are due today, so as soon as I get home to the parents' I'll check one last time for those Bible homeworks, and then it's a zero.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:20 PM | Comments (2)

December 16, 2009

That darned Medieval Warm Period

Or Putative Medieval Warm Period? In answer to a comment somewhere back there I came across this at Unlocked Word Hoard - who has a regular commenter who really understands these things:

In one now-notorious e-mail, Michael Mann wrote that "it would nice to 'contain' the putative 'MWP'" (or Medieval Warm Period), but Mann has since argued that what he meant by that was that he simply wanted to identify exactly when the MWP began, not deny its existence. Science Dude, however, finds Mann's explanation unbelievable, both in the context of the e-mail and Mann's other publications. Read enough of what Mann has written about the MWP (or what he prefers to call the "Medieval Climate Anomaly"), and you'll see that his explanation doesn't pass the laugh test. Whether the MWP was just an anomaly or not, Mann clearly meant to hide it in the data.

Go look.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:59 PM | Comments (0)

Desperate times

I just finished grading all the exams for Art 101 with 55 minutes to go before giving the European Studies 101 exam.

Praise Jesus!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:07 PM | Comments (0)

December 15, 2009

One of THOSE days to kick off exam week

The Hour-by-Hour for Geneva, NY (14456)

10 am...39
11 am...38
12 pm...35
1 pm.....34
2 pm.....33
3 pm.....34 <--when I go into 2nd Long Meeting of the week
4 pm.....33
5 pm.....32 <--2nd Long Meeting schedule to end here.
6 pm.....32
7 pm.....31 <--when I go into 1st Exam of the week
8 pm.....30
9 pm.....29
10 pm....28 <--official end of 1st Exam of the week

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:10 AM | Comments (0)

December 14, 2009

Oh, the last-minuteness of it all!

Today is a reading day before the deluge - I spent much of today fielding yes/no questions about final exam study questions - almost all of them reasonable enough. Still, one DOES wish they'd thought of these last week!

The Café is packed with busy studiers and snackers. I'm having a cup of coffee before one of the weekly meetings so useful for my spiritual development. Just a few more days and I can flee South!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:46 PM | Comments (1)

December 11, 2009

Neo-premodernism

From Professor Soltan's entry on the recently deceased Stephen Toulmin

"the thing to do after rejecting Cartesianism is not to go on through the wreckage of the temple but to go back into the town where this heretical temple was built and rediscover the life that was lived by people for many centuries before the rationalist dream seized hold of people's minds."

That's something Toulmin said in an interview. I like it.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:41 PM | Comments (0)

How to balance a budget

Sorry to have been so irregular about posting lately; circumstances have me down. Not only is it the end of the semester, that twice-a-year trauma for both them and us, but the broader world is catching up.

Part of getting tenure is an increased demand on professors for service. In a moment of public-spiritedness last year I agree to serve on the Committee on the Faculty (COFAC), which is the faculty committee past which everything that affects faculty governance, work conditions, and policy flows. Luckily a different committee has primary responsibility for academic and curricular things, but the lines blur a lot and plenty of things come before us, too. We meet fairly regularly with the president about this or that, and the provost is an ex officio member.

That would be quite enough, thank you very much, but in this time of fiscal crisis in most of higher education our local response includes a president's Budget Advisory Task Force (BATF). I'm a member. Let's just say that many, many of my dead relatives are springing from Purgatory weekly, and will continue to do so until April.

We're not engaging in massive layoffs like some folks, but we're using attrition. There's not a total hiring freeze - we have a couple of faculty positions that just have to be filled for the curriculum to go on ticking. We're even about to break ground on some new construction that raises some eyebrows - but when you have a targeted capital campaign gift and a bond that has to be spent down by a deadline you're kind of stuck.

People email the provost all the time with helpful suggestions - luckily I don't get a CC on all of them, just on enough to know from their time stamps that a lot of folks around here should be getting more sleep. I should be getting more of that myself.

Hey - if you know any bright children of rich parents who are looking for a scenic place to spend four years studying with a dedicated faculty, hand them my email address. Back to making the European Studies 101 final exam study sheet.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:55 AM

December 9, 2009

December is so very unpleasant

Sorry to whine, but...I have an advisee who has yet to register for Spring. On the other side of the balance I have another who has suddenly realized he might have a very different professional interest - and we need to talk. The second situation is great. The first - yikes.

And then there are last papers. And exams. And Christmas travel....

I'll live.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:10 PM | Comments (1)

December 1, 2009

TIAA matching to ZERO?

Sweetbriar is going to suspend TIAA-Cref contributions for FIVE MONTHS. That's one ingredient to deal with a budget crisis.

We're talking about locally congruent measures. Everyone's in trouble, and everyone's troubles - like Tolstoy's unhappy families - are (somewhat) different.

I've never believed Tolstoy. Maybe that's why, for my sins, I'm on the President's Budgetary Advisory Task Force.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:17 AM | Comments (1)

November 30, 2009

Spelling on tests. SIGH

I never grade for spelling on tests, except for proper names that I have insisted they must learn. But this sentence misses every technical term. The question is about a basilica:

And overall it was a pretty good essay. BIG SIGH.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:37 AM | Comments (6)

November 27, 2009

The Academy - why we don't really love it

Weirdly, the less social authority a profession enjoys, the more restrictive the barriers to entry and the more rigid the process of producing new producers tend to become. You can become a lawyer in three years, an M.D. in four years, and an M.D.-Ph.D. in six years, but the median time to a doctoral degree in the humanities disciplines is nine years. And the more self-limiting the profession, the harder it is to acquire the credential and enter into practice, and the tighter the identification between the individual practitioner and the discipline.

And that's from the first page. Read the whole thing - an essay by Louis Menand about the academy.

via Fr. Philip

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:12 AM | Comments (1)

November 23, 2009

Sorry for the slow posting...

But life has taken a turn to all-meetings-all-the-time. I was in 4 actual ones last week, and had several long, impromptu discussions with colleagues. I need the break. The good news is that I'm pretty much up on my grading, so I can actually sleep and read some over Thanksgiving.

Committee on the Faculty - Mondays, 4:30-6:30
President's Budge Task Force - Tuesdays for the foreseeable future, 4-6
Library Committee - 3rd Wednesday, 4-6
Art historians wrangling the 300-level of our curriculum
and then side meetings.

I know, I know, I shouldn't whine - but I felt very put-upon by Friday - when I happily attended an art opening. The real problem with the 4 p.m. meeting this time of year is that by the time you leave it's dark - which makes it feel like the meeting lasted even longer! I think that Thursday was the only evening I didn't have to be somewhere!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:03 AM | Comments (1)

November 16, 2009

Rice Stadium - attendance defeat!

My university - 2,400 students in my day - has a stadium that seats 72,000. Yes, 3 zeros.

They have given up on ever filling the end zones.

Click on the picture to go to my flickr stream - there were great banners on the concourses - on one side they had photos of famous football players. On the reverse, Nobel prize winners. That's Rice for you.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:17 PM | Comments (5)

And back!

I am back to normal - sitting at my kitchen table, drinking coffee, and living virtually - but with the enormous advantage of knowing that I didn't waste my youth - just a fair amount of time I could have used even better than I did. Rice University was a fine place full of interesting people, and in lots of ways it made me what I am today. And I'm happy about that.

And lots of uninterrupted grading time on the flights home!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:07 AM

November 13, 2009

And arrived...

at the lovely Hotel Za Za - formerly the Warwick! Someone once told me that Frank Sinatra thought the view of Rice and Herman Park from the top floor bar at the Warwick rivaled anything in the world. I'll see.

I need to dash - a carfull of ladies from my past is picking me up in moments to start the mad social whirl.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:38 PM | Comments (4)

Off to Houston!

Off to Houston for my 25th Hanszen (whoops - I mean RICE!) reunion!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:50 PM | Comments (0)

November 9, 2009

Dante Blogging - Inferno Canto XXV

Canto XXV

In Canto XXV Dante stretches his powers of surreal description to rival Lucan and Ovid - and he challenges the two classical poets quite specifically. We are still in the Malebolgia of the Thieves, where snakes torment sinners. Dante sees three souls transformed, transmuted, metamorphosized from their human - if naked and degraded - appearance - into something other.

Be silent, Lucan, where you touch upon
   wretched Sabellus and Nasidius,
  and listen to the arrow I shoot now.
Be silent, Ovid, with your Arethusa
  and Cadmus, where your poem turns
   this to a serpent, that one to a spring;
I hold no grudge, for never front to front
  did you transmute two natures so their forms
   were ready to change matter with each other. (25.94-102)

Dante's damned souls are bitten, and through the bite merge and transform into something other in a terrifying way. Esolen speculates that this transmutation is appropriate "for sinners who never respected what is proper to (what is the property of) the indivdiual or family. Now their own boundaries blur in a hideous defacing of the body: a false union, an "improperty," so to speak" (468).

The direct challenge to the auctoritates Lucan and Ovid strikes me as Dante here, three-quarters of his way through Hell, feeling his mastery over his tools. He can deploy language, description, and allusion with the best of them now. Well, with the best save Virgil. Is the anxiety of influence is full-blown, though, when he names them? I'm not certain about that.

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Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:32 AM | Comments (0)

October 27, 2009

What the academy is up against

Here is an article that puts some numbers - both budgetty and human - on what's going on with colleges and universities.

Stanford's endowment fell 27 percent to $12.6 billion in the fiscal year that ended Aug. 31. Hennessy has suspended the school's so-called smoothing formula, which spreads losses over five years. The university, located near Palo Alto, California, said it dismissed 412, or 3.2 percent, of its non-faculty workers, in the first eight months of 2009, postponed $1.1 billion in construction and will close its 58,500-volume physics library.

Stanford will now reduce the amount it withdraws from the endowment over two years, leading to deep cuts designed to speed the university's financial recovery, Hennessey said in an interview. Stanford, which has the U.S.'s third-largest university endowment, relied on the fund for 29 percent of its operating budget in fiscal 2009, the school said. As a result, Stanford will recover faster and gain efficiency, he said.

"It is only in those crunch times that we really say, 'Which things no longer make sense?'" said Hennessy, 57, Stanford's president since 2000. "That's a healthy process. Not a painless process, but a healthy process."

By making steep cuts, Stanford will be able to return to normal hiring and growth sooner, he said. In a typical year, Stanford hires about 110 faculty members, said Lisa Lapin, a Stanford spokeswoman. For the 2010 fiscal year, the school froze about 50 faculty searches.

The Bloomberg article has some comparisons to some of the other really rich schools (Stanford is tied with Princeton for the 3rd largest endowment). Some of them are still spending less than 5% per year from their endowments (a luxury non-educational non-profits don't have). We down here at the poor-but-honest end of the pack are living with lots of the same realities, though. There's a presidential task force to look at everything and make suggestions of ways to close our deficit - or, as I think the Board of Trustees put it, to stabilize our budget. I've ended up on it for reasons that make some structural sense. We're in one of those everything is on the table moments - though not everything is really on the table, of course - we're far from declaring financial exigency and shutting down divisions.

"We got used to the fact that everything could get funding," said Julia Brownell, 19, a student from Menlo Park, California. "Now, we have to get used to the idea that funding is hard to come by." On a much smaller scale we had the same feeling - and getting used to saying and hearing "no" is hard. I'm glad the task force only has to make recommendations.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:52 AM | Comments (1)

October 26, 2009

Dante Blogging - Inferno Canto XXIV

Canto XXIV

Again, this canto starts with contrast - the last pocket was full of the deadly tired hypocrites, laboring under their lead cloaks. Dante himself is tired, and Virgil tells him:

..."You must
shake off your sluggisness," the Teacher said,
  "for no one comes to fame who sits in soft
  pillows of down, or lies easily in bed,
And when his life is wasted utterly
  he leaves such traces of himself behind
  as smoke in air or foam upon the sea. (24.46-51)

Virgil is preparing Dante not only to get through the Malebolge, but also "to climb a longer stair" (24.56), the mountain of Purgatory.

Dante gets busy and they climb out of the region of the hypocrites into the region of the thieves - a giant clutch of snakes. Ugh. Snakes. It really does sound like a moment in an Indiana Jones movie - snakes knotted around sinners in horrific detail. Certainly one of the punishments I'd rather not picture.

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Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:56 AM | Comments (0)

October 23, 2009

Grading woes

How do you find a NEW way to make your professor pull out his hair?

I'm finishing off the last round of European Studies 101 midterms this morning (yay!) and I hit one that doesn't make sense. Oh, the answers are fine, it's the math. I add up the column of figures and it's too high - this lad is making 8s and 8.8s, an occasional 9, and even one 7, but I get 91.something or other. So I do it on my calculator. Same answer (which at least shows that the caffeine has kicked in and I can add).

THEN I check the column - there are eleven numbers! He did an extra question!

Yes, it's my fault - I did one of those "choose 1" tests, and two of the groups had 3 possibilities and he did TWO.

So, drop the lower grade of those two and he hits an 83. Big sigh of relief.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:29 AM | Comments (0)

October 21, 2009

Dante Blogging - Inferno Canto XXIII

Canto XXIII

After all the noise of squabbling devils in Canti XXI and XXII, XXIII begins with silence.

Taciti, soli, sanza compagnia
  n'andavam l'un dinanzi e l'altro dopo
  come frati minor vanno per via.

Silent, alone, no escort at our side,
  we set out, one before and one behind
  as Friars Minor walk in single file. (23.1-3)

The silence doesn't last long, and the pilgrims end up fleeing devils coming back for more. Virgil grabs Dante and runs with him - and they tumble into the 6th ditch. There they find the hypocrites, walking slowly, wearing beautiful golden cloaks whose inside is all lead.

Dante runs into two Bolognese friars who recognize his Tuscan dialect. Tedious Guelphage and Ghibellinage passes. Esolen seems more tolerant - "Note how severely Dante condemns those who meddled in political affairs, even when the meddling benefited Dante's own party" (464). Maybe it's because my coffee hasn't set in yet, but I figure Dante's faction inside the Guelphs didn't come out so well in the 1266 settlement of the 36 Good Men. Nevertheless, as Esolen points out in another note, all the named occupants of the Ditch of the Hypocrites are clergy in one way or another.

Just as Dante is about to abuse the friars he catches sight of a man crucified to the path where all the lead-weighed souls pass over him - and one of the two friars reveal that his father-in-law and the whole council of which they were a part suffer the same punishment.

"That soul you wonder at, who lies transfixed,
  advised the Pharisees that it was fit
  to martyr one man for the people's sake. (23.115-117)

This is Caiphas, who Esolen points out did not call directly for the death of Jesus, since that is not how hypocrites operate. "Yet thought hypocrites usually intend more than they will say, in this case Caiphas spoke more than he intended, and was the victim of his own irony. For Jesus was slain for the people, but not as the priest supposed..." (464).

Dante, as a medieval Christian, has no doubt about Jewish blood guilt for the crucifixion. He identifies that guilt as sown by these men - but he does not pardon it. One of the sad truths of the world is that great art does not heal. It can help, but Dante, the poet of individual responsibility, who finds people in Hell who no one else thought might be there and will find folks in Purgatory who repented great wickedness still believes in inherited group guilt for the Jews.

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Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:45 AM | Comments (1)

October 15, 2009

Dante Blogging - Inferno Canto XXII

Canto XXII

Dante continues his devil-farce in Canto XXII. I'll certainly have to come back to this and compare it to some of the devil-play in French farces, which I've spent some time thinking about in public. Certainly, Dante is closer in these two canti, with their sinners bobbing in boiling pitch, poked by demons, to modern popular conceptions of Hell.

The humor here is pretty broad - but the conclusion is actually funny - the devils begin fighting among themselves and fall in - and get stuck together with the tar. We could take this as a serious lesson about how there is no honor among thieves or mutual respect among devils, and that's true, but it misses the point, I think.

Click here for all the Danteblogging and none of my other ramblings.

(oh - sorry for the gap - it's midterm and I've been grading)

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:48 AM | Comments (0)

October 14, 2009

Ah - midterms.

I am giving a midterm.

Yes, even as I type my European Studies 101 (Antiquity to the Renaissance) students are writing busily for 55 minutes.

I have the laptop with me and am watching them think.

This is a typical identify-the-quotation-and-comment test. What makes it mine, different from when folks from other departments teach it, is that there are 3 or 4 images on the test to consider either in their cultural context or in comparison to a specific text. For instance, we do a day (a day and a half, this year) on the Parthenon to go along with Pericles and the Melian Dialogue. It's useful to see what those Athenians spent the treasure of the Delian League building - and to figure out how much MARBLE it would have taken.

Likewise, when we look at the Code of Hammurabi we look at the Stele of Hammurabi. Right up there at the top is Hammurabi receiving his authority (though not written tablets of the law) from Marduk. That's a useful image to discuss.

Wish them luck!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:12 AM | Comments (1)

October 13, 2009

Hilarious Harvard Exceptionalism

From the Harvard Crimson:

Indiana University Professor Elinor Ostrom and University of California at Berkeley Professor Oliver E. Williamson will be the recipients of this year's Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, the prize committee announced yesterday--to the surprise of some members of the Harvard Economics Department.

. . .

This will be the twelfth consecutive year that Harvard has not been represented among the Economic Sciences category winners of the Nobel Prize since Professor Robert C. Merton won the prize in 1997.

Some of the more recent winners undertook their research at Harvard before receiving their prize while at other institutions.

via Marginal Revolution

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:50 PM | Comments (3)

October 12, 2009

A crack in the ice?

When pretty much every college and university in America has some sort of salary and hiring freeze on one threat that doesn't work well is saying to the Board of Trustees, "If you don't raise salaries people will start to go on the job market." There is very little market, except for retiree replacements at places that are doing that kind of thing.

The University of Chicago seems to see this as an opportunity.

The University of Chicago is planning a faculty expansion in coming year -- not just the unfreezing of selected positions that some institutions are hoping for this year, but an effort to increase the total size of the faculty. Robert J. Zimmer, the university's president, recently sent faculty members an e-mail in which he noted the impact of cuts in the last year, and said that he believed additional cuts would not be necessary. Further, he outlined plans for a faculty expansion. While details are not yet available, he said the following: "[W]e will institute a program for the gradual expansion of the faculty. Organized by the deans and provost and led by the faculty, we will seek out special opportunities and address key needs through a selected expansion over the next five years.

It could work. If Chicago starts picking off folks at the top that will open up some movement - and that might help break the salary freezes all sorts of places. Because if Chicago hires one of my middling-senior colleagues, that frees up salary to hire replacements at the bottom of the scale.

I'm on a committee with the highest-paid member of our faculty, who wryly admitted that the best thing he could do for the salary situation is retire. There doesn't seem to be any other reason for him to do so, though (good health, still vigorous teaching, sacrificial community service), so I'm glad he isn't on the list yet.

But still - he's right. We're a campus where some targeted buy-outs could make a big difference, given our salary structure and hour-glass shape to the faculty (if you look at cohort size). Our Provost and Dean of Faculty, an economist in her earlier life, seems always to point out when incentives for retirement come up that even mentioning the administration is considering such a thing actually slows retirements while people wait to hear what they might get.

I figure that a good many senior folks out there (here and elsewhere) are waiting for the resolution of the Obamacare thing so they can make a better decision. Why start using Medicare the year everything about insurance is up in the air?

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:59 AM | Comments (0)

October 11, 2009

Regatta - coming in

What a perfect crisp October day!

Hobart & William Smith are hosting Fall Sectionals, so there are teams from as far as Maryland and Wisconsin here this weekend - what a great day for them to sail!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:41 AM | Comments (1)

October 9, 2009

Dante Blogging - Inferno Canto XXI

Canto XXI

Dante begins this Canto with a lovely set of sound effects - read it out loud and see!

Così di ponte in ponte, altro parlando
  che la mia comedìa cantar non cura,
   venimmo; e tenavamo 'l colmo, quando
restammo per veder laltra fessura
  di Malebolge e li altri pianti vani;   e vidila mirabilimente oscura

And so from one bridge to the next we came,
  talking of things I do not care to sing
   within my Comedy, and reached the top,
And rested there to see the other crack   of Evil Pouches, and their useless cries;   and what we looked upon was wondrous black. (21.1-6)

Those first four lines with their P, C, and O are really something - and he's using them to describe things he will not sing to us.

The Canto ends with the opposite - a vulgar sound all done with T, C, and D.

Per l'argine sinistro volta dienno;
   ma prima avea ciascun la lingua stretta
   coi denti, verso lor duca, per cenno;
ed elli avea del cul fatto trombetta. (21.136-139)

Then the platoon turned sharp left on the bank,
  but first they'd stuck their tongues between their teeth
   and blown it at their sergeant for a sign,
and he had made a bugle of his arse.

As Esolen points out, "one musical note in Hell, as it were" (461). The sergeant generating the note is a devil - one of Dante's first band of dedicated demon tormenters. This ditch is full of boiling pitch and bribe-takers; the demons circle the bubbling goo poking any grafter who sticks a body part above the surface. Their names are, as Esolen points out, very Screwtapey: Calcabrina works out to Tramplefrost, Cagnazzo becomes Larddog, Rubicante becomes Redfroth (460). I'd never thought, though, that these crazy compounds should remind us of the brigands and politicians of Dante's time. Remember that one of his great patrons (though perhaps not this early?) was Bigdog of the della Scala family, Cangrande.

Click here for all the Danteblogging and none of my other ramblings.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:32 AM

October 6, 2009

It's always nice to know the British can be ignorant too, despite their nice accents.

In a savage attack, Andrew Grant, chairman of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference (HMC), compared the Government's crackdown on independent schools' charitable status to Henry VIII's seizure of land and property in the 1500s.

. . .

He compared the move to Henry VIII's decision in the 1530s to shut down English monasteries and nunneries, confiscating all land and property for the crown. It was sold to pay for Government expenditure.

Addressing headmasters on Monday, Mr Grant said: "Let's be clear: the threat that currently underlies the Charity Commission's guidance is the well-tried mediaeval one of confiscation of land and property and it looks no less crude and ugly under the rose of Labour than it did under the rose of Tudor. Down in St Albans, we've been there before, of course, in 1539, when the monastery was dissolved."

By any stretch of the historiographical imagination, of course, Henry VIII is Renaissance or Early Modern. Keep your objurgations more current, Mr. Grant!

Then there's this interesting bit of academic class warfare:

The comments came as the University and College Union, which represents lecturers, said private schools' charitable status should be abolished. It claimed the £100m a year saving could pay for 20,000 extra university places.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:01 AM | Comments (0)

October 5, 2009

Dante Blogging - Inferno Canto XX

Canto XX

The next pocket of the Malebolge contains those who predicted the future. Their punishment fits their crime very visibly - as Vergil says about one of them:

See how he's made a breast out of his back.
   because he wished to see too far ahead,
   now he looks back and walks a backward path.
(20.37-39)

That is, their heads are screwed around to face their backs, and they back through hell at a slow walk, weeping down their backs.

Vergil seems a little more hostile to these than even to the average damned souls. Esolen suggests that his extremely hostile narration of the founding of his own city of Mantua by Manto, the daughter of Tiresias, may be an implicit self-defense against charges of magic (458). In the Middle Ages the Aeneid, like the Bible, was used for fortune telling - in the sortes Virgilianae one picked up a copy of Vergil's poem, flipped to a random page, stabbed a line with your finger, and found your fortune. The sortes Biblicae was the same thing, but with a Bible.

The only memorable medieval person in this circle is Michael Scot, court alchemist and astrologer to Frederick II Hohenstaufen. Astrology is one of those pagan practices the Church was never able to stamp out. Yes, pagan - though there may be Christian's who have a very high mark for predestination, we have to leave room for the free will. If stars control things, there's no free will. And there astrology columns still are in newspapers.

Click here for all the Danteblogging and none of my other ramblings.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:46 AM

October 4, 2009

Plato and crankiness

Tomorrow we start The Symposium in Euro Studies 101. Talk about mood swings!

I appreciate Plato much more now that I am an adult. Plato was a great artist. However, I think he's a deeply tricky one - and probably even not particularly honest. I don't believe in his Socrates at all - just one quick read through Xenophon makes you realize that in a world of opposing evidence we can't just say that Plato is right - unless, of course, we are professors of philosophy who think that full-time philosophers are inherently more reliable than soldiers.

So tomorrow I'm starting off with about 15 or 25 minutes of pictures of symposia, masks of Dionysus, and Greek homosexuality. I'm an art historian, after all - and these folks get to deal with visual evidence along with translated texts.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:39 PM | Comments (2)

October 2, 2009

Dante Blogging - Inferno Canto XIX

Canto XIX

Dante begins with an epic apostrophe - but not of the muses:

O Simon mago, o miseri seguaci
  che le cose di Dio, che di bontate
  deon essere spose, e voi rapaci
per oro e per argento avolterate
  or convien che per voi suoni la tromba,
   però che ne la terza bolgia* state.

Simon Magus, O you wretched crew
  of his disciples! The things of God should be
  espoused to righteiousness and love, and you
Rapacious wolves, you pander them for gold,
  foul them for silver! Sound the trumpet now
  for you -- for this third pocket is your place.

The simonists, those who like Simon Magus want to reduce sacred authority to a cash transaction, are planted upside down in holes, with fire burning the souls of their feet. The red-hottests pair of feet turn out to be those of a recent pope, Nicholas V. Esolen cleverly points out that Nicholas had inverted the purpose of the hierarchy of which he was head, so this makes an example of Hell fitting the sin.

Nicholas mistakes Dante for Boniface VIII - he wonders if the prediction was off by a few years and Boniface is already dead and waiting to be plunge Nicholas deeper into the hot hole. Dante then leaps forward to Boniface's even worse successor, Clement V.

It is clear from all this that Dante is generally troubled by the temporal power of the Church - he takes it all the way back to the Donation of Constatine. Dante's problem is that the sources of temporal authority he wanted to like were the Empire and the Kingdom of France - neither of them very likeable, either.

Still a problem today, and no more liable to a solution other than the individual holiness of clerics and just uprightness of rulers. It could happen.

*When I was proofreading I noticed this little moment of structural orientation I had slid past before. Handy!

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Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:14 AM | Comments (1)

September 30, 2009

Worst Apostrophe Error EVER

Really. In a paper I was grading. I'm thinking of banning the apostrophe - no contractions, no possessives - for the next paper so they can think about it.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:14 AM | Comments (3)

September 24, 2009

In an 80s mood

My 25th Hanszen - oh, that's right, RICE - reunion is in about 2 months. I'm chatting with friends about arrangements. So iTunes goes onto the 80s Smart Playlist (which is more or less random-music-identified-with-my-youth-but-excluding-Steely Dan, who I never really liked back then).

Here's tonight's serving of 15:

Black Coffee In Bed - Squeeze - Singles 45's And Under, 1982
Heaven - Talking Heads - Popular Favorites 1976-1983
Billie Jean - Michael Jackson - Thriller, 1982
Can't Stop the World - Go Gos - Beauty and the Beat, 1981
Girls! Girls! Girls! - The Judys - Washarama, 1982?
Don't Stand So Close to Me - The Police - Zenyatta Mondatta, 1980
Doctor's Orders - Aretha Franklin (Duet with Luther Vandross) - Greatest Hits (1980-1994)
Brand New Lover - Dead or Alive
Burn Rubber (Why You Wanna Hurt Me) - The Gap Band - The Best of the Gap Band
Hitsville U.K. - The Clash - The Clash: The Singles, 1980s
Bizarre Love Triangle - New Order - Brotherhood, 1986
Goodbye Seventies - Yaz - Upstairs at Eric's, 1982
Cat People (Puting Out Fire) - David Bowie - Let's Dance, 1983
Love Will Tear Us Apart - Joy Division - Substance 1977-1980
Skidmarks on My Heart - Go Gos - Beauty and the Beat, 1981

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:30 PM | Comments (0)

September 22, 2009

Omigosh

Less than 2 months until my 25th Rice reunion. I guess I should make hotel reservations (thanks, for the pointer Grayson!) and start building a playlist.

The problem, of course, is that we have very little class identity. Really, Rice should rotate on a regular basis among the Colleges - say have Hanszen and Baker in year 1, Weiss and Sid in year 2, all those unknown new colleges in year 3, etc.

I have much more in common with a Hanszenite from 1965 than Weissman from 1984. And isn't Reunion about shared references, shared love, and fundraising? Cater to us!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:12 PM | Comments (1)

September 21, 2009

Life after a no confidence vote

The president and the faculty are directed to make nice. I was a lowly adjunct on a campus where this had happened. Life was grim, even for one as un-hooked-in as I was.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:31 AM | Comments (0)

Dante Blogging - Inferno Canto XVII

Canto XVII



Virgil threw Dante's belt over the edge in Canto XVI to summon a beast to ride down the cliffs. When Geryon arrives he is horrifying - a "likeness of deceit" (17.7). He is, after all, their ride from the circles of the violent to the circles of the fraudulent.



The mythological Geryon that Hercules killed had 3 bodies. Dante's version is a composite - kindly old man's face on a serpent's body with a lion's legs and a scorpion's sting - and he smells. But that's who they are going to ride.



Virgil sends Dante to look at the last of the 3 categories of the Violent against God, the Usurers, while he explains to Geryon that one of the passengers will have human weight. Dante wanders over to where the usurers squat, brushing fire-flakes off their skin. Dante can make nothing of their features, but they each wear a money bag around their necks with their coats of arms (Esolen points out they were not driven to usury by poverty, but by greed).



Though Dante recognizes two Florentine coats of arms, the damned soul that speaks is a Scrovegni of Padua. Esolen doesn't tell us, but every art historian can, that this is Reginaldo degli Scrovegni, whose son Enrico commissioned Giotto to paint the Arena or Scrovegni Chapel, partly in expiation for his father's sins and partly for his own.



The picture here is the Last Judgement from the chapel's west wall. Giotto may have heralded the Renaissance, but there's nothing not right out of Medieval Last Judgements here - Christ is enthroned above, surrounded by a rainbow. He is flanked by the 12 Apostles and choirs of angels. Below to His right are the saved, queuing up in orderly fashion to approach the Throne. Fire pours out of the left side of Christ's mandorla and streams down to Hell, where sinners are tormented.



At the foot of the cross a kneeling man presents a model of the chapel, carried by a kneeling Dominican friar, to a group of saints who will convey it to Christ. That's Enrico Scrovegni.



Dante could perhaps have seen the chapel, even - it was completed around 1305 in Padua, a city he seems to have visited. Think I'll be showing it in class? You bet!



Click here for all the Danteblogging and none of my other ramblings.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:08 AM | Comments (0)

September 18, 2009

Sorry for the slow pace through Hell...

Sorry for the slow pace through Hell, but grading comes first. Little as anyone likes it.

I'm teaching 3 this term - Art 101 (Cave Painting to Gothic), European Studies 101 (Creation Stories to The Tempest), and Art 270 (first half of my medieval sequence). So far I'm pleased with the student work, but there's a lot of it! Eust 101 turned in papers on Monday, and I don't have them finished yet (I'm still inside a one week turnaround) and Art 101 turns in papers today. And there are long homework projects from Art 270 I'm still plowing through.

So - back to work. More Dante soon!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:07 AM | Comments (0)

September 17, 2009

Dante Blogging - Inferno Canto XVI

Canto XVI

Dante shows the same reticence in Canto XVI about the sin and the same courteous interest in the sinners - three Florentines run up and find a different way to evade the 'no stopping' rule - they form a circle around the 2 pilgrims and keep moving - "as naked champions, muscles slicked with oil" (16.22). Again, I think we should remember the crowd at this level and wonder about the simile.

The four Florentines leave Virgil out of the conversation as they discuss the decline of their city. Ser Brunetto had blamed it on rustics moving in from Fiesole. Here, Dante blames the new-rich.

There is some odd by-play with Dante's belt - Virgil takes it and throws it over the edge of a cliff to summon the monster Geryon, on whom they will ride down to the 8th Circle. Esolen reminds us that though the belt is ambiguous, Dante won't have another one until Virgil makes him a new belt from a rush at the foot of Mount Purgatory. Belts obviously have something to do with restraint or constraint, but it's not clear quite what.

Most noticeable in the canto is Dante's naming the work! We're almost halfway through the 34 canti of Hell, and here Dante addresses the reader:

ma qui tacer nol posso; e per le note
  di questa comedìa, lettor, ti giuro,
   s'elle non sien di lunga grazia vòte

. . . but I cannot
   keep silent here, and, Reader, by the notes
   of this my Comedy, I swear - and may

They keep in favor long(16.127-130)

So - a comedy. Remember, comedy is what ends happily and is probably low and vulgar (or so Aristotle). Dante is certainly going to end happily, and he's writing in the volgare. That's enough for the name. The attribute divina shows up quite soon after his death - and the favor has lasted more than 700 years.

Click here for all the Danteblogging and none of my other ramblings.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:52 AM | Comments (1)

September 16, 2009

Is it just me . . .

Does this table-tent signage in our Scandling Center Café look a little like "Chile Slime Salad," or am I reading too much into it?

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:23 AM | Comments (3)

September 15, 2009

Dante Blogging - Inferno Canto XV

Canto XV

Canto XV begins on the same structural note with which XIV ended - Dante observes the diking system of Hell - ingeniously made, like those which the Flemings make. It interests me that he uses such a foreign example first, then mentions the Paduans. He certainly would have been to Padua sometime - it would have been easy to get to Ravenna that way - but he never traveled in the North. I suppose Dutch dikes were already a byword. Lots of Florentines would have been to Bruges, of course.

The dike system provides a setting - Dante and Virgil are walking along the top at a higher level than the sinners racing below (remember, the blasphemers lie supine, the usurers squat, and the sodomites run).

When following the dike we met a band
  of spirits coming toward us, and each one
  stared at us hard as one is wont to stare

As someone in the dark of the new moon,
  knitting their brows to keep us keen in sight
  as an old tailor threads the needle's eye. (15.16-21)

Esolen notes this simile a little oddly: "The images in this tercet derive from common experience in town life and thus prepare us to meet one of Dante's townsmen and to hear from him a harsh appraisal of that town" (445). I certainly get the everyday life aspect, but why would that make us think of Florence rather than everyday life?

Oh well - more pertinently, I think these two tercets are doing something else - and stand in contrast to Dante's action just below, when "even the charred features could not keep / My intellect from recognizing them" (27-8). Dante's use of vision corresponds to something we've seen over and over again - the reference to Aristotelian science and the Thomist appreciation of what goes wrong in sin - that sinners have failed in their intellect as well as in their flesh.

Contrariwise, the hard stare of the sinners is not the intellect-laden gaze, but cruising. Remember, the sinners in Dante's Hell have never given up their sin - that's why they're there. People who gave up their sins are elsewhere - Purgatory and Heaven. Sinners who chose lust first and then chose God show up in Purgatory XXVI - sodomites explicitly among them.*

So it should be no surprise that a band of souls suffering for having spent time cruising under the new moon are still at it.

Dante greets the soul whose charred features he sees through with the polite pronoun and a title - only the second time in Hell Dante uses voi. Dante makes clear his respect for ser Brunetto as a mentor, "la cara e buona imagine paterna" (15.83).

The actual sin doesn't get discussed in this canto - and Brunetto doesn't even want to name many of his fellow sinners, and only describes the sin as "the same fall."

Know, in a word, that they were scholars all,
  great men of letters, clerks of wide renown,
  made filthy in the world by the same fall.

In somma sappi che tutti fur cherci
  e litterati grandi e di gran fama
  d'n peccato medesmo al mondo lerci.

Listen to those sharp, bright clicks in the Italian! -pi, -ti, -ci, -di

So, without ever going into detail, ser Brunetto runs away - and Dante favors him with a last simile. He runs like someone in a race, "and of those he seemed / The one who wins, and not the one who loses" (15.123-4).

*Yes, yes, I know that some modern commentators on Scripture suggest, for good reasons involving things like references to Sodom in other parts of the Old Testament, other sins for the condemnation of Sodom, like violating host/guest relations or uncharitableness - but Dante had no question what counted as sodomy, and its his poem.

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Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:07 AM | Comments (0)

September 14, 2009

Talk about old fashioned inbreeding!

I thought that college presidents with employment history like this were long gone...but Gettysburg has just appointed someone who, with the exception of four years away to start a Ph.D.,* has never been anywhere else since she (that part may be novel - the traditional story was always "old boy makes good") was 18.** She even married someone from the same undergrad class.

Now I'm sure President Riggs is the greatest living Gettysburgian, enormously competent, widely beloved, and chosen strictly on merit. And at least she went away for two degrees. But in an age of liberal arts colleges seeking to innovate and broaden their horizons this is a little bewildering.

The upside - she knows where all the bodies are buried.

*the linked story says she's class of 1977 and joined the Gettysburg faculty in 1981 as an instructor.
**visiting professorships, sabbatic leaves, terms abroad, or something like an ACE Fellowships aside.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:40 PM

September 12, 2009

Swine Flu in Upstate NY

Cornell Student Dies of Swine Flu.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:30 PM | Comments (0)

September 8, 2009

Dante Blogging - Inferno Canto XIV

Canto XIV

Canto XIV brings us to the 3rd round of the 7th circle, the worst of the violent, the Violent against God. Dante divides them into three groups. This Canto concentrates on blasphemers, while the other two groups, sodomites and usurers, take up the next 3 canti.

Nevertheless, the schema for punishment across all 4 canti occurs here:

Some lay flat on their backs upon the ground,
   and some were sitting huddled at the knees,
   and others roved about continually
The greatest number were of those who ran;
   the least, who took their tortures lying down--
   but their tongues were the freest in their cries.

Esolen points out that the ones who are the worst are treated first - the blasphemers against God (and the gods?). Their punishment is to lie flat on their backs, where all they can do is writhe under the falling fire. The usurers squat, able at least to brush off new-fallen embers. The sodomites are able to run around, dodging the fire - which falls in an especially lovely metaphor.

Sovra tutto 'l sabbion, d'un cader lento,
  piovean di foco dilatate falde,
  come di neve in alpe sanza vento.


Over the desert, in a gentle fall,
   there rained broad flakes of fire, as in the Alps
   the snow comes falling on a windless day.
(14.28-30)

Gorgeous - but painful - and the damned spend all their time brushing the "fresh flakes from their skin" (14.42).

Dante meets here one of the few classical souls tormented for sin instead of serving as a trusty under the demonic administration. (Rather few demons, per se, seem to show up in Hell.) The interlocutor in Canto XIV is Capaneus, one of the Seven Against Thebes, struck dead by Zeus with a thunderbolt forged by Vulcan, Dante parading what he's learned from Statius, not Aeschylus (thanks, Prof. Esolen! I wondered briefly if it was Ovid and then looked in the back). Statius has got to be one of the lesser-read classics; I have an undergraduate degree in the field and never picked him up. He's going to come up again later - he's a lot more important to Dante (both the poet and the narrator) than anyone but Beatrice and Virgil.

Capaneus is a good example of the impenitent - the roaring sinner who doesn't even pretend he doesn't deserve his hellfire. He is still damning Zeus - though it is God's Justice doing the punishing. His blasphemy seems to be declaring his own manhood to be his god as much of his specific denunciation of the Olympian, though.

The Canto ends with one of those odd structural moments where I wonder what Dante is up to - and realize that I have more reading to do. Dante is wondering about the source for the four rivers of Hell (Acheron, Styx, Phlegethon, and Cocytus - analogues of the four rivers of Eden). Virgil's explanation goes off to the tears of the Old Man of Ida, a giant statue on the island of Crete who seems analogous to the giant idol in the Book of Daniel - in Nebuchadnezzar's dream. I see the parallel but I don't know that I understand why it shows up here - and I wonder where it comes from. Did Dante make this up? Esolen doesn't help with the last question.

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Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:04 PM | Comments (0)

Does your institution charge an Excellence Fee?

Priceless. Or, probably, $75.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:32 AM | Comments (0)

September 7, 2009

No day of rest for us

We have classes today!

Indeed, one of my responsibilities in a year like this, when my Monday/Wednesday/Friday rotation features two 100-level classes, is to assure first year students that yes, they have classes on Labor Day.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:48 AM | Comments (1)

September 4, 2009

Dante Blogging - Inferno Canto XIII

I just noticed something odd about the Esolen Inferno from the Modern Library - no map! I don't think I've ever had a translation of Dante that didn't have a diagram of each place in each volume (the rings of Hell for the Inferno, the Mountain for Purgatorio, etc).

This sprang to mind because of this bit:

"Before you enter farther, you should know
  that you are now within the second round,"
  said my good Teacher..."

E 'l buon maestro "Prima che più entre,
  sappi che se' nel secondo girone",
  mi cominciò a dire...

I find it impossible to believe that Dante himself didn't have a sheet of something pinned to the wall with a diagram on it. What wouldn't we give for that! I'll have to look into the tradition of mapping Hell and figure out who did the earliest known version after Dante.

There's also a fine touch in the first two lines quoted that doesn't really come through in the translation -- the word Esolen renders as "Before," which is going to go with an "until" further down, is prima. In the next line comes secondo. Even though one of these is a time marker and the other is an ordinal, they're still "first" and "second," "before" and "after."

So in answer to a question my father asked last weekend, I'm trying to get through this once well in English, but I am looking at the Italian when something catches my eye.

Canto XIII is about the most self-absorbed of all the damned, the Suicides. Let's not indulge them by talking about them any more.

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Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:44 AM | Comments (0)

September 2, 2009

Dante Blogging - Inferno Canto XII

Canto XII

A few quick notes about thoughts Canto XII threw up -

Dante and Virgil have to climb down a rock-slide to get to the next ring. I wonder where Dante got the idea that the Harrowing of Hell - Christ's Descent into Hell Virgil described in Limbo was so violently ruinous to the physical structure of Hell? Is it an ancient topos, or something new to Dante? I really should ask my acquaintance Georgia Frank over at Colgate, who has studied early descent into Hell and purgatory. Maybe we can get her to come do a guest turn in the spring of '11 when we teach this!

Remember that fraud is something that beasts can't do? The Minotaur, of course, is the offspring of a fraudulent cow - Daedalus made a cow for Pasiphaë to crawl into so she could be impregnated by Poseidon's bull (oh, those Greeks!). The Minotaur, though, is guarding the violent, along with the centaurs. Hmm.

About the Centaurs, who are racing around the river of fire, shooting arrows at any violent man (mainly famous rulers) who rises too far out of the stream, again, half-beasts to guard the bestially violent - specifically those who were violent against others. Also on my coffee table is Machiavelli's The Prince, which will come up in November in European Studies 101, and Machiavelli makes a rather different use of centaurs in his chapter 18 - "In What Mode Faith Should be Kept by Princes."

Thus, you must know that there are two kinds of combat: one with laws, the other with force. The first is proper to man, the second to beasts; but because the first is often not enough, one must have recourse to the second. Therefore it is necessary for a prince to know well how to use the beast and the man. This role was taught covertly to princes by ancient writers, who wrote that Achilles, and many other ancient princes, were given to Chiron the centaur to be raised, so that he would look after them with his discipline. To have as teacher a half-beast, half-man means nothing other than that a prince needs to know how to use both natures; and the one without the other is not lasting. (The Prince, Mansfield translation, p 69)

Machiavelli and Dante both link the centaurs with rulers, one for training and one for punishment. Hm. Since one of the ways I amuse myself when I read Machiavelli is thinking of him as writing a manual for getting Lorenzo de Medici to Hell even faster than the average member of that family, noticing this helps.

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Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:47 AM | Comments (0)

September 1, 2009

Dante Blogging - Inferno Canto XI

Canto XI

Is it worth talking about Dante as a fair judge?

Dante is even-handed only in the sense that he damns a certain number of Guelphs - otherwise he's not to be trusted. I was thinking about this because I had a talk this weekend with a friend of a scene in Purgatory where someone Dante thinks was pretty bad in life scraped in because of a moment-of-death conversion (I can't find it now - it'll wait). Some of the folks in Hell don't seem to have been given a chance for repentance, even when they had the leisure for it - like Pope Celestine in Canto III - who, after all, lived for 10 months in imprisonment after making what Dante calls "il gran rifiuto." Think he might have repented?

Similarly, Dante sometimes works with poor historical information, like here in Canto XI, when he damns Pope Anastasius as a Monophysite (one of the last of the Christological heresies of early Christianity). But then Dante was no historian - there's a reason most of his characters are, more or less, current events. By the way, I'm not at all offended by the idea of a pope in hell (I like John Chrysostom's quip, that hell is paved with priest's skulls), but given the rules Dante sets up it seems unlikely - they have too many chances for sacramental confession. I have no particular doubt that Teddy Kennedy made a good end, for instance. He had a lot to confess, but so do I.

Dante's got a job, though - he has to populate the rings of Hell.

Oh - a quick aside - I wonder why the Modern Library and Anthony Esolen titled the three books Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise. He may well have explained that in some front matter I missed, but it seems a little odd to stick to the Italian in one but not the other two. Maybe a pure marketing decision - name recognition for the first may really be that high?

OK - back to the rings of Hell. Now is a time to draw on the board again - Hell has order inside which chaos is confined. Look at the bottom right (Christ's left) of the mosaic from the west wall of the cathedral at Torcello (one of the islands in the Venetian lagoon). Those boxes each contain a variety of the damned - I'd click to enlarge. Similarly, Virgil offers in Canto XI a quick explanation of the layout of the rings of Hell.

All the remaining sins have some element of force or fraud - we're past the traditional Seven Deadly Sins and into something more offensive to God. The violent are neatly divided into those who have committed violence against their neighbors, against themselves, or against God. The lowest rings, though, are crimes of fraud. Or,

Since fraud's a sin peculiar to mankind
  God hates it more; and so the fraudulent
  sink farther down, assailed by greater pain.
(11.25-27)

The Torcello mosaic and Dante go a long way to reminding us that the Middle Ages exulted in order. Whether they achieved it or not is another question - but any explanation of the history of ideas or the history of culture that presents some kind of change from disorder and darkness to balance and brightness because of some self-styled Renaissance is up against it - what can be more neurotically balanced than Aquinas? What vision of the Cosmos is more orderly than Ptolemy's as elaborated by Muslims and medieval Christians? The philosophical movement that goes along with imitation natural landscapes is the Enlightenment, not the Scholastics - who preferred their horti to be conclusi.

Oh well - professors are always fighting yesterday's battles. In fact, most of my students don't seem to have a lot of cultural baggage about the Middle Ages. They haven't really ingested any periodization at all. I should probably shut up and move on.

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Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:45 AM | Comments (0)

August 31, 2009

It's a lot like riding a bicycle...

No not that! Get your mind out of the gutter!

I mean TEACHING. I last set foot in a classroom at these Colleges in mid-December, 2007. Turns out I didn't forget how to pass out a syllabus and start a course rolling in the interval.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:31 PM | Comments (1)

The job search from Hell - from this side of the table

637 applications for one job. And they managed to get to a list of 27 for the conference interviews! Of course, they did that by having as one of their top criteria "went to the right schools." Ick.

They brought it on themselves by (1) being in NYC and (2) leaving the field as Open.

The story has a happy ending (at least so far - check back at the time of review one!) - they got to hire 2. The sole comment (so far) notes that they failed on the diversity front, though.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:33 AM | Comments (1)

August 30, 2009

Dante Blogging - Inferno Canto X

Canto X

Canto IX was a Canto of waiting - Canto X gives Dante more to think about than he likes. He see great figures from both sides of the Florentine political schism damned in the tomb of the Epicureans - and this leads him to some thinking about poets. Dante is, perhaps, always about poets and poetry.

Remember the photo of les Alyscamps from my contact Nick? Look at this Gustave Doré version (the resolution is too poor to bother taking it from Wikipedia and reloading it here). Dore has a great picture, but he has the historical phenomenon wrong. Oh, well - what can you do with the Romantics? Still, the Modern Library Esolen translation is printing them, so they're going to come up.

As Dante says, "The lids have all been raised" (10.8), but you can see that in Nick's picture as well. Indeed, Roman sarcophagi seldom have their original lids; they were usually taken and recycled into later buildings or art works. In fact, lots of the Alyscamps might have ended up in the facade of St. Gilles du Gard and the cathedral of St Trophime in Arles - Romanesque carvers were never ones to overlook a good supply of pre-quarried marble. And Arles had nothing particularly good local. We call that Green Architecture nowadays.

Of course, the Epicureans in the red-hot tomb wouldn't have objected in life, because then they believed that death meant the extinction of the soul. Now that they have found out otherwise they might appreciate more permanent monuments on Earth.

Dante first talks with Farinata degli Uberti, an unpleasant Ghibelline; he thinks Dante a bounder, which he probably was. Then Dante talks to another resident of the tomb, Cavalcante de Cavalcanti, a Guelph and father of one of Dante's poet friends. Cavalcante is worried about his son, who died only months after the action is set. Indeed, the foresight of the dead is confusing - though Dante tries to clear it up. How did Ciacco prophesy? How is it that Cavalcante doesn't know about his son?

Farinata rather graciously explains that the closer the event the less clear it is.

"As a man with bad vision," he replied
  "we dimly see things far away. So much
  splendor the sovereign Lord still shines on us.

When things draw near, or happen, emptiness
  is all we see. If no one brings us news,
  we can know nothing of your human state. (10.100-105)

I'll have to think about the optics of that. What are the implications for vision if the splendor (splende) is descending from God?

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Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:59 PM | Comments (0)

August 27, 2009

Dante Blogging - Inferno Canto IX

Canto IX

Canto IX is a Canto of anticipation - Virgil and Dante wait outside the gate of the City of Dis for someone to open the door. I noticed three things - two of them go together and the third bewildered me for a bit - Esolen's note helped a lot, though I'm going to have to see what the Lectura Dantis commentary* makes of it, too.

First the bewildering bit:

O voi ch'avete li'ntelletti sani,
  mirate la dottrina che s'asconde
  sotto 'l velame de li versi strani. (9.61-63)

O you whose intellects see clear and whole,
  gaze on the doctrine that is hidden here
  beneath the unfamiliar verses' veil

The literal sense is easy enough - Dante is addressing (ideal) living readers, asking them to interpret - to read verses for doctrine hidden behind the veil. But what? This occurs as Virgil turns Dante away from Medusa and covers his eyes to save him from petrification. Is it to tell us to look when Dante can't? But then what are we to see?

Actually I think that's pretty close - we, readers who Dante kindly addresses as persons whose intellects see clear and whole, are to look at Medusa. He can't.

Esolen helps here. "Dante, we must understand, is in real danger. When Virgil covers his charge's faace with his hands lest he see the Gorgon and be turned to stone, we must not think it idle....Whatever the danger is (despair?), we are to remember that its approach to Dante might well cause the loss of his eternal soul" (428). Esolen also refers to Dante's explanation of the 4 ways of interpreting (from the Letter to Can Grande). Since we can read this literally as turning to stone or (the moral sense) the loss of his soul by staying stuck in Hell we are reading beyond the veil. How does that sound? It satisfied me over coffee, at least.

The picture on the right, from the photo stream of my Flickr friend Nick in Exsilio, brings us to the 2 related points. There are two great moments of classical recall and reuse in Canto IX - one of which Dante may have gotten in the folkloric sense.

First, Dante asks Virgil for some reassurance - Dante is once again on the verge of the despair Esolen mentions. Dante asks "has anyone from Limbo ever been this far in Hell?" (tercet 6). Virgil replies that he himself has been all the way to the circle of Judas, when sent by the witch Erichtho to drag a soul up to the land of the living to speak a prophesy. That's a reference to Lucan's Pharasalia, book 6, where just like in Virgil's Aeneid, book 6, we read about the Underworld. We last saw Lucan in the Castle of Limbo in the company of Homer, Horace, and Ovid. Ah, intertextuality!

So, yes, Virgil has walked this path before - yet another reason for Dante to stop whining.

But once the angel from Heaven opens the gates of Dis and our pilgrims walk through, they see a vast field of jumbled tombs, which Dante compares to the Alyscamps at Arles (thanks, Nick!) and a sarcophagus field at Pola - across the Adriatic from Ravenna. You may also remember the Alyscamps from some very orange and yellow van Gogh paintings, which show a rather prettified park version. In Dante's day it was more of a mess, probably - an area outside the city walls filled with tombs. Alyscamps is the Occitan for what northern French calls "Champs Elysees." In medieval legend, which may have some relevance for Dante, these were the tombs of the army of Roland, slain by Saracens. Vivid visual image for a field of tombs, though.

*So far only the first two volumes are out. Each Canto gets a good essay in commentary, but each essay's author is free to focus very narrowly. So far it's always been interesting but never immediately useful. I'm sure the 2nd time through I will mine lots more to talk about with students.

---
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Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:44 AM | Comments (1)

August 26, 2009

Dante Blogging - Inferno Canto VIII

Canto VIII

It occurred to me that I ought to dig up some creative commons licensed art occasionally - so here is Delacroix's "The Bark of Dante" - Dante in red and grey; Virgil in brown; and Phlegyas, a damned son of Mars, nude and wrapped in blue. Delacrois really does capture the energy of Phlegyas, who rows the fasting moving transport in Hell. The city of Dis glows red-hot in the background. Esolen compares it to the New Jerusalem (428), but it's also a counterpart to the quiet castle of the virtuous pagans in Limbo.

Dante recognizes the soul gnawing on the boat - one of his rivals in Florence, a man who profited from Dante's exile. Dante lets go of his anger, and wishes to see him suffer.

"Teacher, I've got a hankering," said I,
  to see them dunk that spirit in this swill
  before we leave the lake and disembark."

And he replied, "You will enjoy your fill
  before the farther beach comes into sight.
  Such a desire is good to satisfy." (8.52-57)

None of this namby pamby nil nisi bonum de mortuis here, which is, after all, a sentiment based more on a pagan fear of the restless dead than on theology. Dante's anger is just - and Justice is the key to Hell. Mercy is the key to Purgatory, but we're not there yet. Somewhere Thomas Aquinas teaches that contemplating the smoke rising from Hell will be one of the just delights of Heaven (I don't know, I'm half remembering it and have no chance of finding the citation while sitting at the kitchen table - anyone have an idea?). We'll see. Certainly the damned soul of Filippo Argenti does nothing to ask for mercy from Dante's. The damned do not apologize. That's why they're damned.

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Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:48 AM | Comments (1)

August 25, 2009

Dante Blogging - Inferno Canto VII

Canto VII

After the punishment of the gluttonous we next see the shared punishment of the avaricious and the spendthrift - mirror images of each others' sins. Dante sets them up as the extremes from the Aristotelian golden mean of possession - and then asks Virgil to explain Fortune. This will be another good opportunity to talk about cosmology, because Virgil explains Fortune as the angel of our earthly sphere, who shares out power and wealth between peoples, taking from one and giving to another.

Fortune's Wheel is one of the major images of the later Middle Ages - and until this reading I'd never noticed how Dante shifts the familiar Wheel to a Sphere - Fortune rotates our sphere, not a wheel for him (7.95). Interesting! I wonder if that ever made it into the illustrations?

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Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:37 AM | Comments (0)

August 24, 2009

Dante Blogging - Inferno Canto VI

Canto VI

The damned of the third circle are the gluttons, wallowing in a mire and beaten by a hard winter rain:

...de la piova
  etterna, maladetta, fredda e greve;
  regola e qualità mai no l'è nova. 6.7-9

...where the rain falls
  eernally, accursed, ponderous, cold --
  changeless in rhythm, changeless in quality.

Even with little or no Italian you ought to be able to read that out loud and hear the sound effect Dante wants. Brrr.

Canto VI also brings us our first Florentine (Paolo and Francesca were from the Adriatic coast - Ravenna and Rimini), and provides us with a good example of Dante's topicality. The soul identifies himself only by his nickname, Hog, and we don't know any more about him. Dante asks him what will happen in Florence in the next few years (there's no speculation in this canto on how the damned know the future - we'll get that later) and the Hog predicts.

Esolen valiantly notes:

Naturally, few readers now will care deeply about the fortunes of Blacks or Whites, Guelphs or Ghibellines. We should remember, however, that Dante's visition -- the incarnational vision of Christianity -- was never, and could never be, a vision that ignored the goodness of this very world that Christ entered to save. Florence is part of that world; then even Florence plays a part in the divine plan.

I think that sounds like a man bored by years of having to explain the Blacks and Whites, Guelphs and Ghibellines (Dante was a White Guelph, by the way, which was why he was exiled in 1302). Esolen is right, but Florence in 1300 still isn't very interesting.

I think we can use the tedious topical references to remind ourselves what a great poem this is - the Comedia overcomes its topicality. Otherwise we would have stopped reading it long ago.

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Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:26 AM | Comments (1)

August 23, 2009

Ok - I'm a bad medievalist

But I want to start the day for Canto V with this on the big screen.

And isn't the "Ladies -- all the ladies..." part MUCH better here than in the Salt'n'Peppa version? And there's Glockenspiel! Too hell with more cowbell! More glockenspiel!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:43 PM

Presidential rankings

Has any group of American historians produced one of those polls announcing how they rank the current president against, say, Millard Fillmore or James Buchanan?

I haven't seen one yet, and I read Cliopatria pretty regularly.

And if not, why? If it's too soon to assess, why was it not too soon to assess the previous administration in course?

Of course, the question makes medievalists wonder about the current affairs quotient of American history as a discipline in general, if one can poll experts about what's still going on. I mean, no one ever asks me how Sarkozy or Merkel ranks against Charlemagne or Louis the Stammerer.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:01 PM | Comments (1)

August 21, 2009

Dante Blogging - Inferno Canto V

Canto V

Canto IV ended with the pair of pilgrims heading "out of the quiet, into the trembling air--/Into a place where nothing ever shines" (4.150-151). In Canto V we are assaulted by the shouting and grunting of Minos -- who is very rude for a king and judge. I suppose that Minos also presents the first horrible body of Hell, as he whips his tail around his torso, with the number of loops representing the circle of Hell to which the soul is sent. I've never quite understood the monstrous conflation of Minos and the Minotaur - I wonder where Dante would have learned Greek myths other than Ovid? He certainly knew the Metamorphoses, but would he have known the Heroides? I'm not at all sure. It's been so long since i've read the Ariadne and Theseus section of the Heroides that I don't remember how much topical detail about Minos it carries. I've always wondered if Dante was running together Minos and Midas - specifically the Midas-judging-Apollo-and-Pan story.

Canto V begins with a quick explanation of the structural principle of Hell, narrowing from the top as one descends:

So I descended from the outer ring   down to the next, which belts less space about   but stings the souls to greater agony. (5.1-3)

and Minos's body provides a weird echo:

Discerns what place in Hell is fit for him:   belts himself with his tail as many times   as there are grades the sinner must descend. (5.10-12)

The hardest Canto for big-R and little-r Romantics to deal with is probably Canto V, where Courtly Love comes in for some hard knocks. I'm not in the mood to blog about Paolo and Francesca except to say that luckily I will be team teaching with a friend who regularly teaches troubador material and has no illusions about chaste ladies and ideal knights, even if she does want to believe that Arthur existed.

Click here for all the Danteblogging and none of my other ramblings.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:58 AM | Comments (1)

August 20, 2009

Dante Blogging - Inferno Canto IV

Canto IV

Canto III ends with Dante falling into unconsciousness, and IV begins with a boom that shakes him awake. Not every pair of Cantos carries action across the break so smoothly (or jarringly, as in this case), but the transitions are always worth checking. Dante was a thorough craftsman. There is certainly lots of debate about the making of the poem - he started it in exile, probably in 1304, he seems to have published Inferno in 1314. That gives a lot of time for polishing.

I think the urge to see Dante as a poet who begins uncertainly is an example of the (Romantic?) failure to separate maker from creation - to assume that Dante (in this example) is speaking authentically as Dante, that he is afraid, that he does not know where he is, that he is learning from Virgil as he goes along. I'm calling the Pilgrim "Dante" out of laziness and convention more than anything. I don't believe this is Dante Alighieri speaking to us from the heart - this is a finely constructed object of art. It certainly has stress fractures and may even have some bad lines (I'm not enough of a judge of the Italian to say - though this effort will surely help that), but the Commedia makes much more sense as a unity. If there's ever a poem that repays formalist analysis it's this one.

In Canto IV we enter Limbo - and Dante asks Virgil one of those hard questions - did no one leave here before the Resurrection? What about those unbaptized infants?Is this fair??

Well, if 'fair' means playing by the rules, this is fair. It's also hard lines on the virtuous pagans. Dante suggests, though he lists only big name Jewish Patriarchs and Matriarchs, that virtuous Jews from before the Incarnation were saved at the Harrowing of Hell, when Christ descended. What happens to later Jews we will consider later.

Dante is more interested at this point in showing us that there is a hierarchy in Limbo, a hierarchy not of happiness or contentment but honor. There is honor in limbo for the greatest souls.

I've always thought that the appearance of the first epic list of names here is hardly an accident. Dante is not only giving us a long list of virtuous unbelievers - among whom he includes 2 or 3 Muslims - because he's in a castle full of them but also because, in Virgil's company, he has just met Homer, Ovid, and Lucan. I think because he is accepted into their circle as a poet, he demonstrates his mastery of the genre. If we don't believe that we have to take refuge in believing the narrative and think that a person, Dante, is walking all around the only castle in Hell with decent lighting looking at nametags.

The Canto ends with the pair leaving this Castle with clear light, headed into darkness. Dante does it with a LOT of words ending in -a.

La sesta compagnia in due si scema:
  per altra via mi mena il savio duca
  fuor de la queta, ne l'aura che trema.
E vegno in parte ove non è che luca.

Esolen gives us:

The company of six is cut by two,
  and my wise guide leads me another way,
  out of the quiet, into the trembling air --
Into a place where nothing ever shines

"Trembling air" sounds lovely, but when we turn the page we will find out what makes it tremble.

Click here for all the Danteblogging and none of my other ramblings.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:27 AM | Comments (0)

August 19, 2009

Dante Blogging - Inferno Canto III

Canto III

The inscription over the Gate of Hell:

I AM THE WAY INTO THE CITY OF WOE,
I AM THE WAY INTO ETERNAL PAIN,
I AM THE WAY TO GO AMONG THE LOST.

JUSTICE CAUSED MY HIGH ARCHITECT TO MOVE
DIVINE OMNIPOTENCE CREATED ME,
THE HIGHEST WISDOM, AND THE PRIMAL LOVE.

BEFORE ME THERE WERE NO CREATED THINGS
BUT THOSE THAT LAST FOREVER -- AS DO I.
ABANDON ALL HOPE YOU WHO ENTER HERE.

The hard thing is not to show students that Hell is hopeless, but that Love created it. Virgil gives us a help in the 6th tercet:

We have come to the place I spoke about,
   where you would see the souls who dwell in pain,
   for they have lost the good of intellect. (16-19)

Esolen's Appendix C will also be a help - a big dose of Aquinas. The people in Hell have gotten what they sought - separation from God, the Trinity described as Omnipotence, Wisdom and Love. If Love is to give someone, finally, what he wants then Love has to create a place like Hell. Hard lines, but it makes an intellectual sense. It won't satisfy them - I know I was one of two people out of about 18 who got it the first time when I took Dante as an undergraduate - but there we go. Maybe one of the course outcomes should be "Students will realize the way they want the world to be has consequences."

I, too, prefer the idea that Hell is not eternal - that it's really just a harder version of Purgatory, but so far as I've heard the only major 20th Century Catholic theologian to think about that possibility seriously was Hans Urs von Balthasar (Dare We Hope "That All Men Be Saved"?), but I'm not really interested in reading theology much. I'll wager with Aquinas and try to scrape in to Heaven.*

By the way, the line immediately before "We have come to the place I spoke about" reminds us of Canto II. Virgil tells Dante, "here you must put all cowardice to death" (15). Dante is going to have trouble doing that. Like us his feelings are going to get in the way of understanding again and again.

Indeed, the first time he hears the wails of damned souls he weeps - and these are the souls who, like Dante in Canto II, unwilled what they willed, changed every plan with every thought. Angels who were neither rebels nor faithful, people who never lived well or badly. Dante, and Justice, respect more those who sin boldly. This is also the first example of a punishment to fit the crime: these souls are damned to follow a banner moving fast - to finally follow, not hang back and consider what they might or might not do.

In this Canto, too, we get the first example of Dante putting people in Hell because he doesn't like their politics. Most of those are tedious factional problems of Florence, but one soul Dante recognizes "che fece per viltade il gran rifiuto," "the craven one, who made the great denial" (61). He almost certainly means Pope Celestine V, who abdicated the papacy in 1294 and left the way open for Dante's least favorite pope, Boniface VIII. Dante's hatred of Celestine is based on hearsay, and much of his hatred of Boniface is based on narrow Florentine patriotism (though Benedetto Caetani was hardly a pleasant man). Remember, Dante is not dogma!

*That is, I will be leaving money for Masses for my miserable soul in Purgatory.

Click here for all the Danteblogging and none of my other ramblings.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:18 AM | Comments (0)

August 18, 2009

Dante Blogging - Inferno Canto II

Canto II

Dante is one self-absorbed poet who has to learn to be a little less so. Canto II - and the whole of The Inferno - is about* fear, one of Dante's besetting faults, and getting past fear. Dante starts the Canto well, invoking the Muses, genius, and memory - and I'm wondering to what extent ingegno has connotations of "skill" as well as "genius" or "ingenuity" here. He addresses Virgil at great length about previous trips to Hell and Heaven, but by the end of his address he is afraid he is not up to it. "I'm not Aeneas, I'm not Saint Paul!" Dante sums up his own problem in 6 lines:

And as a man who unwills what he wills,
   changing his plan for every little thought,
   till he withdraws from any kind of start,
So did I turn my mind on that dark verge,
   for thinking ate away the enterprise
   so prompt in the beginning to set forth. (2.37-42)

Ah - cowardice. Virgil names the vice and explains how he himself came here, his call by Beatrice. Virgil himself had wondered that Beatrice came to him from Heaven with no fear or worry; Beatrice gave him the answer, which he offers as one reason for Dante not to fear:

The only things that justly cause us fear
   are those that have the power to do us harm; (2.88-89)

That's going to come up again.

More important though is this - Virgil puts it for Dante in the terms of courtly love and the Court of Heaven - why are you afraid:

Seeing that three such ladies blessed in Heave
   care for your healing from their court above,
   and what I tell you holds forth so much good? (2.124-126)

Esolen says about another moment in the Canto "He is saved not because he loves but because he is loved" (413).

Dante's response is a lovely piece of courtly contrast - his courage is like little flowers, fioretti and virtude -

As little flowers shut small and bowed beneath
   the frost of night, when the sun brightens them,
   rise open-petaled on their stems upright,
So did my weary courage surge again (2.127-130)

Talk about plenty to discuss - and that's even without delving into the placement of the invocation of the Muses (yes, we started in medias res as well as nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita) or one of my own little hobbyhorses, Dante's avoidance of names. In Canto II we get a good example of his refusal in the Inferno to name the Virgin Mary, and the first time Aeneas is called something other than the father of Silvius is in a negation - "I'm not Aeneas!" Typical - and worth talking about.

*disclaimer - when I say something "Is about" or "is all about" I am engaging in the exaggeration of the spoken voice or the written blog post - everything in the Middle Ages is about lots of things. Univocality may be a sign that something is not medieval.

Further: It occurred to me when rereading - while I was getting the HTML to format the tercet indentations correctly - that I hadn't said that virtude has its root in Latin vir, "man." Then I realized that this is not a commentary on the Commedia but only a first pass at teaching notes. When I do this sort of thing for books I'm preparing to teach I just circle word parts that are going to go up on the blackboard - I know what vir means, what virtù means in Renaissance Italian, and I'm going to go on about it in class.

Click here for all the Danteblogging and none of my other ramblings.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:19 AM | Comments (0)

August 17, 2009

Dante Blogging - Inferno Canto I

Dante Blogging

My dear friend and colleague Laurence Erussard and I are planning to teach Dante together as one of our Medieval Art and Literature courses. She was up for next fall - Fall 2010 - but I insisted that starting Dante in August and ending in December was wrongheaded, especially in the Frozen North. So we will teach Dante in Spring '11 - starting in Hell in January and ending in Paradise in May - which is closer to right. June would be better.

To prepare for this, since I've only ever taught Dante in a casual, half-credit style, I decided to read my way through again. My resolution is to blog a Canto a day. The new(ish) Anthony Esolen translation comes highly recommended by Prof. Bob Benson at Sewanee, who has taught Dante every year for a long time. I bought a set. I got through 3 canti before I realized that I ought to be blogging my progress. Here we go.

Canto I
Dante's hard for us. Long poetry is hard for everyone. The Medieval World View makes life more difficult.

We're going to have to do a good job setting the students up in how to read allegory - not to slave at it, but to let themselves dance with the polysemy. Is the Wolf Greed? Malice? The World? A wolf? Why not all four? You might think, in this age of irony, that ambiguity would be something students get instinctively; my experience is that my students want certainty -- they'd like an answer. Unsettling that desire will be one of Dante's contributions to their education.

The first astronomical moment shows up in line 17. raggi del pianeta/che mena dritto altrui per ogne calle, which Esolen translates: "the rays of that wandering light of Heaven/that leads all men aright on every road." That's handy - we get to start with the idea the Sun is a Planet in the Ptolemaic Cosmos, and that planets are wanderers. What a good start!

Click here for all the Danteblogging and none of my other ramblings.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:48 AM | Comments (2)

August 12, 2009

OMIGOSH

Classes start in 2.5 weeks.

I just sat down in a chair with a low bench beside it. My elbow rested comfortably on a stack of books.

1. One book for which there is a review mildly overdue
2. An Interlibrary loan book in Italian on a pure research topic - not quite yet overdue.
3. 3 books I'm teaching this semester - but haven't taught since Fall 2005 and really should reread.
4. a new cookbook

Guess which I've actually looked at this week. The hard part is that the answer is "more than one of the selections."

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:42 PM | Comments (1)

July 28, 2009

The most expensive bell pepper eaten in the 14456 last night

First Fruits! This is the first thing I've picked from my garden allotment behind Trinity Episcopal Church - $15 got you a 3x6 rototilled plot and all the water you can use. I have peppers, tomatoes, and okra (!) planted.

I picked the pepper last night and grilled it (skewered with store bought zucchini - I foolishly didn't plant zucchini). Brad Smith, in town for a research visit to the Cornell library, took the photo.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:19 AM | Comments (4)

July 8, 2009

Whew! Computer working.

Ok - so the new MacBook Pro and its invoices arrived on campus too late for me to get it up and running before I left for Germany. I spent yesterday cursing technology - they've redesigned the Firewire cables! So, the procedure for transferring data from the old laptop to the new laptop involved ethernet and networks and - ugh - a lot of time. And I've now authorized my 4th of 5 computers for iTunes. I hope something changes before I get to #6!

I finally got it done, so everything is pretty.

I'm not sure about the slick screen - but it's so grey here this week that there's no way to see if it will be glarey!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:01 AM | Comments (3)

June 24, 2009

Hmm - what're the Classical topoi for the exposure of babies?

I read an interesting catalog from an exhibition about the depiction of children and childhood in ancient Greek art a couple of years ago - Coming of Age in Ancient Greece, but I am not remembering if there was anything much about the exposure of unwanted infants. Somehow I always think of this as a male response - but read this article about women and men responding babies with facial abnormalities. Hmm.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:39 AM

June 22, 2009

Shipment Tracking?

I've commented before on the two-edged sword we have in shipment tracking. Worse, though, is when you get an email at 3 p.m. announcing that your new computer is on campus (two days earlier than expected!) but that you can't pick it up until the invoices are all complete and assembled!! Argh!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:27 PM

June 17, 2009

Harvard Homicides through the ages

Who knew?

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:20 PM | Comments (0)

Why I've ordered a new 13" MacBook Pro

I have a cracked LCD, and that L really does stand for liquid. The oozing liquid is bad and getting worse pretty rapidly. I waited until Apple announced the new MacBook Pro lineup, paid off the remainder of the payroll deduction loan for the broken one, and have ordered a new one.

Oh, well.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:20 AM | Comments (3)

June 9, 2009

It's not just a job, it's an adventure!

I still get the Chronicle of Higher Education's weekly email jobs list of art history positions. After all, one never knows....

This week there's only one job - English Composition and Art History - in Kurdistan! The American University of Iraq - Sulaimani is hiring.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:29 AM | Comments (2)

June 5, 2009

Digitized Incunabula

Early printed books go online now! Here's the BBC story. Cambridge University has a grant from the Mellon Foundation to make books like the first printed Homer (first use of italics!) and their Gutenberg Bible available online.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:54 AM

May 30, 2009

Economists and historians

It is hardly surprising, then, that the bond market is quailing. For only on Planet Econ-101 (the standard macroeconomics course drummed into every US undergraduate) could such a tidal wave of debt issuance exert "no upward pressure on interest rates".

Of course, Mr Krugman knew what I meant. "The only thing that might drive up interest rates," he acknowledged during our debate, "is that people may grow dubious about the financial solvency of governments." Might? May? The fact is that people - not least the Chinese government - are already distinctly dubious.

Niall Ferguson can't resist pointing out that he, the historian, was right and that Paul Krugman was not. I can't blame him.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:23 AM | Comments (0)

May 26, 2009

Diversity in Action

The White House tableau itself was history: A black president and his white vice president, Joe Biden, striding onto a stage in the ornate East Room with the nominee who grew up in a New York housing project where her parents had moved from Puerto Rico.

Yeah - you see, Joe Biden has neither of his earned degrees from an Ivy League institution. Delaware and Syracuse - diversity!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:28 PM | Comments (0)

May 20, 2009

Textbook Query

Yes, I'm late on this. I'm still on sabbatical until July 1 anyway!

So I'm choosing. I need to use a Bible* for European Studies 101 and for Art 270, the first half of Medieval.

I am relatively indifferent to versions / editions. I don't use anything not in Protestant versions in these courses, so they can use almost anything. I would like the book to be inexpensive and legible. I don't really care if it has good study notes or how the poetry sounds when read aloud (I'll bring in xeroxes of multiple versions of the Psalms we read, anyway).

The last time I taught 270 there was no course in Religious Studies that semester requiring a Bible (someone ordered the big Tanakh for one of the courses in Judaic studies, but that was as close as they got). I can not depend on the nominally Christian students having their own copies (you know, I found out I couldn't depend on the nice young ladies at Agnes Scott to have brought their Bibles from home, either).

Last time I used a paperback Jerusalem Bible that is out of print - or at least I can't find it. The book store carries a paperback King James Version in their trade section - that's almost unusable for modern students not raised with it.

Any ideas??

*Please don't tell me I need to say "Christian Bible." The things used by Jews have names other than "Bible."

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:31 PM | Comments (7)

May 14, 2009

Talk about an activity fee!

The mayor of Providence wants to tax Brown students directly.

The mayor of Providence wants to slap a $150-per-semester tax on the 25,000 full-time students at Brown University and three other private colleges in the city, saying they use resources and should help ease the burden on struggling taxpayers.

Mayor David Cicilline (sis-ah-LEEN-ee) said the fee would raise between $6 million and $8 million a year for the city, which is facing a $17 million deficit.

If enacted, it would apparently be the first time a U.S. city has directly taxed students just for being enrolled.

Of course the students' excuse that they spend money in Providence is true of people who have established legal residence in Providence, too. This will be interesting!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:13 AM | Comments (0)

May 13, 2009

Oprah at Duke

I heard a Duke University commencement address once - Ted Koppel, in 1987. I believe he had a daughter among the graduating seniors; he took an understandably paternal tone, but his talk was less annoyingly hypocritical than what I read about Oprah's.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:09 PM | Comments (0)

May 12, 2009

Santa Rosa Junior College is run by someone better suited to disapproving of the tshirts worn by high school students

There. I took the institution's name in vain. SRJC has threatened students who use the school's name or initials in private communications.

The school officials still don't see why it's a big deal that they're threatening students. However, their reasoning makes very little sense. "The reason for it is so the college doesn't get misrepresented in some way or make it look like the college is endorsing a product or issue," according to Santa Rosa Junior College President Robert Agrella. But that makes no sense. If a student uses an actual address from the university, wouldn't that risk be much greater? In other words, does the college really think that it's a bigger risk for someone to say something that the college does not endorse from nameSRCJ@gmail.com or name@santarosa.edu? Because it seems fine with the latter, but not the former. The whole thing smacks of college administrators who don't understand technology and have way too much free time on their hands.

"School officials" never do - but more typically they're high school officials who don't understand freedom of speech.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:32 PM | Comments (0)

May 10, 2009

Weirder and weirder - they've found the body of the UGa Killer Professor

What on earth? They found his naked body buried in the woods.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:41 PM | Comments (3)

May 5, 2009

Academic nostalgia

In the face of world-wide contraction in academic publishing, Duke is going to bring out a period piece - a 17 year old dissertation (wikipedia says she received her Ph.D. in 1992).

Of course, since it's by Obama's sainted mother it will probably sell.

Inside Higher Education's version, where you can find a link to the DUP press release.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:39 PM | Comments (4)

April 21, 2009

Farewell, Roma!

Off again!

I had a good visit - shorter than the last few, but long enough to get some serious work done. I've looked, drawn, and thought a lot, read some, and even - gasp - written. I'm not a natural outliner, but the Santa Prassede material is so disparate that I've had to be a better planner; I think I've got a pretty good working outline going.

I'm headed to Turin today. Why? Because I need to get to the North and because I've never been! Why not? Thence to Frankfurt and from there to Istanbul!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:57 AM | Comments (1)

April 1, 2009

Rather DIE than finish the semester?

I know the feeling, though I'm not suffering from it this year.

If it's any consolation, look at this tomb in Bologna from around 1400 when they knew how to honor professors.

The full-length figure of the entombed is in his academicals. Below on the main face he lectures from his canopied chair while hordes of eager students take down his every word.

Ah, the good old days! Click on the picture to go to the photo stream and see another, more charming tomb slab. I think I want one with books as my foot rests.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:01 PM

March 28, 2009

Sun! Swedes!

There I was drinking a 2nd cappuccino and deciding whether to go into San Petronio before or after the Morandi Museum when the King of Sweden drove by - in a motorcade, of course.

Later in the day I finally found out why he's in Bologna in the paper - he's visiting Alma Mater. By the way, Bologna invented that phrase. The familiar name of the University is Alma Mater Studiorum, literally the Sweet Mother of Studies, but more properly the Wetnurse of Studies.

So when you call your old school Alma Mater you're harking back to that particular medieval tradition that sees study as nourishment.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:14 AM | Comments (1)

March 26, 2009

Off to Bologna!

The course is over, the weather is really chilly, and I'm off to Bologna!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:54 AM | Comments (1)

March 25, 2009

Pushback against moral claims of ownership

Yale University is resisting a claim that because the Soviet Union seized Van Gogh's The Night Café the University should return the painting to the 1918-owner's heir. Here's the AP story. Indeed, Yale is initiating a lawsuit to assert a claim to the picture. Interesting!

via InsideHigherEd

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:37 PM | Comments (0)

March 22, 2009

Headlines half seen - and maybe only a quarter read

Seals to shed light on life of Whales in Middle Ages??

No, it was Seals to shed light on life in Wales in Middle Ages

HISTORIANS will be reviewing more than 5,000 medieval seals relating to Wales, held at the National Library of Wales, as part of a new research project.

The team from Bangor and Aberystwyth Universities will look at the seals - used to authenticate and close documents - to find out what they actually tell us about the people who commissioned them, interpreting how they saw themselves and wanted others to see them and what they can tell us about the society that produced them.

Uniquely, one strand of the project will also be concentrating on images of medieval women.

The project is funded by an Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) research grant of £490,000. Bangor and Aberystwyth Universities are collaborating their expertise for the work. The research project also includes digitising the collection, making it more accessible to the general public and creating a travelling exhibition based on the collection.

And here I was wondering about the transitive quality of sea-mammals in the Middle Ages and the value of comparing pinnipeds to cetaceans.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:48 PM | Comments (0)

March 21, 2009

Have I mentioned that I hate German syntax?

Hate is too strong - but gosh, German word order is rigid and counter-intuitive for this English speaker.

Yes, my final exam is Monday. Our teacher got a look at the test and told us that the verbs with obligatory prepositions we've been slaving over for the last 2 weeks* get ONE question. As someone who had to make final exams for high school Latin, I can sympathize - but still!

Ask me next month how much I think I've learned.

*you know, sich freut (auf/über), träumen von, sich erinneren an, that sort of thing. And yes, I know that English is just as annoying - we fight with our mothers but against enemies. When I was learning to speak Italian we always knew we were getting near the end of a book when we suddenly started reviewing the prepositions, which are hatefully idiomatic in Italian, too. I've gotten to the point in Italian that I just don't worry about them all that much - and strangely I seem to get them right a good bit of the time. Quantity always pays off in language - read more, speak more, and you'll do better.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:42 PM

March 17, 2009

Collapsed Cologne Archive

The collapsed Cologne Archive was only a few blocks further south than St. Maria im Capitol, a church I particularly wanted to visit. So I walked on to see the depressing site. The rubble is covered with plastic and the whole site is roofed over - I pray they recover a lot.

The Archive's own web page - complete with a diagram at the bottom of the collapse (via Cronaca).

Updated coverage at Archivalia.

Great photo stream from Spiegel Online - including before and after aerial views.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:40 PM | Comments (0)

March 16, 2009

Focus

Yes, really, I went all that way for this photograph.

Einhard, Charlemagne's biographer, reports that shortly before Charles died the word PRINCEPS faded from the inscription sinopide scriptum, "written in red."

Magical thinking, or prophecy?

The mosaic inscription as it stands is a 19th Century restoration - but I like it.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:05 PM | Comments (1)

March 15, 2009

Sorry for the radio silence

But I was visiting someplace I think about way too often. More pictures to follow. I took 130 in Aachen - about half of which were useful. Digital is great! Um - Cologne. Köln. That too.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:34 PM | Comments (1)

March 5, 2009

Can some books make you dumber?

"Of course there is the whole correlation is not causation thing, but, I mean, duh," he added.

via Instapundit.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:30 PM | Comments (0)

March 4, 2009

Peer review and 'excellence'

This looks very interesting: How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment - reviewed here at Inside Higher Ed. For anyone who has ever not gotten a grant - or who has thought that getting a grant is proof of the excellence of something or other, this is recommended reading. Consider this: "One panel Lamont observed simply didn't award all the fellowships it could have because the reviewers wanted to leave for the airport."

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:12 PM | Comments (0)

February 11, 2009

Welcome to the Catalogue of Digitized Medieval Manuscripts

I meant to link to this before - the more manuscripts the merrier.

Further - sorry, I pasted a malformed link - it should work now!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:49 PM | Comments (2)

February 9, 2009

Pretending to be a Covered Muslima in Arab, Alabama

And surprised that people smiled at her. Bet they offered her sweet tea, too.

You know, the gullibility of people conducting what passes for experimental social 'science' never ceases to amaze me.

Of course everyone was sweet to her - it's Arab. That's where my mother was raised! They're all sweet, even some of our family who aren't so very nice.

Driving around in America and having people not be ugly to you because you're dressed funny does not mean they tolerate or fail to tolerate Muslims. I wonder how folks looked at my cousin the Orthodox priest when he was home for his father's funeral. I mean, he wears what might well pass for a dress and certainly looks warm.

Would American Muslims please remember that all this practice of covering the head in public is a very recently-ended phenomenon in the West. My not-so-very-long-ago-deceased Grandmother only stopped wearing hats and gloves when she went to Birmingham to shop about the time I was born?

Oh, well. Good luck, fake Muslima. Don't try Walmart if you're looking for someone to be rude to you!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:19 PM | Comments (2)

February 6, 2009

Appropriating Aristotle

What would Europe be without revolting students? I mean students protesting something or other - this time the introduction of some kind of fees for German higher education. Which, of course, should be free. Click and see their lame graphic design work.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:49 PM | Comments (2)

January 31, 2009

Why close the museum? To sell the art!

More on Brandeis from Felix Salmon at Portfolio, who found out about the bizarro valuation at $1 for each piece of art!

Clearly, Brandeis has come to the conclusion that by shutting down the museum, it can ignore all rules pertaining to deaccessioning, and worry only about the strings attached by donors to individual artworks.

Nathan also said something else which was extremely interesting to me: apparently all of the Rose Art Museum's artworks are considered to be assets of the university endowment, valued at $1 each. All the proceeds from the sale of any artwork, then, is automatically a desperately-needed capital gain for the endowment. [my emphasis]

This is one of the most underhanded financial twists I've seen a university do in a long time! Because they value each asset at $1, every actual sale will be a capital gain! Yay! Whoever thought that one up deserves a bonus - a big bonus! Maybe even a John Thain-style office makeover.

Earlier blogging on Brandeis.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:40 AM

January 30, 2009

Studies show . . . or maybe not

American college freshmen know fewer facts about science than do their Chinese counterparts, according to a new study, but both groups have a comparably poor ability to reason scientifically.

In other words, the Americans tested were bone ignorant and the Chinese at least knew some facts. A lot of facts, if you trust the test scores. I think I'd rather teach a class of freshmen to reason who knew things than to teach a class who knew nothing both facts and how to reason - but maybe that's just me. Now this sounds likely:

Lei Bao, the study's lead author and director of Ohio State University's Physics Education Research Group, said this runs contrary to the commonly held belief that reasoning skills develop as students are "rigorously taught the facts."

O.K. - reasoning skills do not come automatically with learning facts. But unless you can show that teaching the Chinese students lots of facts made it harder to later teach them scientific reasoning I'm not sure this study proves that Chinese secondary science education is anything like as bad as that in America, which that first paragraph suggests. Go look at the comparative scores!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:22 AM | Comments (0)

So is it a masterpiece by Goya, a masterpiece by another hand, or have you changed your opinion of the painting entirely?

I think that's the question I would like to use to survey the specialists about The Colossus, which may or may not be a Goya.

You see, I specialize in a period without names - and medievalists see the problems created by the idolization of genius artists very clearly. Plenty of folks who specialize in fields with better attributions to individuals, from Chinese scroll paintings to the present, see the problem, but let's face it - lots of people don't see or won't admit a problem.

The questions: If the label changes to The Colossus, Asensio Juliá, will as many editors include the work in textbooks? Will the Prado keep it out all the time? Does your opinion of Goya change, or your opinion of the painting?

Here's an example of the Genius Artist approach in the Times Online:

Nigel Glendinning, a British art historian, doubted that anyone but Goya could have painted the work. He told the Spanish newspaper ABC: "I never said it would be impossible that [someone else] might have intervened in the work of Goya, but the painting is too audacious to be by Asensio Juliá, because of the centrifugal strength of the composition and its iconic power. I hope to be able to see the study and the proofs."

Well, maybe he's been overestimating Goya or underestimating Juliá all these years - given that his own apprehension of iconic power depends on his belief that this painting is by Goya, even though he's dressing it up with some formalist language (composition). One of the great founders of formalist analysis of art, Heinrich Wölflin, called for an art history without names and never got it. Will Glendinning's opinion of Goya change, or his opinion of the painting change? What he's saying is that it's a masterpiece and therefore it must have been created by a certified genius. Goya. We'll see. But the medievalists are in the corner, nudging each other and laughing quietly.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:48 AM | Comments (1)

January 27, 2009

I hate packing

Someone pointed out to me that I haven't really blogged about what I'm doing this spring.

My idea of a fun sabbatical is 2 months of intensive German. So I'm off to Freiburg, Germany, for a Goethe Institut. I have reservations to come back in late April, but we'll see how the money holds out for some time in Italy after the German course. I'm thinking that I might finally get a week in Istanbul this trip!

Meanwhile, I got 90 days worth of asthma, sinus, and blood pressure meds today. I'm doing things like staring at my suitcases, wishing they would fill themselves without my intervention. Friday is going to be the usual mess of me wandering around cussing and wondering why I get myself into this kind of situation - why don't I just stay home with my hands folded and think deep thoughts quietly? Why did I have to become an art historian, whose life always involves running to LOOK at things? Why didn't I stick to literature!

But that will pass. I love being places - I just hate getting there. Especially by contemporary air travel. And deciding how many pairs of shoes I can take. The preliminary answer this year? Wear one, pack two, and buy boots or something snow-proof in Germany if it turns out I really need them. My stout walking shoes may be enough, if they shovel diligently. But things are going to Hell all over, and maybe German street cleaning will show that.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:42 PM | Comments (2)

January 26, 2009

Carnivalesque 46

An Early Modern blog carnival!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:08 AM | Comments (0)

January 18, 2009

Nine Pounds of Gold Coins found by metal detectorist

Let's admit it, academics - what most people like to see in museums is GOLD!

So when someone finds gold we need to play it up - it's a matter of funding for what we care about, which, of course, is the advancement of knowledge.

824 gold staters found in East Anglia. That's a lot. At about 5 g apiece that's over 4 kg of gold coins. A lot. With a picture of a lot of gold. [further: the article at the Daily Mail has a closer version of the picture - you can make out the horses on the staters!]

"It's a good, exciting find. It gives us a lot of new information about the late Iron Age, and particularly East Anglia in the late Iron Age.

"The discovery is important because it highlights the probable political, economic and religious importance of an area.

"It certainly suggests there was a significant settlement nearby. As far as we understand, it was occupied by wealthy tribes or subtribes," she said.

Such dignity. Such advance of knowledge. Such a jump in the sales of metal detectors!

The coins are dated from 40 BC to 15 AD - making them pre-Boudicca - but not by much. This reinforces pretty clearly why the Romans set up among the Iceni when they finally took over Britain under Claudius - if there was this kind of wealth in that tribe there was good reason to put a colony there.

Another important consideration is what British find law means for someone with a metal detector and 9 pounds of gold. Some people would melt down a find like this. At $843.15 an ounce, where it closed on Friday, that's over $120,000 anyway. Some people would sell the coins on the black market - there are a lot of them, after all. In Great Britain the well-behaved metal detectorist can hope for a fair reward when the find is declared treasure trove.

And so, the coins fall into our hands, academics - they'll end up in a museum! And we'll get to study them!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:25 AM | Comments (0)

January 9, 2009

Two ways to fight federal regulation of university endowments

We all knew that the big universities were going to scream big losses and poverty in response to Congressional moves to force them to spend 5% annually, but the Wall Street Journal reports a new twist from Princeton:

Still, Princeton had been among those criticized for alleged hoarding of its endowment, as some members of Congress discussed requiring colleges to spend at least 5% of their funds annually.

In recent years, Princeton has typically spent less than that. Thursday, the university said that with the declines in its endowment and the need to fund programs, its annual spend-out rate from its endowment could jump to 6%.

You see, in this time of straightened finances, when the losses on a 16.3 billion dollar endowment make you lie awake at night, you have to increase the payout to get through the hard times. Then, having weathered the hard times and the threat from Congress you can drop down to your sub-5% level and start rebuilding. Clever!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:20 AM

January 6, 2009

Academic Nepotism and Panetta

I know that lots of them on both sides of the aisle do this kind of thing, but it always offends me and the big man is in the news, so here you go:

The surprise selection of Leon Panetta as director of the Central Intelligence Agency in President-elect Barack Obama's administration would leave his public policy institute at CSU-Monterey Bay in the hands of his wife, Sylvia.

Applauding Panetta's selection for the top CIA post, university President Dianne Harrison said Monday she had been "assured by Leon that Sylvia will continue to run the institute and it will be business as usual."

. . .

Panetta and his wife founded the institute at CSU-Monterey Bay in 1997 in partnership with the university to provide studies in government, politics and public policy. Panetta played a key role in Congress and in the Clinton administration to get the university established on the former Army base.

So before leaving public office Panetta got a public university established somewhere, then he and his wife found an institute, which they control so tightly that he can leave her in charge while he goes back to Washington? Ick. Just ick.

Further: A little googlng gets me nowhere - I find nothing much about Sylvia Panetta other than her husband and her co-directorship of the Institute, though maybe she, too, is a lawyer. Don't know. Academic politics as usual.

Further still: Whoops! I mistakenly deleted a comment from this post in the midst of spam clearance. It had something in it reminding us that the academically significant institute at Monterey is the Leon & Sylvia Panetta Institute for Public Policy. Sounds important, hunh? Oh - go here, scroll to the bottom, and check out her academic credentials. Of course, Wikipedia is currently leading off L.P.'s entry with "Leon Edward Panetta (born June 28, 1938) is a Democratic politician and scholar . . . ." As far as I can tell, the reason the article claims he's a "scholar" is that: "[h]e is the founder and director of the Panetta Institute, serves as Distinguished Scholar to the Chancellor of the California State University system and is a professor at Jesuit-run Santa Clara University teaching public policy." He's a J.D. with a tell-all book about the Nixon administration, which sounds like "scholar" is a courtesy title.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:29 AM | Comments (1)

December 31, 2008

If they're fictitious paper gains, are they fictitious paper losses?

On the Yeshiva University front:

The university's chief financial officer, J. Michael Gower, said in an e-mail that the school's actual principal investment in a hedge fund linked to Madoff had been only $14.5 million.

On paper, that stake had exploded in value over the past 15 years to $110 million, but Gower said all of those "profits" now appear to be entirely fictitious, meaning that the losses were mostly fictitious too.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:08 AM

December 29, 2008

Whatever happened to "don't put all your eggs in one basket"?

From an interesting Madoff article at Bloomberg.com:

U.S. foundations that invested with Bernard Madoff donated more than $73 million to nonprofit organizations in 2007, according to a tally based on foundation tax returns.

The Dec. 11 arrest of the 70-year-old New Yorker has directly affected some 400 U.S. nonprofits, from Amnesty International to the Death Penalty Information Center to the Lymphoma Research Foundation. A precise accounting of Madoff-related losses isn't possible. Each week brings new disclosures, and several foundations that said they had money with Madoff haven't indicated how much. He is accused of operating a Ponzi scheme.

. . .

The JEHT Foundation -- which gave away $24.2 million last year, primarily toward criminal justice reform -- and the Picower Foundation -- which distributed $268 million since 1989 -- both recently announced that they've been forced to close.

I don't really understand the chart at the link - how the JEHT foundation had assets of $7.5 million but gave away $24.2 million, but still. Maybe they left out a zero or two? The Picower foundation, which seems to have lost everything, had $958,425,057.

By the way - look at the number of higher education recipients in the lists. Ripples.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:44 AM | Comments (1)

December 22, 2008

How much HAS Harvard Lost?

At the Huffington Post:

Harvard University's admission that it lost $8 billion from its $36 billion endowment fund, as staggering as it sounds, may grossly underestimate the true magnitude of the loss between from July 1 through Oct. 31 2008. According to a source close the Harvard Management Corporation (HMC), which runs the fund for Harvard, the loss is closer to $18 billion if the losses on the fund's illiquid investment are realistically appraised.

In other words, not a little less than a quarter, more like half. Yikes.

via Cliopatria. Though now that I look around, Prof. Soltan has a picture.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:14 AM | Comments (1)

December 18, 2008

UK schools and league tables

So what my colleagues here have built here (for I am just a relatively recent arrival) is not just a program that is top of the league table, but one that is stunningly good. Really, I'm a naturally shy and retiring guy (you know that), but facts must be faced.

The way the RAE worked involved a national panel which put out a call to all UK universities to pick out for each department or subject area those of their academic staff who were judged to be productive in research, and to submit four publications by each of those, plus various other data. In each subject a national panel worked for a year or so reading and grading everything submitted. They mixed in a score for the research environment and a small percentage for esteem indicators like major prizes and awards, and then presented the results as a vector of five integers: first, a rounded percentage corresponding to work of a quality that leads the world in originality, significance, and rigour (4*); then another corresponding to quality of international excellence but not at the very highest level (3*); another corresponding to internationally recognized quality (2*); another corresponding to nationally but perhaps not internationally recognized quality (1*); and a fifth corresponding to work falling below nationally recognized standards for research work (Unclassified).

One happy professor.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:37 PM | Comments (0)

December 17, 2008

Advice for academic job candidates, II

Candidates - don't settle for portfolio services. Develop enough of a relationship with your recommenders that they at least tailor something to different types of schools. The all-purpose to whom it may concern recommendation really isn't inspiring me to want to interview you.

I am appalled by how few recommendations mention our name(s) or even that magic phrase "at a liberal arts college." Do the recommenders not care enough to use mail-merge? Admittedly, I'm only half of the way through the files and one poor distinguished named chair kinda guy has already recommended five (5) candidates to us in glowing terms, so how much worse it would be with personalization I don't know. Maybe I could make some decisions between them? Perhaps he might indicate that he thinks one of the five people (among the 45 files I've read so far) would be better here than the others?

My previous advice to candidates is here.

Further:

Well, don't say that all professors are too burdened to write individual letters - that I can't get what I want. I spent much of today (Thursday) reading folders (and more! more files being completed by late arriving items!) and came across a nice example of what I would like to have seen more of. Distinguished professor of this'n'that has written recs for 4 out of the 63 candidates I've reviewed; the most recent folder from one of that professor's students had two letters via Interfolio (both boilerplated with greatness). Then came a letter from a department person where the candidate is currently teaching; the recommender visited every class taught there (ooh - we're a teaching-centered liberal arts college, too!). Finally, one letter came from the distinguished professor of this'n'that on stationary with colored letterhead. Colored ink signature. Aimed not just at the liberal arts market as opposed to R1s, but actually mentions our name twice (second occurrence in a locally acceptable short version). Does the candidate make the cut for a conference interview? Well, I have to say that if the candidate makes the cut, it is because the candidate is answering the advertisement (see earlier advice), meets the stated criteria, AND has 2 excellent recommendations pointed to our needs, not just the needs of every active search committee on the market. By the way, the distinguished professor of this'n'that's other 3 letters? Via Interfolio. So ask - perhaps you will receive.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:33 PM | Comments (5)

December 15, 2008

Living in your head

Have you ever been accused of living in your head? Well, take Susan Sontag as a cautionary tale - take a bath every day as an antidote.

And yet the innumerable tiny details that preoccupy Sontag over the years, the moments when she does describe her relation to the physical world, are revealing. There are a surprising number of entries in which she resolves to bathe more frequently. "Take a bath every day," she writes over and over, which somehow one doesn't imagine reading in the journals of an adult. But bathing is difficult for her; it involves a confrontation with the physical body she finds distressing. She tells us she sometimes falls asleep in her clothes. There is something endearing in this self portrait: the arrogant command of her authorial voice somehow belied by a sweet image of the unworldly woman writer, so uncomfortable with the basic physical demands of life, so flustered by soap and water.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:26 AM | Comments (1)

Why does higher education cost so much?

The Chronicle of Higher Education tries to answer that important question by looking at the University of Kansas.

I'm going on hearsay, folks, because I don't subscribe and the Chronicle has a lock-down policy on content that's worse than the Wall Street Journal. Here's what Erin O'Connor's gleans:

CHE points out that in the past twenty years, Kansas has tripled its operating budget, while maintaining a steady enrollment of 26,000 students. During that time, state support has doubled--but while state funding in 1988 covered 40 percent of the operating budget, it now covers only 22 percent. Grants and contracts cover some of the difference, but not all of it. Meanwhile, tuition for in-state students has quintupled. Kansas is still very affordable, at around $7,000/year -- and is much less expensive than rival flagships. Still, the tuition rate has increased at three times the rate of inflation over the past two decades.

Where is all the money going? To various things aimed broadly at enhancing student experience and so improving retention: new facilities (two science buildings, a fitness center replete with climbing wall, renovated dorms, a multicultural resource center, a performing arts center, a writing center, revamped high-tech classrooms, increased library services, IT), more professors, and more bureaucracy to administer all the new student services, to publicize them, and to study them. Energy and health care premiums also add to the total.

She also points out the thing that frightens us; is all the money making any difference?

All that aside, there is one thing that the article does not cover. With all its attention to how much money Kansas has pumped into the thesis that the spending will improve educational outcomes, no attention is paid to whether educational outcomes are any different than they were before Kansas began its spending spree.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:52 AM

December 10, 2008

So is it bad that university endowments are doing so badly?

Harvard freezes faculty salaries and halts most searches. Their endowment dropped 30%.

The president of Bard College thinks pretending to be a bank was a bad idea all along for universities.

The Bard College president has for years been telling anyone who would listen that endowment growth in higher education was irresponsible and encouraged all the wrong strategies. He has called for colleges to spend the money they raise, rather than stocking it away. With the economy crashing, and tuition-dependent colleges like Bard worried about enrollment and wishing they had larger endowments, is Botstein sticking to his views? How does higher education look to the person who warned that endowment dependence was a terrible thing?

Botstein wants you to know that it's not Schadenfreude he's feeling. "I don't wish any of these institutions ill."

But to Botstein, what is happening now is proof that the endowment strategy doesn't work. "Institutions should not be banks. They are not good at it, and they are no better than anybody else. It should come as no surprise that as investing vehicles, there was a certain amount of arrogance and hubris," he said. "There was much too much time and money spent on getting richer and richer without being clear about why."

via Professor Soltan

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:39 PM | Comments (1)

December 9, 2008

The Mayor of Boston looks hard at payment in lieu of taxes - and wants more.

The mayor of Boston wants to renegotiate and standardize the payments in lieu of taxes currently in place between non-profits and the city. The article claims that non-profits of one kind or another own 50% of the property, but are paying $32 million in taxes. Here are two paragraphs you need to read:

Combined, tax-exempt institutions give the city $32.4 million annually in payments in lieu of taxes, a drop in the bucket when compared with what the city spends on police, fire, and other services. If their properties were taxable, the institutions would be writing checks for 10 times that amount - between $350 and $400 million each year, city officials estimated yesterday.

. . .

For example, Boston University contributes $4.6 million each year, the highest of any institution, while Harvard University - which owns twice as much land in Boston - pays $1.9 million. Northeastern University contributes only $30,600.

What a mess. I wish him luck.

via Inside Higher Ed

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:50 AM

December 8, 2008

The Academic Job Search - hints for the Candidate I

I'm on sabbatical, but I feel the duty to serve on one of our searches this year. I read a bunch of the completed folders this afternoon.

Candidates: please, please, read the advertisement. Apply for the job advertised. I marked a bunch of NO columns on rubrics sheets because the candidates were not applying for the job we're offering. That's different from the people whose folders you have read and reread to see which parts they do and don't seem to have; no, some people are missing the basics. Some people's folders make you wonder if they read the advertisement other than to get the mailing address.

Another quick hint - if you're going to write a single cover letter for all jobs on the market, don't mention your eagerness to teach graduate-level courses. Just say you are eager to teach. That way you'll cover both graduate institutions and places like this. Two people I've already read got the NO mark because once I read that line in the cover letter I looked for any evidence of actual interest in teaching undergraduates at a small liberal arts college and didn't find a lot. I might have read more generously at this stage if you hadn't annoyed me on page 1 of your file.

Finally, be sure to use the correct name for the institution. We're Hobart and William Smith Colleges, not Hobart Smith College. There's no need for you to learn about the complicated history of the coordinate colleges unless we hire you, but don't make the committee wonder about your reading skills. That leads to a NO on the ol' rubric sheet.

All that said, good luck! Because luck is a lot of what it takes.

Here's the second piece of advice.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:24 PM | Comments (2)

December 3, 2008

Great reading rooms of the world

Well, actually I'm in the Manuscripts and Archives reading room next door, but it's a fine place to work, if a tad less aggressive in its grandeur. I'm playing about with Richard Upjohn and the Hobart chapel - and I'm satisfied about 2 points I needed to settle.

And I've requested photos of some plans and elevations - interesting to see the stages of his revisions!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:08 PM | Comments (1)

November 24, 2008

Just what we need - MORE Ph.d. holders

Yes, even in this year of aborted searches and hiring freezes people can stand up with a straight face and be pleased with rising rates of Ph.d. completion. I'm pleased that Inside Higher Ed uses the headline Doctorate Production Continues to Grow, as though we're talking about an industrial process rather than the individual accomplishment of scholars. Since the story admits that "the overall gains continued to be driven by significant numbers of Ph.D.s and other doctorates awarded to non-Americans," perhaps they're right. We import an increasing number of graduate students to keep the doctoral programs churning.

Our provost said aloud in the monthly faculty meeting last year that there was a coming shortage of doctorate holders on the market. The room burst into laughter.* And that was before this year created another cohort of the accidentally unhired. Ah, to own a taxi company in New York City!

Luckily, though, the story has this hopeful bit: "...the number of Ph.D.s awarded in the humanities dropped by 4.6 percent, to their lowest point since 1994."

*to be fair to the provost, perhaps she was thinking of the disproportion of PhDs being awarded in the sciences to non-citizens and the difficulty in making a hire under those circumstances. Surely, though, in a world with more than 250 complete applications for a position in the English department (hearsay, but from a member of the search committee) it's not disastrous if the number of degrees in the humanities drops by 5 or 6 percent?

Further - Oh, I should add: no hiring freeze here; we're going ahead with our searches, though there may be less ready replacement for people on leave and such next year.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:32 AM | Comments (1)

November 23, 2008

Carnivalesque 45 - a blog carnival of Ancient and Medieval findings

Welcome to Carnivalesque 45 - a blog carnival of Ancient and Medieval findings!

Lots of people are talking conferences - it's a way of not thinking about grading, of course. J. J. Cohen at In the Middle gets some organizational information about what sort of audience to expect for his paper at the Leeds Congress and breaks out into a rash:

Yeah, nooo pressure at all. I'll just wear a nice suit and juggle oranges on a unicycle while reading from my translation of Judith Butler's Giving an Account of Oneself into medieval Latin. Slowly.

Dr. Virago complains at Quod She about her future office, but then she shows pictures of the Modern Panopticon! She's right - those are a lot of windows to clap to.

What brings people to the blogs they read? Jonthan Jarrett at A Corner of Tenth-Century Europe (IN a Corner of Tenth-Century Europe? I'm not sure) looks at his referrer logs and decides to do something for the searchers.

If I leave aside the porn searches and count only strings that look academic, the two things that bring people to this blog from search engines more than anything else are, firstly, my piece on the First Crusade, which is good as that's what it's there for, and secondly, the piece I wrote about Charles the Simple, because it includes a reference to and a map of the Treaty of Verdun. It's searches for "treaty of Verdun" that bring people to that, and they can't really be getting what they want out of it. I'm not going to try and fill that gap here, because there are already better sites out there explaining what the Treaty was, but I will do two things. Firstly, I will make an important point about the Treaty's effect, and then I will do what I do best, or at least most, and tell you a story from a charter that helps to illustrate the sort of thing that was going on.

Dr. Weevil is also checking meta-blog information. He blogged a bit from 14th century essayist Yoshida Kenko that reminded him of the essence of blogging:

If I fail to say what lies on my mind it gives me a feeling of flatulence; I shall therefore give my brush free rein. Mine is a foolish diversion, but these pages are meant to be torn up, and no one is likely to see them. (Kenko, Essays in Idleness 19, tr. Donald Keene)

Then a little later,

Belatedly wondering if anyone else had quoted Kenko's proto-blogger manifesto, I did a Google search on "Kenko + blogger + Idleness + flatulence". The first result of "about 93" was my own 11:57pm post, dated (timed?) "9 minutes ago", which means that Google had it in their database approximately 25 minutes after I posted it. I would be less impressed if I had even 0.1% (e.g.) InstaPundit's traffic.

Speaking of meta-blogging, how many of us started out as anonymous bloggers only to be outed? Or noticed? It just happened to Another Damned Medievalist.

Disiecta membra! Got to love them! Carl Pyrdum at Got Medieval shows us a marginal guy ripping himself apart! And monkeys!

We don't always have to reinterpret the same ol' same ol' - we can dig up new stuff! But then we find ourselves in an arms race with, you know, the public. Who sometimes dig things up without consulting the experts. Alun Salt at Archeoastronomy considers all sorts of issues along these lines - starting with Great Britain's current finding regime, the Portable Antiquity Scheme. The broader consideration is of how we might encourage a world in which a conserved heritage is more valuable than a marketed heritage. Lots of links for people interested in ethics and morals of archaeology. Here's the Portable Antiquity Scheme in case you don't already have it bookmarked.

Talking about the ethics and morality of archaeology, Dr. Martin Rundkvist at Aardvarchaeology offers a guest entry by Florian Freistetter of Astrodicticum Simplex - who manages to go to a lecture and restrain himself from standing up and shouting by taking diligent notes:

A few weeks ago, on 17th October, I had the dubious pleasure of attending a lecture by Erich von Däniken with the title Götterdämmerung, "Twilight of the Gods". The great hall in Jena's Volkshaus was rather full: I believe there were 650 to 700 people there. It was a strange feeling, being in the same room as all those people and knowing that most of them would probably believe what Däniken was going to tell them.

Speaking of aliens, Michael Drout, in his only political blog posting, asked Why Settle for the Lesser Evil?

Gesta at On Boundaries posted on a Chris Wickham lecture, 'The problem of the dialogues between medieval history and medieval archaeology.' Gesta links comments on the same lecture by Jonathan Jarrett and Magistra et Mater, and notes:

What is interesting from my point of view is that clearly I had my teaching head on rather than my research head in this lecture. While Magistra and Jonathan were mulling over the implications for the way they write history, I was pondering how we start to address the problems at undergrad level. I fear I am becoming institutionalised.

Do you know what Zenobia really looked like? Judith Weingarten has some ideas. Coin pictures at Zenobia, Empress of the East!

And since we're turning to the classical world, let's talk Classics as a major - and one of those awkward conversations we sometimes have this time of year during registration for Spring classes. Are your students declaring majors? Michael Gilleland at Laudator Temporis Acti has Ed Turner's letter to young Ted Turner (yeah, that Ted Turner) on the subject. Ed wrote:

"I am appalled, even horrified, that you have adopted classics as a major. As a matter of fact, I almost puked on my way home today."

How would you help Ted answer Ed?*

Edward Cook at Ralph the Sacred River tells us why the Jesus Bowl is just another crock. Everyone loves Magic Bowls, but this one's nothing special.

And a different sort of bowl - and back to the idea of the morality of digging up or owning things, Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber talks about buying a Song dynasty bowl. Read the comments.

Just remember, don't go buying things as if the sales catalog is accurate! David Nishimura at Cronaca pointed out a couple of stories about a Fatimid ewer selling at Christie's for 3.2 million pounds. The same piece had been cataloged in January of 2008 as a 19th century claret jug and valued at 100-300 pounds. Jug, ewer - is it the price point that inflects the nomenclature? Whatever - caveat emptor!

The December 2008 (early modern) will be hosted at Investigations of a Dog. Go make suggestions!

*Fun fact to know and tell - Ted Turner started Latin under the same man I did, W.O.E.A. Humphreys at the McCallie School. Note that I am not listed as one of the notable alumni.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:22 PM

Another Salvo in the SAT Wars

As highly selective colleges drop their SAT requirements for graduation, there's this article to consider from someone who had a lot of information at his disposal - Peter Salins, who was Provost of the State University of New York System from 1997 to 2006 on Does the SAT Predict College Success?

Salins has one criterion for success - graduation in 6 years. He had a big system with some variety in the schools to look at. His answer? Yes. Go read and see.

You'd think this is a question we could have answered to general satisfaction long ago, given the energy that's been poured into it. Perhaps that in itself is a lesson about the social sciences?

via Joanne Jacobs.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:59 PM | Comments (1)

November 20, 2008

Early Medieval Church Silver at Dumbarton Oaks

I got to visit Dumbarton Oaks last weekend with my nephews (and sister!) - the Sion Treasure is a highlight for me. It was the perfect preparation for someone to spend the week reading the Liber Pontificalis and its telegraphic mentions of the largesse of the popes. Here's what the LP (in Davis's translation, linked above) says Paschal I gave to the church of Santa Caecilia, which he rebuilt:

For love of the venerable saints [Agatha and Caecilia], to decorate this church [Sta Caecilia in Trastevere] this holy prelate provided an apse adorned with mosaic and a silver canopy of wondrous size, weighing 600 lb 8 oz. He finished and marvellously embellished the holy altar's propitatorium* and the confessio** inside and out, and its grills, with silver sheets, weighing in all 154 lb 15 oz. At this virgin's holy body he presented an image of silver sheets weighing 95 lb. In front of the altar's vestibule he provided a cornice covered in silver sheets and 2 columns, where he placed 1 arch and 2 chevrons, weighing in all 100 1/2 lb. There too he presented 3 sliver-gilt images weighing 48 1/2 lb. For this church's arches this prelate provided 26 great silver chalices weighing in all 109 1/2 lb. There too he presented 2 silver canisters*** with six wicks, weighing 2 lb 9 oz; a fine gold bowl weighing 3 lb. This pontiff provided 2 silver canisters with nine wicks, weighing 10 lb; 3 silver bowls weighing 5 lb.; a silver gilt thurible weighing 1 lb. (LP, Life 100: chapters 19-20)

And that's before the biographer lists the fabrics Paschal donated.

This kind of amazing silver work - Dumbarton Oaks' example probably coming from a provincial monastery in Lycia in Anatolia - was not uncommon in the Mediterranean world. Click and see two other views of the stuff from the same site.

The inscriptions in silver are also splendid and eye-catching - and help liven up for me some of the tedious textual inscriptions I study as evidence for how patrons wanted people to see and use their buildings.

Moments like this also make the neo-Baroque so common in modern 1962 Missal arrangements seem quite dull. This is real silver, not gold leaf or gold thread embroidery. Imagine what people thought about their altars in the 6th century as opposed to what we might surmise from the plaster and gold leaf decorations of the 17th?

*propitatorium - well, it's the word the Vulgate uses for whatever was on top of the Ark of the Covenant - what the KJV calls the "mercy seat." It doesn't show up often in the Liber Pontificalis, so we're not exactly sure what it is except that it was associated with the altar. Some people translate it as "altar frontal." I find that more convincing than "ciborium" or some kind of rear ledge over the altar.
**confessio - the container for the body of the saint.
***cannister - some kind of cylindrical floor-based oil lamp

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:28 PM | Comments (2)

Scholarly Moodswings

I don't know about you, but I go through life with a kind of academic bipolar disorder. I read things and think thoughts and suppose that they've already been thought - and published, usually in German. Then I swing around and realize that nothing has been said before - nothing! There's so much work to do!

I'm having one of those up moments this week. It's a nice way to be about your reading.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:17 PM | Comments (0)

Against Legacy Admissions

This is a strange article at Inside Higher Ed about challenges to legacy admissions. Evidently law professors are trolling for cases to take to court to test their theories?

But this week -- for the second time this year -- a law journal is publishing a legal analysis that suggests that legacy preferences are illegal. The new issue of the Santa Clara Review features an article -- whose lead writer would like to find plaintiffs to test his theory -- arguing that the 1866 Civil Rights Act bars legacy admissions at public and private institutions. An article earlier this year in the Washington University Law Review argues that the "nobility clauses" of the U.S. Constitution ban legacy admissions at public institutions.

I find the argument from the "nobility clauses" strangest. Oh, well.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:31 AM | Comments (0)

November 19, 2008

The Return of Martin Guerre Lives! Or something like that.

Have you ever seen or taught The Return of Martin Guerre, book or film? Of course you have! It's a staple of humanities courses! (aside - I wonder how much Natalie Zemon Davis made off that? It was well-deserved!) Man goes to war, man returns from war, another man returns from war who is proven after lengthy court struggle to be the real man - you know.

Here's a kind of real-life version in Chile. Man disappeared during dirty war. Body declared his in 1995. Wife receives compensation payments. Body declared not his in 2006. Man returns from just over the Andes, where he's been living (the original Martin Guerre was working in Spain). Excitement ensues.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:49 AM | Comments (1)

November 18, 2008

Admissions officers bewildered by this year's Early Decision applicants

You see, they're up. The applications. Almost everywhere anyone asked. They were supposed to go down, because:

Admissions experts predicted that the binding nature of early decision would discourage students and families in a year when many are uncertain about their personal finances and would want to consider public college alternatives or to weigh aid offers from a range of colleges before committing.

This is good - no one wants to be Beloit, cutting 40 jobs because they fell 36 student short this year.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:45 AM | Comments (0)

November 17, 2008

College death

For all we go on about huge university endowments and scandalous college president salaries it is useful to remember that colleges can die - especially in a troubled economy like this one. Here's an interesting article about college closings.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:15 AM | Comments (1)

November 13, 2008

You just might be a scholar if . . .

. . . the sentence "You've got I.L.L." makes your heart leap! Inter Library Loan - where would we be without it?

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:55 PM | Comments (1)

Campus Priorities

Lucky B.A.W.! Go read the whole thing.

As someone more on the admin side, I was flabbergasted that these science faculty, who are supposedly all about the grants and the funding, couldn't see the writing on the wall in terms of where their cash will be coming from in the future. This is a land grant institution. We've been asked for a sizeable budget cut THIS YEAR, with more to come. And when things get better, do you think that money's gonna magically reappear?

Given our state's history, my Magic Eight Ball says, "Signs point to no."

The icing on the cake? As I was leaving the auditorium, earnest chick was behind me speaking sotto voce to her companion. Her major complaint (other than those previously aired, that is)?

"He kept saying 'guys' a lot. I think that sort of gendered language bodes ill."

Right. Keep on keepin' on, sister-girl. You'll have no funding, and the university will have no coherent vision for staying competitive, but at least the Vice-Chancellor won't use pronouns in an offensive manner. Thank God that you're able to save us from ourselves!

And thank God that I'm not the chair of this hiring committee.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:35 PM | Comments (0)

The Dream - or Nightmare - Palace of the Wittgensteins

I've never cared for what little I knew about Wittgenstein the person - but this book may explain why he was so very odd. And we wonder why Freud turned out the way he did? It was the clientele in Vienna!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:18 AM | Comments (0)

Someone training for the wrong line of work at the University of Iowa

UI anthropology student Morgan Hansen, who is seeking a certificate in museum studies, felt "unnerved" by the idea that art could have been stolen during the flood.

That's a student who should consider other degree certifications; she's quoted about the University of Iowa's failure during the floods this year to move all the art objects to safe storage and then back again without a few things going missing.

OF COURSE people steal from art museums during natural disasters, and one should automatically plan to watch the movers carefully. Never heard of things "falling off the truck?" Maybe she shouldn't go into museum work - she's too optimistic about human nature.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:21 AM | Comments (0)

November 5, 2008

A Superfluity of Andrews

I'm at a friend's campus trying to use VPN to get into my home network to use the Visual Resources Collection. It's not working. They have firewall issues with VPN. So I want to email that nice Andrew in I.T. who I was talking to and ask if there's a work around. I don't know his email address (we have multiple ways of naming people) so I go to the look up page for that kind of thing and search by first name. We have 40 people on campus named Andrew or with the last name Andrews. I'm not sure what the proper word for a group of Andrews is, but I'm suggesting that we have a Superfluity of them.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:43 PM | Comments (0)

November 3, 2008

Choosing publishing venues by journal grades - or lose your departmental budget!

Here's an interesting article at Aardvarachaeology (with a bias toward Scandinavian archaeology - but hey, you learn things all over) about the grading of journals in Europe and why scholars have to pay attention to the grades:

Suddenly, humanities scholars will have to start paying a lot more attention to where they publish. In Norway and other countries, a department's funding is directly linked to the ERIH [European Reference Index for the Humanities] grade of the journals where its faculty publishes.

Grade A means global readership. Grade B means international readership. Grade C means national readership. Only good respected scholarly journals get graded at all. Here's a rundown of grade A and B journals focusing at least to a great part on Scandinavian archaeology (not including e.g. Mediterranean archaeology practiced by Scandinavians). My emphais.

Some of the external reviewing systems in European universities would give us fits! American professors might well have the sense that their tenure or promotions might depend on the grade or quality or something of the journals where they publish, but not something larger like departmental funding!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:54 AM

CNN.Money's 10 Most Expensive Colleges

CNN.Money's 10 Most Expensive Colleges:

Price is tuition only.

George Washington University - $40,437
Sarah Lawrence - small liberal arts
Kenyon - s.l.a.
Vassar - s.l.a.
Bucknell - s.l.a.
Carnegie-Mellon
Colgate - s.l.a.
Columbia University
St. John's College Annapolis - eccentric s.l.a.
Wesleyan - hmmm - kinda s.l.a., though they have ph.d. programs. - $38,934

I've seen other versions, but this struck me this morning.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:38 AM | Comments (2)

November 1, 2008

Genetic engineering we can all use: beer with resveratrol

Genetic Engineering we can use, from a student research project at my alma mater!

College students often spend their free time thinking about beer, but some Rice University students are taking it to the next level. They're using genetic engineering to create beer that contains resveratrol, a chemical in wine that's been shown to reduce cancer and heart disease in lab animals.

Rice's "BioBeer" will be entered in the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition Nov. 8-9 in Cambridge, Mass. It's the world's largest synthetic biology competition, a contest where teams use a standard toolkit of DNA building blocks -- think genetic LEGO blocks -- to create living organisms that do odd things. Notable past iGEM creations include sheets of bacteria that behave like photographic film and bacteria that smell like mint while they're growing but like bananas when they stop growing

It doesn't sound from the press release that they'll be chugging this genetically modified product at Beer Bike this year.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:30 AM | Comments (1)

October 30, 2008

Returning Art Looted by the Nazis

Here is a good article about the process one museum, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, has gone through with one painting, a Fernand Leger, before returning it to the heirs of the 1939 owner.

After 10 years of detective work, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts has concluded that a $2.8 million painting it has owned for decades was stolen by the Nazis. The museum has returned the 1911 painting, Fernand Leger's "Smoke Over Rooftops," to the French heirs of a Jewish art collector who died in 1948.

"Having researched this to the end of the road, we decided we had to return the painting; it was the right thing to do," said Art Institute Director Kaywin Feldman.

Other museums have faced similar challenges to their collections. The institute's saga began in 1997 when the museum received a letter claiming that the painting had been taken from Alphonse Kann, a legendary French collector who owned "tons of Picassos, Braques and late-19th-century Impressionist paintings," according to Patrick Noon, the institute's paintings curator. His story helped inspire a 1964 movie, "The Train," starring Burt Lancaster, about a trainload of art that the Germans tried to spirit away before the Allies liberated Paris in 1944.

First they had to decide this was the right one - Leger painted at least 5 other "Smoke Over Rooftops." Then they had to deal with the awkward sales history - once in 1942 to one Parisian gallery owned by Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, the great dealer in everything Cubist and a German Jew himself, and once to a second gallery owned by a German specialist in selling degenerate modern art for and to the Nazis.

It sounds like this was an expensive process, and the MIA hasn't released a figure yet. The conclusion, though, says something about the strength of their collection:

Initially the museum hoped Kann's heirs would lend or give it to the museum but that proved impossible. Asked if the institute would try to buy it back if the Leger were to be offered at auction, Feldman and Noon smiled ruefully and shook their heads.

"We have two other very nice Leger paintings in the collection," Noon said.

If art history undergraduates ask why they should learn French and German (and Russian would be useful for this line of work, too), tell them this story.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:19 AM | Comments (0)

October 28, 2008

The Little Things in Life

Click and follow the photostream for a quick explanation of how the little things can sometimes make or break a day.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:29 PM | Comments (0)

October 27, 2008

Why the Corporate World Needs University Endorsements

Prof. Soltan writes at Inside Higher Education about how someone like the execrable Prof. Nemeroff can drag down the name of Emory University:

Keep front and center the fact that in this sense the university is immensely valuable, even to people like Nemeroff, for whom the shabby, earnest ethos of the institution is a joke and a personal insult. To play the professor is to play the man with integrity, the man who has eschewed the corporate world because he's above single-minded profit-taking. He's motivated by science and altruism.

And it is precisely everyone's appraisal of the university professor as a serious person, motivated more by ideas than money, that Nemeroff and his corporate clients exploit. Professor Nemeroff shares with you his admiration for our new drug! This admiration emerges solely out of his intellectual scrutiny of its properties. You can trust his sober, disinterested point of view because... he's a professor...

The character emerging from what UD's been describing comes out of a nineteenth century novel. The fraud, the poseur, the hypocrite, the confidence man who breaks the rules more and more flagrantly because he's sure he can get away with it. The world, after all, is a cynical place. He knows how to play it.

This is a comic character, full of high sentence and secret hoardings. The only writer today who can do him justice is Tom Wolfe.

Charles Nemeroffs are amusing in novels. Their reality is sad, sad, sad. If you care about the American university. (my emphasis)

I wonder how much further into the 21st century the idea of the sober, disinterested pursuit of truth will survive as a characteristic attributed to professors in general. I think Prof. Soltan is right that it does still operate now. I'm not certain what will break it up faster - revelations like those about the corruption of science by Prof. Nemeroff or the realization by the broader public that Republicans are correct when they say that almost all professors are members of or contributors to only the parties of the left.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:16 PM | Comments (1)

Everyone builds trebuchets . . .

. . . but at Arizona State folks are building a mangonel. Here's the story: Beware of Flying Pumpkins During Homecoming.

Update: Aha, the Hobart & William Smith Trebuchet Contest was in the Spring of 2004, back before the total collapse of my blog database in January 2005. No wonder I couldn't find any entries with the search term "trebuchet." So I have to re-post the picture from that time, now very long ago.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:24 AM | Comments (0)

October 24, 2008

Put your money where your mouth is.

Alan Bennett donates a bunch of manuscripts to the Bodleian and criticizes the tuition-policies of British higher education. So, has he founded a scholarship to keep one student at a time out of debt?

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:09 PM | Comments (5)

October 21, 2008

Narcissim rewarded with high office in Higher Education? Say it's not so!

"I have created an organization that is more driven by relationships than reporting lines." If there's a more succinct summary of narcissistic management, I haven't seen it.

That from the regular Confessions of a Community College Dean column at Inside Higher Ed. The Dean thinks: "I suppose it's possible that W[ashington] S[tate] U[niversity] is the land of milk and honey, in which peace and love reign, and into which an outsider attempted to introduce sin. Anything's possible, I suppose."

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:55 PM | Comments (1)

October 20, 2008

Can a middle-aged professor learn new tricks?

I may have succeeded in turning over one of the heaviest of new leaves. For many, many years I have bought bottles of vitamins and taken about half of them and then drifted off into unfortified existence, little caring about my vitamin D or calcium levels. Today I can report that I am about to finish a bottle of Wegman's Complete Multi Vitamins and Minerals with Important Antioxidants.

There's hope for you! Change!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:15 AM | Comments (3)

October 16, 2008

Self-pity, bronchial division

I am very tired of prednisone and how it makes me feel. I'm in the maximum dosage stage* of my second course of the nasty stuff, which always makes me feel miserable, dry-mouthed, and sleepless. Ugh.

On the bright side, we get a training session today for the Xerox multi-function device that replaced all the desktop printers at Houghton House - finally I may be able to fax again!

*40 mg per day for 4 days, 20 mg for 4 days, 10 mg for 4 days. Ugh.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:36 AM

October 15, 2008

Those Bonobos - the chimps that made love, not war

Well this is a relief. Science has proved, once again, that conflict is more natural than peace. Me, I'm not surprised, but people who took college anthropology courses might be, if their professors liked to make analogies between people and animal behavior.

A type of chimpanzee known to use sex for greetings, reconciliations, and favors may not be all about peace, love, and understanding after all. A new study reveals that some bonobos--one of humankind's closest genetic relatives--hunt and eat other primates. [I love that weasely "some". Let's face it - bonobos eat monkeys. Where were all the qualifications of "the bonobos we have observed so far" back when they were telling us how the bonobo showed that free floating sex produced peaceful chimps? Don't believe my report of utopianism - go read the wikipedia entry, where the females are also reported to have a higher status. So far it doesn't have any monkey-eating.]

Groups of the endangered chimpanzee subspecies were observed stalking, chasing, and killing monkeys they later consumed.

Scientists have long known from stool samples that some bonobos eat rodents and small antelopes in their natural forest habitats in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), but many researchers thought this was the extent of their hunting activities.

Gottfried Hohmann and Martin Surbeck, at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, thought differently.

"We saw that their relations with neighboring monkeys were frequently hostile and found a black mangabey finger in bonobo feces last year," Hohmann said.

"We did not know if the mangabey had been killed by another predator and then scavenged by the bonobo or if the bonobo had killed the mangabey itself, but this raised our suspicions."

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:22 PM | Comments (0)

My next desktop

When I come back from leave I get to request a new school computer - but Brian Tiemann explains in considerable detail why the new 24 inch LED Cinema display is what I need.

The clincher is the power connection for your laptop running out of the display. One step closer to the goal of charger-brick-less living!

Further: Ack! Via John Gruber's Daring Fireball I find that my MacBook won't run this new screen without an adapter. And at that point the MacBook will only be 18 months old, so that doesn't sound likely. Hmmm.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:32 AM | Comments (0)

October 11, 2008

Worried about economic collapse? Get over it!

Apocalypse postponed. Normalcy restored.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:42 PM | Comments (2)

October 9, 2008

Smug - it's the new black

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:20 AM | Comments (2)

October 1, 2008

So what do we mean when we say we teach Arabic?

Inside Higher Ed has an interesting article on Arabic pedagogy. The problem is deciding what to teach - Arabic is a complicated phenomenon. I blogged about the difficulties of diglossia (multiple languages or dialects inside a single package) a while back and compared a lot of American instruction in Arabic to teaching Latin and then sending our students to Italy and Spain. Really, that's not an unfair comparison.

From today's article:

Teaching conversation skills in an Arabic classroom may seem like an uncontroversial thing. It would be standard, after all, in many introductory courses for other languages. But when Munther Younes started integrating instruction of the formal written language with a spoken dialect in Cornell University classrooms 18 years ago, he was a pioneer.

"What we're doing that's different ... is that other programs either teach the classical language by itself - they're a small program and they don't have the manpower or support. Other programs that are bigger introduce a spoken dialect, but they do the two in separate tracks. What we do at Cornell is integrate the two into one track, with two sides, so students learn to read what Arabs read and write, and they learn to speak what Arabs speak," says Younes, a senior lecturer and director of Cornell's Arabic program.

"So it's an honest reflection of what really happens in the Arab world."

Arabic is characterized by a so-called "diglossic" situation, in which the formal, uniform written language (Modern Standard Arabic) differs considerably from the various spoken dialects. Traditionally, and still, the former has been privileged in foreign language classrooms -- in some cases to the total exclusion of -- the latter.

The reasons are complicated. Some are pedagogical -- fear of confusing students in constantly switching between varieties. Some are practical -- native Arabic speakers pick up the dialect at home and study Modern Standard Arabic in school, and carry that tradition to the North American classroom. And some are ideological or political. Modern Standard Arabic is the language of literature and Arab culture, while the dialects lack respect. Arab students, Younes says, "would be condemning the dialect in the strongest terms [while speaking] in the dialect."

Among other things, the Cornell program has decided to teach Levantine Arabic (Syria, Lebanon, etc.). That's at least mutually intelligible with Egyptian. But what about other Arabics?

This is a real problem for American higher education. As is the problem of trained instructors - which also comes up in the Inside Higher Ed piece. Here at these Colleges we're supplementing our meager offerings with visiting native speakers. I hope it helps.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:33 AM | Comments (1)

September 23, 2008

Debunking those College Admissions Season stories

Inside Higher Ed has a story about the survival of early decision admissions, despite Harvard having dropped the practice in 2006. I was glad to see this paragraph:

Despite some media hysteria about the difficulty of getting into college, most institutions admit most applicants. Nationally, 68 percent of applicants are admitted. Those institutions that admit fewer than 50 percent of applicants receive only 31 percent of all applications, and enroll only 18 percent of first year students. My emphasis.

I don't think I realized what a small percentage of the nation's students end up attending selective institutions (though I would've if I'd thought about it for a minute). I knew that most people have more problems getting organized to apply than actually being admitted.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:14 AM | Comments (0)

September 22, 2008

Room and Board

I had not fully understood the burst of dorm-building at community colleges in Upstate New York. Here's the Student Housing page from Finger Lakes Community College. And from Monroe (that's Rochester) CC.

This piece from Inside Higher Ed's Confessions of a Community College Dean made me think a little more about what's going on:Perversely Enough, We're Upscaling.

I knew that recessions (or economic slowdowns, since I'm really not interested in splitting semantic hairs here) generally bring increased enrollments at cc's. The reasons are straightforward enough: the opportunity cost of education is lower when jobs are scarce, the need for a degree is higher when jobs are scarce, and our low tuition becomes much more attractive when things get precarious. This is old news. People who otherwise might have gone somewhere more expensive will take a second look at the local cc when money is an issue.

Unless - and this was the part I didn't realize - they're so ridiculously broke that the logic circles around. According to my source, who's in a position to know, some of our increasing number of homeless (or intermittently homeless) students are actually transferring to four-year schools earlier than they would prefer. The draw is financial aid for dorm rooms and meal plans.

Financial aid at the cc only covers tuition, fees, and a (low) estimate for books.* It doesn't do anything for living expenses, which aren't getting any cheaper. But financial aid at the nearby residential four-year colleges includes room and board. If you're intermittently homeless, the prospect of aid covering a place to live and a meal plan is nothing to sneeze at.

So the perverse impact of the economic downturn is that we get more people from the upper end of the economic scale, since they're playing it safer by choosing the low-cost option, and fewer people from the lower end, since we don't offer subsidized room and board. Perversely enough, we're upscaling.

And here's the Monroe CC faq where we ask and learn the answer to "Can Financial Aid be used to cover the cost of living in the MCC Residence Halls?"

Quick answer, yes, depending on eligibility.

When I first read about the new dorms going up for FLCC I figured it was a way to get money out of the state-run bonding entity, the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York, and use it to build revenue-generating dorms. After all, we funded our new dorms the same way at about the same time

I'm used to the mission-statement version of Residence Life - that we foster the whole person by providing housing and programming. I also knew a little about the financing of dorms. I had never really thought that NOT having dorms could in certain circumstances cause a higher transfer rate out from community colleges to four-year schools. The Higher Education Industrial Complex never ceases to surprise.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:01 PM

September 19, 2008

Fun facts to know and tell - Accreditation or Property Protection - which came first??

In the course of writing a comment at Tim Burke's (about the post linked below) I happened to visit the website for the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools website. I think of Middle States and its regional counterparts as accreditation agencies, though I have always understood that accreditation is not a neutral procedure.

I clicked on History.

They began as a group of college presidents organizing to protest the taxation of college property! The connection between lobbying government for tax benefits and assuring the government that association members are providing standardized education began early. From their history:

The genesis of the Association can be traced to a meeting of activist college presidents in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in February 1887. The meeting was held to protest a proposed tax on college properties and concluded with the consensus that education from early age through the university was in chaos. The presidents chartered themselves as the College Association of Pennsylvania, soon thereafter renamed the Association of the Colleges and Secondary Schools of the Middle States and Maryland.

. . .

The initial objectives of the Association were to standardize the qualifications required for admission to college, to determine the desired characteristics for college preparatory schools, to recommend courses of study for both colleges and schools, to foster school and college relationships to each other and to the government, and to study and recommend best practices of organization and governance.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:49 PM

Busted!

Someone just knocked on my library study door! Ack!

Luckily it was a student who knew I was up here on the XXX [redacted] floor. He's doing honors and just picked up the key to a space he shares with some other honors folk and saw my light on.

Still, my illusion of refuge just vanished!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:40 PM | Comments (0)

Tending Your Academic Garden in the Autumn

Prof. Tim Burke has a thought-provoking essay on what may be the end of a long period of growth for higher education, especially at selective institutions. It goes well what I blogged about yesterday - faculty retirement (or the slowing thereof).

Read it here - Planned Contraction or Chaotic Retreat?.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:40 AM

September 18, 2008

Here's a silly question about the current economic news - "Will Professors Delay Retirements?"

The answer, Of course! And there is no big rush to hire more tenure track professors to replace them.

I'm not saying that anyone lied to me (especially in the early 21st Century, where "being wrong on the basis of partial information" is the same as "telling deliberate lies"), but I first heard the 'coming great wave of retirement' line in the Fall of 1983 when certain entirely well-meaning professors told me and my compatriots that maybe graduate school was finally not such a bad idea after all. There would be retirements! And jobs!

I haven't seen it yet.

Of our retirees last year, one was accelerated by a medical condition and one by a spouse's work-related move. A third was pretty much planned. This in a faculty of something like 180, and from 3 professors with 113 years of combined service. Not that they aren't all fabulous people, professors who I would have been delighted to take courses from myself, and colleagues I regularly pushed advisees toward, but 113 years of combined service and only 1 unforced retirement.

There are and will be, for the foreseeable future, very few jobs. Those of us who get them or have them are lucky - lots of other very qualified people could have filled the same positions.

I figure the biggest shift in the academic market - and this is just a guess - are new positions reflecting new curricular areas. I'm sure those new position creations will at some institutions come at the cost of traditional lines.

Further - see this from Tim Burke - Planned Contraction or Chaotic Retreat?

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:42 PM | Comments (0)

September 17, 2008

"...largest investment in the nation's aesthetic- industrial complex"

The Big Poem.

via Prof. Soltan.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:15 PM | Comments (0)

September 16, 2008

Think the American Professoriate has it bad?

This is an interesting (but brief) account at Inside Higher Ed of how tenure / untenuredness works in Europe and Argentina. Argentina sounds wacky: Defend your position against all comers!

That sounds a little like this element of Harvard's system:

While other universities simply ask for [outside] evaluations [of scholarship], Harvard sends a 'blind letter', a list of potential candidates that includes the tenure candidate and other leading scholars in the field.

Outside scholars are not told which of the listed professors is the internal Harvard candidate.

Commenters provide some other horrific examples.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:26 PM | Comments (1)

September 15, 2008

Ugh - big power outages

I'm glad not be teaching this morning - I have a feeling a number of students will be using the "my alarm clock was dead" excuse today! Geneva had big storms and a big power outage last night. Something's up with my cable box; if it's blown out that'll make 2 since July 4th! I'm hoping there's something up with cable in town more generally. By the time I drifted over to campus (I was in no hurry - I needed to put something in the mail and the post office doesn't open until 9 anyway) there still wasn't any coffee in the café. They only got power back at 8 or so!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:29 AM | Comments (0)

September 12, 2008

Hurricane Shut-down

My alma mater is battening down the hatches.

We dodged hurricanes during my four years (1980-1984). There was one pretty serious blow that happened just before orientation week one year; when we got back the live oaks were missing many of their leaves, but I think I remember that only one tree went down on campus. There was a legacy of masking tape on all the windows for months!

Sometime during my first year someone explained to me that the map of the Gulf on the big brown shopping bags at Weingarten's were actually printed there so that you could cut one up, stick it to the refrigerator with a magnet, and track the incoming tropical storms.

Here's praying William Rice's Marsh doesn't fill up this time!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:21 AM | Comments (0)

September 9, 2008

Seneca Lake

This isn't what Geneva looks like today - it's kind of breezy and cooler - but this picture from last week makes me happy; looking at Seneca Lake every day is one of the things that makes life in Geneva pleasant, even in the depth of winter.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:06 PM | Comments (0)

September 8, 2008

How much are professors worth?

Prof. Bainbridge hears a rumor of a law professor with a $600,000 salary offer. Somehow I have a feeling that no one in the humanities is making that much. Medicine, yeah.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:07 AM | Comments (1)

There's Stolen Art and there's LOST Art

A day after reports surfaced that Wellesley College's Davis Museum may have unintentionally thrown out a prized 1921 painting by French cubist Fernand Leger, President H. Kim Bottomly promised that new controls will be in place by October to better protect the museum's art.

. . .

The Leger had been loaned to the Oklahoma City Museum of Art for an exhibit that ended in April 2007. The work was then sent back to Wellesley, where it sat in a crate for months before the museum checked and found it was missing.

It is unclear what happened to the oil painting, which measures 25 by 21 inches, but museum officials have speculated that it may not have been removed from the crate before that crate was discarded.

One supposes that "new controls" may include "a new director" and "a new conservator." Read it all.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:36 AM | Comments (0)

September 3, 2008

100s of Unique Images. *Sigh*

This is the poster for the poster sale I mentioned yesterday.

I really hate this colloquial usage of unique. I hate it slightly more than my utter incapability to make this picture do right.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:08 PM | Comments (1)

September 2, 2008

Poster Sales Days

They set up folding tables across the front of the Scandling Center and sell posters the first days of the semester. I found this article about most popular posters amusing. Sadly, Dali's Persistence of Memory didn't make the list.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:09 PM | Comments (1)

September 1, 2008

Britticisms about Latin. Latin translations of Britticisms? Hmm.

My pleasure reading in my library study this week (for those moments when translating Hrotswit's Dulcitius makes me tired) is Nicholas Ostler's Ad Infinitum, a biography of Latin. It's a quickish read and very entertaining. Luckily for my workflow I already know Latin, so I'm suffering few of the temptations to go a-whoring* with Akkadian or some such, which his Empires of the Word: a Language History of the World inspired.

Ostler is just now (p. 191) talking about litterae humaniores, the educational side of good grammatica. He says: "The Frankish chronicler Gregory of Tours, his Latin famously ropy, might well remark (around 575), 'The rhetorician philosophizing is understood by few, but the plain man speaking by many.'

Ropy?

Hmm. I popped open the OED website (my complete hardback is in the office) and found these meanings for "ropy."

1. a. Forming or developing viscid, glutinous, or slimy threads; sticky and stringy.
b. transf. of the air.
c. fig. Bad, unsatisfactory, unreliable, unwell. slang and colloq.
d. Of a cow: producing ropy milk.
2. Having the form or tenacity of a rope; suggestive of a rope.

I think Ostler means 1. c. But I'm not certain. One could argue that Gregory of Tours' syntax is somewhat viscid.

-----
*about a-whoring. More fun Latin! So, last week I was reading the Life of Christina of Markyate. Please see this photograph for the result of all this leisure reading! I was using the C.H. Talbot translation in the handy Latin-on-the-left-page edition from Medieval Academy Reprints for Teaching; zipping right along, I saw this sentence:

For lo, they that are far from thee shall perish: Thou hast destroyed all them that go a-whoring from Thee. [emphasis mine; capitalization of 2nd person pronouns, sic]

Of course I check the left page to see what on earth Talbot could have construed as "a-whoring" and find:

Quia ecce qui elongant se a te peribunt: perdidisti omnes qui fornicantur abs te.

The earliest usage of "go a whoring" in the OED is from Coverdale's translation of Exodus in 1535. Fornico doesn't show up in classical Latin - or at least it doesn't show up in the Oxford Latin Dictionary, whose citations specifically exclude Christian authors. Lewis and Short give us Tertullian as the first usage. Nobody gives us enough usage to justify that abs te except understanding fornicare as a verb of motion - "to go a-whoring." I wonder on the basis of that bit of Latin if the slang predated the written English by a LONG shot! Parts of the Life of Christina of Markyate probably date to the 12th Century, her own time.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:56 PM | Comments (3)

A Man on Sabbatical

And don't I look relaxed?

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:47 PM | Comments (2)

August 31, 2008

Last Day of Summer

Hobart & William Smith Colleges start classes on Labor Day - so this is the last fully free day of summer; students down at the Boathouse were taking advantage of the amazing weather.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:47 PM | Comments (1)

August 29, 2008

Renovated Library Goodness!

Just inside the front door - today's papers! With seating! No more reading off bamboo rods . . . .

From little touches like this to big ideas about fostering student group work and individual research - this renovated first floor has them all.

The occupancy certificate came through yesterday morning, so the new first year students get to see the new Information Commons (I know, ick) in operation their first day!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:31 AM | Comments (0)

August 28, 2008

Hobartiana!

My friend Greg Avery (Hobart '94) bought this commemorative saucer recently on eBay - it shows the Hobart Quad from the south. Because it shows Coxe Hall and Medberry Hall but NOT Williams it must be from 1900-1907 or so. The inscription on the back is barely legible, but he's doing some research.

Click on the image to go to my Flickr stream, where there's a detail.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:59 AM | Comments (2)

August 27, 2008

What everyone is wearing this summer

We gutted and renovated the ground floor of our Library this summer. Today is the inspection for the certificate of occupancy. The inspector keeps setting off the fire alarms. Luckily, when they were testing the alarm systems a week or so ago someone handed me a set of these. Otherwise I might be distracted or something.

- - - - -

Update: I hear the building passed! The circ desk will move back downstairs after lunch!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:45 AM | Comments (1)

August 25, 2008

You'd think school had started or something - but no!

We're getting there. There was a new faculty orientation event this afternoon - and I offered a little walking tour of South Main Street to provide a little transition from some useful panel discussion to happy hour at the Red Dove. Looks like a nice crew - certainly all the folks I got the opportunity to talk to are very pleasant. And to make it feel just like September, the evening ended with a 2.5 hour Human Rights Commission committee meeting.

As I headed home I noticed - and politely averted my eyes from - a number of porch parties on Pulteney Street, epicenter of off-campus student dwellings. The school year is gearing up.

It's going to be very strange to NOT be teaching - the 2nd autumn that's happened since my 3rd year of graduate school?

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:03 PM | Comments (0)

August 20, 2008

Why We Blog

The other day I posted a picture on my flickr stream of my new home away from my home away from home. One of my regular readers happens to be the just-now-formerly-acting-head-librarian (I'm not sure how else to describe Sara other than, say, Library Goddess, but those two will have to do).

She noticed a particularly horrible chair with green padding in the first photo. She brought me a new one - much more comfortable for sitting with my feet up and reading purposes.

I'm an even happier camper now!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:02 AM | Comments (1)

August 19, 2008

Sense on College Drinking - lower the drinking age to 18

College presidents from more than 100 schools across the country are calling on lawmakers to do something about binge drinking: Consider lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18.

"Twenty-one is not working," says the group's statement, signed by presidents from prominent colleges such as Dartmouth, Duke and Syracuse. "A culture of dangerous, clandestine 'binge drinking' - often conducted off-campus - has developed."

I agree entirely. The current binge drinking culture was created by the 21 year drinking age. Lower the drinking age, reopen serious campus pubs, strictly enforce public drunkenness laws on campus - that's my prescription. But then I'm just a professor.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:37 AM | Comments (8)

August 16, 2008

The calm before the storm

The Quad, studentless, Friday afternoon.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:26 PM | Comments (1)

August 15, 2008

Beer goggles

This is the kind of finding that gives research science funding a bad name - people who are drinking find others more attractive than those who don't. Woo hoo. And, news flash: As well as changing perceptions of attractiveness, alcohol also encourages us to engage in behaviour we would otherwise avoid.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:24 PM | Comments (2)

August 13, 2008

The ultimate university "the situation is under investigation" statement. Really.

"We're sure that there's probably some facts and information that's just not available. I mean, you see a lot on the video, but we need to make sure everything is revealed before we take any action," said Fort Hays provost Larry Gould.

That's in response to this:

FORT HAYS, Kan. -- A professor at a Kansas university who dropped his pants and mooned a room full of students and teachers is under investigation after video of the incident was posted on YouTube, school officials said.

Bill Shanahan, a professor at Fort Hays State University, was at a debate with the Fort Hays State debate team last March when the incident occurred.

School officials said they believe things got out of control when the team got low scores from two of the judges.

Shanahan is seen on the video jumping up and down, ranting and then mooning the crowd in the room.

You'd think checking the video would clear things up for Provost Gould.

Here's the YouTube link - the language is as bad as the mooning.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:55 PM | Comments (3)

August 8, 2008

I guess school starts soon?

Walk away for a week and they make some real progress around here! The ground floor of our library was gutted this summer to turn it into a Learning Commons. When I left last week they were messing with wiring - now there's furniture being dragged in and there are carpets down over most of it!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:25 PM | Comments (0)

August 3, 2008

Technology and the Life of the Mind. Sorta.

Prof. Burke posted an interesting set of questions late in July about how he might change his note taking (etc., etc.) habits by using software. The comments have been very interesting - mainly recommending EndNote and Zotero. I have Zotero, a Firefox plugin, but have never really switched over to it. I tried Tinderbox twice, but I never felt like I came anywhere close to seeing its potential.

I'm posting this entry here to remind myself (see how disorganized I am?) to keep reviewing the comments over at Easily Distracted to see if I get struck by lightning. I, too, am thinking that now (before September or October, say) would be a good time to revamp my work-style for a couple of new projects before they get too far along.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:56 PM | Comments (0)

July 31, 2008

Old School Tieism

Mutual fund managers had significantly better returns on investments made in companies led by their former classmates than they did in companies where no such connections existed, according to a recent study. Indeed, investments in so-called “connected” stocks outperformed non-connected stocks by more than 8 percent, the study found.

From Inside Higher Ed.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:59 PM

July 28, 2008

Rutgers' new stadium

Prof. Soltan offers us a dismantling of the dream-land of Big U stadium building.

Skeezy Football Coach + Unbuildable Stadium = today’s Rutgers University.

It’s easy to do the math. I mean, it’s easy for us. At Rutgers, they’re still struggling to understand.

The most conspicuous thing about Rutgers and their football dreaminess is that they're one of those come-from-nowhere schools. I mean 20 years ago who cared about Rutgers football? Syracuse was doing its best to be New York's College Football Team (though that always sounds like a reach to me for NYC, but whatever). Rutgers has that enormous advantage of being in the middle of a massive population of rich folk suffering from a severe skybox deficit - how could they NOT build an enormous stadium on the banks of the Raritan?

Of course, they could build more college classrooms around the state to take up some of the unserved high school graduates, but skyboxes are more fun than classrooms.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:41 AM | Comments (0)

July 25, 2008

Opening the Hadrian Show in London

There's a big Hadrian show at the British Museum - and here's a description of the opening from Bloomberg Muse:

For the first time in many years, the ruler of London addressed the assembled populus in Latin. Boris Johnson, mayor of the U.K. capital, climbed onto the podium at the opening of the British Museum's Hadrian exhibition and began spouting classical prose.

After awhile, he paused to ask the audience, ``How much more of this do you want? There's yards of it.'' The July 23 audience didn't demur, and perhaps some of them understood what he was saying since there were several professors of classical studies present.

So the mayor plunged on. He is himself, as Neil McGregor, director of the museum, pointed out, the ruler of a vast empire, namely the London government machine.

It was an impressive performance. Tony Blair is able to speak in passable French; President John F. Kennedy famously declared "Ich bin ein Berliner'' in German. But most British officials nowadays probably no longer have a working knowledge of Latin.

It may be that this was the best Latin speech made by a British politician since the Romans departed in the fifth century. Mayor Johnson studied Greats -- a four-year program in classics -- at Oxford, and is evidently a master of the Latin language. MacGregor, thanking the Italian ambassador for his help, described him as "the representative of the former colonial power.''

Here's a review of the show, as opposed to a love letter to Boris Johnson, from the 24 Hour Museum. It's getting great reviews; maybe because I'm just back from Rome I'm not all that thrilled - but they'll have things on show from all over the place. Still, they can't bring the Pantheon - and all the portrait busts in the world can't make up for that.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:01 AM

July 24, 2008

Summer winds down . . .

. . . and the work on renovations accelerates. The library is all atwitter about August 18th as a date to move back downstairs to the renovated 1st floor. The Scandling Center has proceeded so far that yesterday lots of interestingly shaped boxes (LOTS - had to be 75 or 100) arrived.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:57 PM | Comments (0)

July 21, 2008

Getting ready for those incoming students?

That little lecture to your first year advisees on why they shouldn't post compromising pictures online?

Read this. Two years in prison.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:41 PM | Comments (0)

July 19, 2008

Whew!

We had a cookout last night to welcome the new folks to the Houghton House community - a new professor of studio art, a new professor of architectural studies, and a new adjunct architectural studies professor. It was sweltering on my balcony, but fun - I guess there were 19 or 20 adults and a couple of children. Everyone brought stuff - I bought the meat and bread and did the grilling. It was peculiarly breezeless last night, so that meant that I stood in a haze of smoke much of the time - and my glasses sure showed it this morning - grimy!

If I'd had a camera handy I would've caught two of my colleagues rehanging art; when I came downstairs with a load of stuff at the end Ted and Bonnie were adjusting two prints by Ted's wife that hang side by side. They're hanging much straighter now than they have since last fall. I swear the building settled or something since I hung them last May, because I've never been able to get them straight again.

That's a department-as-community - invite people to a party and they bring ice, beer, salad, and picture-hanging expertise.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:22 PM | Comments (0)

July 17, 2008

Those damned capitalists!

They’re accusing Apple of concocting the whole thing as some sort of profit-making scheme.

That's John Gruber on the Free Software Foundation on the iPhone.

Me, I just hope that TIAA-CREF owns a LOT of stock.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:58 PM

July 1, 2008

Ehem.

As of this morning this is The Cranky Associate Professor.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:43 AM | Comments (13)

June 25, 2008

Prof. Soltan on Ms. Winehouse

Prof. Soltan says:

Winehouse’s music gathers grief and pity. It may be a pleasure - an aesthetic pleasure - to hear her music, but the pleasure has to do with letting go of the natural noise of good for the sake of a free-fall into the perverse and malign. Along with Charles Baudelaire, Malcolm Lowry, and many others, Winehouse is part of the expeditionary team to hell. (my emphasis)

Well put.

Listen here - Back to Black. Baudelaire, but with a beat you can dance to?

Rehab (a live version from the Jules Holland show - actually an interesting contrast to the video issue version). Me, I like the skirt. So arch it's Huysmanian?

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:17 PM | Comments (1)

Political Tightropes

This is a (n in)famous neocon.

This is a really, really sharp Swarthmore professor who is a specialist in modern Africa. (click and read more of his stuff).

Compare and contrast. I keep doing it without any resolution. Luckily, I'm a medievalist - no one wants to know what I think.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:09 PM | Comments (0)

June 23, 2008

Vote for me for Fascist Dictator . . .

. . . and I will set you free from competing style guides! What IS it with journals with their own house styles?

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:47 PM

June 17, 2008

How they get away with it

Inside Higher Ed has a first person thing from a person who, after 20 years as an adjunct, has just been offered a tenure track position.

Some have asked why I continued to teach as a part-timer if things were so tough, and to be honest, every spring I begin asking myself that same question. In fact, I have left teaching twice. The first time I was offered a position as a business manager for a corporation that owns travel stops throughout the Southwest. The money was good, the hours were close to what I would put in as a part-time instructor (counting prep time and time grading papers), and I had benefits.

I hated it.

There is something about teaching that keeps pulling me in. I love writing, and I love sharing my passion for it with my students. I love feeling that I might be making a positive difference in people’s lives. I love feeling like I’m contributing something to my community.

I guess that's how administrators get away with it - they can find people who really, really like the classroom. Despite the grading. Despite the insecurity.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:26 AM

June 13, 2008

Talking about . . . religion, education, professors, a core curriculum, Darwin

Go read this interview with a Univ of Chicago professor. All of it. I can't find the heart to comment, but I'll pull out some quotations to tempt you:

And so I specialized in religions that are dead, which has the great advantage that nobody talks back. No one says, “That’s not what I heard last Sunday!” Everybody’s dead. And I like that. Now, I sometimes have to deal with religions that keep going. And they’re more problematic because then you deal with people who believe things. They also find their own beliefs puzzling or challenging or interesting—they’re almost synonyms. So they have not only their beliefs, but their interpretations of those beliefs. And I have my interpretations of their beliefs. Sometimes we can sit like this and negotiate it. Other times it’s in a book or transcript. And then in a third sense you have to run back and forth. You have to represent both sides of the conversation as you try to figure out what it’s all about. You get good at doing that with dead people because you’ll never hear from them because you have to do it all the time. And that’s what a historian does. They run back and forth to make both sides of a conversation happen.

And most people who teach religion have a clear relationship with the religions. I cannot. Obviously, most of them are dead, I would get in trouble with the ASPCA [American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals] if I sacrificed a bull ox to Zeus. I have a friend who recently died, but he actually decided to show kids what a sacrifice looks like, so he sacrificed a lamb at Easter time. “We talk about it so much—here’s what it looks like!” Half the class puked, half the class had angry letters from mommy and daddy. But he did demonstrate that it’s not just a metaphor. It’s a messy and not altogether pleasant process. Since [then] we’ve converted it entirely into an economic question. I ask students the meaning of sacrifice, and they always start talking about “mommy and daddy sacrificing so I could go to college.” We’ve been at war for four years, and I haven’t heard one person yet say some soldier sacrificed themselves. That language is gone. It’s entirely economic.

I was told [curtailing the Core] was done to increase electivity, and I think electivity is a good idea. I also think being told what you should do is also a good idea, as long as there are options. But it turns out that’s not actually how it’s been used. It’s been used to carve out spaces for double majors, to which I am unalterably opposed. One major is bad enough. I would like to abolish majors altogether. So two is unbelievable. And then you find out one is for mommy and daddy and one is for you, so then I thought let’s take this issue head-on and stop this crap. It seems to me that majors ought to be flexible enough that if you were in history and then suddenly said my real interest is in biology, they might say, “Well, why don’t you look into the history of biology”—I mean we’ve got a whole fucking library called the Crerar Library of the History of Science. I mean, they ought to be able to find some way to fit you in.

Now, the thing about a Core is it really has to represent a hard-won faculty consensus. I mean, it can’t be “we’ll put this one in for that group, and we’ll put this one in for that group.” It has to be that of all the books we could possibly inflict on you—only in 10 weeks, and you waste the first week, you waste the last week, so you’ve got eight weeks. If they’re not crazy, they’re going to take two weeks to read a book. So you’re down to four books. Now what that Core really ought to be doing is saying that if there were only these four books in the world—or the other way around, out of all the books in the world, these are the four books you should read. If they’re not prepared to say that, they should shut up shop. That’s my first comment. I find too much politics, too much accommodation. “We can’t get the so-and-sos to join us unless we read this.” And they don’t care what it is, it’s got to be a little bit of this, or the economists won’t join the social science core, or something.

via Prof. Soltan.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:11 AM

June 10, 2008

Historical Context - Colleges Construction

This Saturday I give my second architecture-on-campus talk of the month -- last Saturday was Reunion and a talk on the Chapel (built for Hobart College, named after Bishop John Henry Hobart, the man on the left in the purple stockings). This week is a talk for the Geneva Historical Society about many of the 20th Century buildings on campus and their reasonably consistent use of Jacobean gables -- like Smith Hall, named for William Smith in the green stockings on the right.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:06 PM

May 28, 2008

One step closer to putting that whole Rome episode behind me...

Today the receipts all went in. Yay!

.....Further - they all came back on Friday. Booh! After some work, I think I can turn them all in again. Yay!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:26 PM | Comments (2)

May 19, 2008

At least it didn't snow

The one hundred and eighty-third commencement of Hobart College and the nininety-seventh commencement of William Smith College.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:56 AM

May 16, 2008

College Presidents

The boom boom crack boom of fireworks in the distance - part of Senior Week. The president of these Colleges likes fireworks - we have them at all sorts of events. I approve, myself!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:09 PM

May 14, 2008

Back . . .

. . . here, and in time for graduation!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:04 PM

May 9, 2008

Death of an Ecclesial Community

I've been following the end of Seabury-Western Theological Seminary with some interest - it's always luridly interesting for someone like me to see how a board of trustees can fire an entire tenured faculty by declaring financial exigency. Hobart and William Smith has a long relationship with Seabury-Western - our previous chaplain, indeed, left these Colleges for a chair at Seabury-Western. I also have been an irregular reader of AKMA's Random Thoughts, a blog from a Seabury faculty member for a few years.

Here's the board's own position on the closure. Note the wishful thinking in the last paragraph about keeping a doctoral program open. How do you do that without a faculty?

Captain Yips points out a lo-how-the-mighty-are-fallen moment in the affair:

Considering Seabury-Western's collapse, it's worth noting that the Seabury Board thinks that they need $18.7 million, and that this goal "significantly exceeded Seabury’s fundraising capabilities."

It's not a small amount, to be sure, but in the fundraising and nonprofit worlds $18.7 mil is relative chicken feed. There was a time that a more confident and assertive Episcopal Church could have raised that money (in 1890 dollars) over lunch at the millionaire's table at the Chicago Club, from some guys named Field, Armour, Pullman, Shedd, Higginbotham, and Swift - and for this purpose, the older version of TEC would have had a seat at that table. Some of the millionaires were, to be sure, scoundrels, but they were civic minded scoundrels, and the amount needed would have barely dented their resources. Northwestern University's top student charity fundraiser, Dance Marathon, pulls in $700,000 every year. That Seabury doesn't even consider the effort is an interesting marker on the road to collapse.

Really. They didn't try to raise a little less than $20 million to save an institution in Chicago? Admittedly, the alumni/ae of seminaries are seldom sources of large contributions, but whatever happened to all those rich Episcopalians?

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:48 AM

May 5, 2008

Suing Alma Mater

About Priya Venkatesan at Dartmouth (I've mainly been following Prof Soltan's coverage) I noted something that I'm not seeing many folks point out. Venkatesan has her own BA from Dartmouth. She knew what she was getting into!

Any idea that mean Ivy League patriarchalists ambushed a nice woman who didn't know the setting is off.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:29 PM

May 1, 2008

The Dissolution of the Universities

Massachusetts proposes taxing endowments over $1 billion.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:14 PM

April 26, 2008

Writing History

Prof. Burke offers a quick guide:

I tell my students that all good research projects and analytical writing have to provide an answer to the question, “So what?”, a justification for the project or the essay. One student asked me if history as a discipline had any stock or standard answers to that question.

I started to list a few that I could think of, and then a few more. I thought I’d try out the results here, to see if readers could knock a few down or add some more.

Go read his list.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:26 PM | Comments (2)

April 24, 2008

College Licenseing Weirdness

I thought that I had seen a few more sweatshirts in Rome this winter with the Franklin & Marshall seal than was really probable, especially since F&M has no program of their own in Italy, but I had no idea there was a whole company doing it until I saw this shop in Milan! Wikpedia to the rescue - the last section of the F&M entry notes suppressed (9:34 a.m., 4/24/08):

In 1999, after seeing an official Franklin & Marshall sweatshirt, a company based in Verona, Italy began producing clothing in a vintage 1950's collegiate-style with the words "Franklin and Marshall" on them. F&M alumni began to report seeing F&M merchandise for sale in Europe, which puzzled the college.

In 2001, Tim McGraw posed for publicity photos wearing a "Franklin Marshall Wrestling" t-shirt, one of which was included in the CD booklet for his album Set This Circus Down. When the college became flooded with inquires about its (nonexistent) connection to the singer, they began to investigate further and discovered that the Franklin Marshall Clothing company was using its name without permission.

In 2003, after lengthy discussions, the college decided not to sue and instead agreed to accept a licensing fee from the company so that they could continue to produce their products, which had begun to gain popularity with youth, especially in the United Kingdom. The company also rewrote their history slightly, claiming that it was founded in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, rather than in Italy.

Today, the line is sold in upscale stores, such as Bloomingdales and, as part of the agreement with the college, at the Franklin and Marshall College bookstore. However, many of the designs omit Franklin & Marshall's ampersand and instead reads simply "Franklin Marshall." As of December 2007, a green shirt with the "F&M" logo was spotted on a female tee shirt in Mirabello Sannitico, Italy.

Love that classic Wikipedia concluding sentence - semi-relevant personal observation couched in the passive voice. Still, my questions, "what on earth is that?" and "I wonder if they're getting a cut?" are answered.

Milan photoset.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:36 AM | Comments (0)

April 10, 2008

My Life in Res Ed

Yesterday we spent all afternoon visiting the 4 apartments with their landlords. There were remarkably few problems, I suppose, though there will be a little billing for damages. The young will tape things to walls with invisibile tape - or with lo scotch, as they say in Italian. My knee held up pretty well - it was getting in and our of taxis that hurt the most. Maybe I'll actually risk a little museumery today after more grading. Grading. Grading.

Yes, I know, as my baroquista friend says, everything is better in Rome, but grading is still grading.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:53 AM

April 9, 2008

Grading

Sorry for the low interest blogging - but the price I pay for having my semester end now is having my end of semester grading madness now. And we get quasi-dean roles thrown in, too - Nick and I have an appointment to visit all the student apartments this afternoon in company with someone from the rental agency to survey damages.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:55 AM

April 7, 2008

Book list for Layers of Rome

A commenter asked for the book list - and I realized that I hadn't put one up! I thought I had done so back in December when we were packing to come to Rome. Here it is below.

Next time I'll bit the bullet and use Krautheimer for the second half - it's back in print and it's not expensive. It's a fun book, but not really organized in a way that I find useful. The reproductions are not very well-produced, either. Claridge is a great thing for my class - readable, filled with information but not too full, and lots of good drawings instead of bad photos. The maps could use some work.

Claridge, Amanda. Rome: An Oxford Archaeological Guide Oxford University Press, USA, 1998. [great book!]

Any textbook of Roman Art:
Wheeler, Mortimer. Roman Art and Architecture. Thames & Hudson, 1985. [most of them bought this - very inexpensive]

Ramage & Ramage, Roman Art

Kleiner, Fred, A History of Roman Art [I had used this recently as the textbook for a course - one student had taken the course and had this book - very useful but quite expensive.]

- - - - - -

Mathews, Thomas F. The Clash of Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art. Princeton University Press; Rev edition, 1999.

ANY edition or translation of the Bible

Lots of duplicated readings, to be distributed in Rome. [I made less use of these than in the 2003 version of the course - this was almost all primary source excerpts printed off the Internet Medieval Sourcebook and its ancient sourcebook sibling.

STRONGLY RECOMMENDED
Krautheimer, Richard. Rome: Profile of a City, 312-1308. Princeton Univ Press, 2000 [Next time I'll try to use this as a textbook.]

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:40 AM

April 6, 2008

And they're finished!

The last presentation in the last group - Diana had already presented Tiber Island - Kelsey was showing us the facade of Sta Cecilia in Trastevere.

I'm very sad that the last 11 students had to present in my living room, but I'm very happy that my leg is not going to fall off - and I'm afraid it would have if I'd walked all over Rome for two more presentation sessions. Here's a list of everything I've heard about this week.

My colleague thought of this solution - thanks, Nick!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:08 PM

April 4, 2008

Big Ol' Whine

How could a 4-day period with 23 half hour site presentations get any harder? With your leg bandaged so that your knee cap is immobilized, perhaps?

Yes, I have injured myself. I don't remember any knee cap trauma. Maybe I stepped badly off a bus and did invisible damage? Whatever happened, I woke up sore on Thursday morning and still did 4 presentation tours. The hobbling got worse. I stopped around noon and bought a pre-made knee bandage jobby at a pharmacy (20% off!). Today I did 4 before lunch (and church closing time) and 4 afterwards - I'm halfway home but if getting there depends on walking, that last half will take 8 times as long. And student presentations premised on site visits mean walking. Maybe I shouldn't have slogged up the ramp at Castel San Angelo? Maybe I should've gone to the emergency room earlier?

Well, the ER doctor assured me that the knee cap is not broken and that I didn't scream enough when he rotated the leg for him to believe any tendons to be torn - though his written recommendations include that I consider making an appointment with an orthopedist. Meanwhile, my left leg is almost immobilized, iced, and elevated. I've canceled tomorrow's 5 appointments and warned the Sunday folk that they may be next.

However, the group flight leaves Wednesday morning - if I want to stick to my plan I don't have a lot of leeway. Remember, I'm the kind of professor who thinks of giving students back the colds they give to me is better than missing class, so my immediate reaction is "why don't I just hobble along and make them feel guilty for every class they've skipped because they were hung over?" Then I realize that (a) some of them were occasionally really sick and (b) that they're 20 and they don't really notice when the middle-aged are in pain.

Oh - and I'm beginning to think that the injection he claimed was a pain killer was really sugar water.

Fun medievalist facts to know and tell: my closest hospital is Santo Spirito, which was founded in the eighth century by Saint King Ine of Wessex! Well, sort of - Ine retired to Rome after a tumultuous career and founded a hostel for Saxon pilgrims to Rome. That institution is the direct ancestor of the parish of Santo Spirito in Sassia - but I'm reasonably sure the hospital is an outgrowth of the pilgrim's hostel (and this article would suggest so, but it's the old Catholic Encyclopedia and the reference is an article from 1870 - possible). So it's vaguely appropriate for me to go there for Pronto Soccorso.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:49 PM | Comments (4)

They've begun!

Final presentations began yesterday (Thursday) - and late this afternoon I'll be half-way through them!

I've divided the students into groups of 4 or 5 based on easy itinteraries (sometime that means a metro ride, but hey, we all have passes). Yesterday's group did (1) the Imperial fora and Mussolini's creation of a propaganda-rich, if archaeologically-problematic avenue across them; (2) the Piazza Venezia from its initiation through the Victor Emmanuel intervention and the fascist era, complete with Mussolini's balcony; (3) San Marco, from early Christian to 18th century changes; and the Markets and Forum of Trajan.

Everyone did quite a creditable job - we're off to a good start!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:27 AM | Comments (0)

April 2, 2008

Moving the targets for tenure

Eeek!

At Baylor the administration applied new and un-publicized standards for granting (or denying, more's the point) tenure - in quite a few cases reversing recommendations from departments and the university-wide committee.

We're not just talking about changing the standards after someone has already been hired - we're talking about after the candidate's part of the process is complete.

While Cordon said he believes Baylor is a wonderful university, he said he is worried that junior faculty members won’t want to come to a place where they may be completely in the dark about how they will be judged. “It’s not just a moving target, it’s a moving target after you think you’re done,” he said.

You'd better believe it. I wouldn't be surprised if a few of their searches fail this year.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:42 AM | Comments (3)

April 1, 2008

The B-52s know my pain

I ain't no student
of ancient culture
before I talk
I should read a book!
But there's one thing
that I do know
There's a lot of ruins
in Meso-Po-Tamia!

Would that everyone read the book before they talked! And/or, that they all dressed like Fred did in the 80s. That would help my mood.

Please note that I am posting this BEFORE final presentations start, so none of my immediate students are individually implicated - yet.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:46 PM | Comments (1)

Endgame

Students have final assignments in all classes now Their final photo assignment is due tomorrow; my oral exams are Thursday - Sunday; the final drawing critique is Monday; final exams in Italian are Thursday and Monday. Add our students to your prayer lists - this is earlier than a semester has ever ended for them before!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:32 PM | Comments (0)

March 19, 2008

Class prep + Holy Week = Credit towards Heaven?

Bring on the Doctrine of Works - I'm having a good week!

So I'm previewing my favorite mosaics on the Quirinal Hill this afternoon for class tomorrow - I run by Santa Pudenziana, check on Santa Prassede, and hit Santa Maria Maggiore last - and just in time for the Wednesday after Palm Sunday Stational Mass with Penitential Procession. The presiding bishop was a little frighteningly doddery - I saw him holding his chest at one point while the procession was coming back up the aisle, and I'm not sure he was clutching his pectoral cross. The music was splendid - the kind of thing that having a college of canons can do for you! I made use of one of the Dominicans in the college of confessors, too, while I was at it. Is there a plenary indulgence on offer here? Readers?

I've told my students that unless they really want the vast sea of devotion thing they should evade St. Peter's this week and go to the other great basilicas - especially for the Easter Vigil. For the Easter Vigil myself I'm torn between going to Sta Prassede, as I did in 2003 (when, to be sure, it was within easy walking distance of my apartment) and going next door to Chiesa Nuova. I'm really not much of a church hopper when it comes to mass - I tend to go to the same place over and over anyway. Living next door to Chiesa Nuova has been very nice!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:54 PM

Advising from abroad

One of the trickier things about terms abroad is getting students advised and registered. We've got to help everyone, but they really need to email their departmental advisors at home (if they're not majors in our department) to be sure. Making things harder already - and I can't imagine it won't continue to make things worse - we're in the midst of a campus-wide transition to PeopleSoft. I've lost track of the number of times our departmental secretary has emailed this semester to say she would be at a training. Enterprise software. Ugh.

Worst of all, for the sophomores on the trip, they're supposed to be registering the day they fly back to America. NOT fun.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:21 PM | Comments (1)

March 18, 2008

How do you give a final exam in Rome? Let them do the talking!

Here's the assignment for the final exam:

Choose a well-layered site - a single building or a area of the city - no more than 10 minutes of walking time. You should not choose a site or building we have visited together in any detail - hence the major monuments we have discussed and everything from the midterm is off limits. You don't have to avoid the same themes, however. All sites must be approved by me.

Prepare a 25-30 minute presentation for me and a group of your colleagues. You are not, unlike the midterm, just talking to me! Part of your grade will be determined by how well you communicate your site to people who haven't studied it. When we head out for presentations, your engagement in others' talks also counts. Do you pay attention? Do you ask meaningful questions of your colleagues?

Your site should show layers from at least 2 of the 4 broad period divisions below and should have at least one more - if the ancient layer is now invisible because of being built over, you might show us drawings or diagrams. Holding up the textbook is BARELY sufficient, but will not be penalized. That is to say, if your site shows 4 layers, GREAT! But if your site shows only layers from 2 periods but had others which you can convey to us, fine.

*ancient
------------------------------
*medieval - before 1000
*medieval - after 1000
------------------------------
*renaissance - eh, 1350-1600
*baroque/rococo - 1600-1800
------------------------------
*Unification - 1800-1920
*Fascist - 1920-1944
*Contemporary - 1945-now

You will deliver these presentations in groups of 4 or 5. We will begin Thursday, April 3, during the regular Layers time slot. I have no idea yet how long it will take or exactly how many groups we will have - I am leaving that decision until you have chosen sites.

Here's the list of sites they've chosen* - there is some duplication; because we will be going out in groups of 4 or 5 that won't be a problem.

Piazza Navona
Piazza del Popolo
Piazza Venezia

Santa Cecilia
Ss Cosmas and Damian
San Giovanni a Laterano (basilica)
San Lorenzo in Damaso
San Marco, Piazza Venezia
Sta Maria degli Angeli, esp as architecture
Sta Maria degli Angeli, esp as remodeled Baths
Santa Maria Sopra Minerva

Theater of Marcellus, esp Fascist phase of the neighborhood
Forum of Trajan
Horti Sallustiani (Quirinal Hill)
Palatine / Augustus
Trajan's Market

Castel Sant'Angelo
Bridges
Obelisks
Porta Pia
Protestant Cemetary (Pyramid, too??)
Tiber Island

*well, most of them chose. At the end there I had to pass out assignments to four or six people. But now they have two full weeks to prepare!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:05 PM

What a great song! Jamiroquai, Mussolini, and pedagogy

What can I say - I'm thinking about the Fool in Western literature tonight. On average, we need more of them.

All this comes from preparing to teach Mussolini tomorrow. I'm not sure if he had a sense of the tragic - but I really wonder if he had a sense of the Fool. Fascism is hard to teach - starting from the contemporary evacuation of any meaning from the term other than "what American leftists think is bad" to the general idea that Fascism is nothing but Nazis-south.

The origin of words is always hard to teach - the idea that something wasn't there before someone said it confuses students to no end. There was no totalitarianism before Mussolini invented the word, if you believe the world works that way. Me, I think Lenin was well on his way to pulling it off without the vocabulary to explain himself, but then I'm an anti-Communist.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:40 AM

March 17, 2008

Final projects

GOSH it's hard to get 23 people to choose a final project topic in enough time to do the work well. When they've all chosen (or I give up and assign topics) I'll post about it.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:00 PM

March 15, 2008

Hitler's Berlin, Mussolini's Rome

Hitler made much less progress toward his version of Berlin than Mussolini made toward recasting Rome. There's a show up in Berlin now which includes a giant model of Hitler's plan, including the vast dome - story and photo here.

Because we're explicitly teaching about Mussolini's remaking of Rome in the BiDisciplinary course I'm doing some more reading - and once again being surprised that things I thought were eternal about the Eternal City are really 1920s and 30s. Borden Painter's Mussolini's Rome is almost usable as a guide book - and has helpful lists in the back of street and piazza names changed from their fascist to anti-fascist forms. I find it interesting that the Republic didn't change the names of any of the bridges or streets (so far as I know) that were named after members of the deposed royal family, even when those had been built under Mussolini. There are also a surprising number of inscriptions that have never gone away - the visual de-fascisization of Rome was piecemeal.

Here's an interesting bit about a surviving fragment of Hitler's Berlin:

Isolated remnants of Nazi architecture include Hermann Goering's Luftfahrtministerium, now the German Finance Ministry; Tempelhof airport, whose runways are set to close and whose future is hotly debated; the Olympic Stadium; and one of the city's more obscure architectural oddities: the Schwerbelastungskoerper, or heavy-load tester.

Speer built this mammoth concrete cylinder in the south of the city to test how much weight Berlin's swampy land could bear before work started on the triumphal arch. Until recently, the Schwerbelastungskoerper was hidden behind dense foliage and scaffolding, surrounded by fences and signs forbidding entry.

About the size of a four-story block and 15 tons in weight, it is made of solid steel-reinforced concrete. It was placed under heritage protection in 1995. The local authority is renovating it at a cost of 722,000 euros ($1.13 million), aiming to complete it by the end of the year and open it to the public after that.

Inside, measuring equipment shows that Speer's engineers found the Schwerbelastungskoerper to have sunk 19 centimeters -- not quite deep enough to have made the arch unfeasible.

On Tuesday we're back to the Ara Pacis and the Mausoleum of Augustus - but to look at them in their setting in Mussolini's setting. Should be fun!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:16 AM

March 14, 2008

Yikes! 3 full weeks left!

Yikes - doing a little grading today I happened to glance at a full month calendar (my daily glance is at a weekly) and I realized JUST HOW LITTLE TIME I HAVE LEFT TO TELL THEM EVERYTHING I KNOW ABOUT ROME.

Those of you who know my style know that I'm a tad serious. Please stop me if I start talking too fast.

On the other hand, having been useful before 9:30 I had today more or less off. I had to pay a call at the Scuola to turn in the change from yesterday's petty cash (paying for the guided tour) but other than that I had nothing I had to do today. So I drew some, walked a lot, and resolved to go to the Sebastiano del Piombo show at the Palazzo Venezia. Did you know that there's a perpetual adoration chapel in the Palazzo Venezia? Very 1990s, but in a nice way. Somehow I lost momentum and ended up back here for lunch and didn't get back over that way again. Oh, well - the High Renaissance can wait.

The other two things I would like to do this weekend is get into the House of Augustus (it's not clear to me from all the websites if individuals need reservations or not) and go back to Sant'Agnese f.l.m. for some pictures. The best thing about digital is knowing without having to go through expensive processing if your pictures came out. The bad thing is that you know damn well that you should go back and reshoot some of them. So, back out the Via Nomentana for me, tomorrow!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:00 PM

March 13, 2008

Sabina - the best day-trip ever!

We had splendid weather today for a trip to Sabina - after a week of showers and dicey grey skies we met a bus at Termini and headed north.

By happenstance (sheer small worldism) my colleague Nick Ruth met Nicole Franchini, an alumna of William Smith College (the female half of the Hobart and William Smith coordinate system). Nicole has lived in Italy for more than 20 years, most recently in Rome. She and her family also have a house in the Sabine Hills.

Nicole arranged our trip today - and maybe even the weather!

We started at Farfa, one of the great imperial abbeys of medieval Italy - think of the abbey in The Name of the Rose but a little further south in the peninsula. One of the two Carolingian towers survives with a a bit of the Westwork beside it (and a chunk of painted wall - go look at the pictures on Flickr!). The body of the current church is later and perpendicular to the Carolingian building.

We had a good tour of Farfa and then headed on to Casperia, an incredibly beautiful hill town. There were other incredibly beautiful hill towns within sight, as was Mount Soracte, beloved of Horace, who seems to have had a view of it from his Sabine Farm.

Nicole had arranged a buffet luncheon on a terrace / piazza, then dessert and coffee at the house of the restaurant owners afterwards. We wandered around town for a little while, then back to Rome. The students seemed happy in a stunned-by-the-beauty kind of way. I certainly enjoyed myself!

We have to turn our story in to the Pulteney Street Survey, these Colleges' alumnae/i magazine!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:17 PM

Historic Photos on Flickr

Notre Dame's Architecture Library has (or maybe 'is in the process of'?) uploading scans of its lantern slides - and they're all under a Creative Commons license!

This one shows the Pons Fabricius, the foot bridge to Tiber Island, with an INCREDIBLE load of silt - perhaps in the aftermath of the 1870 flood? I'm not sure. Here's my photo from this spring of the same bridge - taken from a slightly different point of view.

Amazing photos! Over 600 for Italy alone! Lantern slides were amazingly high quality black and white medium format glass slides, and nothing is much better for showing architecture. Given the collection there are few scenes of everyday life except those in the foreground of buildings and there's an obvious western European bias, but this is a real resource - 2,714 reasonably high quality photos in the public domain of the world before World War I. Thank you, Notre Dame!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:59 AM

March 12, 2008

Ho hum...

Every other year, data released by the Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics provide a snapshot of the growth of part-time positions in the professoriate. This year — an off-year for that data — the federal statistics provide evidence for another shift, in which the majority of full-time professional employees in higher education are in administrative rather than faculty jobs.

In the fall of 2004, 50.6 of professional full-time employees in higher education (excluding medical schools) were faculty members. In the fall of 2006, for which data were released Tuesday, 48.6 percent of professional, full-time jobs in higher education were held by faculty members.

No news here - move along, move along.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:23 PM

The Saddest Site/Sight in Rome this Week

Just this week the Forum Romanum went on the list of ticketed attractions (thanks, TF, for reminding me!). The people to the left are checking the price list on the gate. There are a two more pictures of the entryway on Flickr.

*€ 9 for EU adults and non-EU citizens
*€ 4.50 reduced price for EU citizens 18-24 and their instructors
*free for EU citizens under 18 and over 65
*and surcharges (no reduction available) for special shows in restricted spaces or to enter buildings like Sta. Maria Antiqua.

I've been four times - twice with classes - this semester. That won't happen any more, I fear. The entrance does combine with the Palatine and the Colosseum, and offers visits over a 3 day period - and I didn't notice, but I don't believe the Forum will close for Mondays.

All in all, we do pretty well. We're not EU citizens, but because the students take Italian at a language school licensed by the Department of Education (or some such) we carry letters with lists of names and a detailed statement to that effect - and seals. You can't forget stamps and seals in Italy.

This always leads to negotiations at the Biglietteria. Sometimes we've gotten nothing but a sneer and the full price (the Museo della Civiltà Romana, which is City owned), sometimes we get the EU student-age price break, sometimes we've gotten in for free after some conversation and then talk among the staff (Palazzo Massimo alle Terme). We can never tell and always go prepared with enough cash to pay the admission. This year I'd say we've gotten in for free more often than not, and gotten reductions to EU citizen levels sometimes.

In a classic example of why the rules don't always work, I just looked up the Soprintendenza's own web page for the Forum. Here's the price list:

Intero € 11,00 ridotto € 6,50: consente l'accesso alle aree archeologiche del Palatino e Foro Romano, al Colosseo ed alla mostra "Trionfi romani".

The sign at the gate says €9 and €4.50 - I swear!

Teaching abroad is often like this - a matter of negotiation, politeness, and being grateful to people who don't interpret their own rules too literally.

Still, the thought that the average 30 year old Roman who just wants to cut through the Forum on a sunny afternoon is now faced with a €9 charge is a little sad.

(prices revised per ADM's comment, complete with cute little € sign, which I couldn't find earlier)

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:45 PM

March 11, 2008

San Vitale, Ravenna

Gosh I love Ravenna - even in bad weather.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:16 AM | Comments (0)

March 10, 2008

Serendipity, Exegetical style

Just as I sit down to grade the Bible exercises for my layers class Google News turns up a book review for me Isaiah: Interpreted by Early Christian and Medieval Commentators, edited and translated by Robert Louis Wilken. The somewhat hostile review notes:

The production of these works [this new series] is essentially a historical exercise, perhaps with the editors operating according to the conviction that biblical interpretation is too important to be left to exegetes, especially critical and postcritical exegetes. The offer of an early Christian reading of the book of Isaiah is especially to the point of the new series, for Isaiah—more than any other Old Testament book—lends itself to a christological reading, so much so that the early church referred to it as the "fifth Gospel." The assumption of the series, surely correct, is that the church has much to learn from the history of interpretation in the early period before church interpretation engaged historical criticism, which exhibited the problems in the text and began to distance the text from the claims of the gospel. My emphases.

In my case, it's not that interpretation is too important to be left to the exegetes, but that critical and postcritical readings of the Bible are pretty much useless for understanding art that draws on the Bible. In contrast, while we were at San Vitale in Ravenna this weekend, my students all understood not only WHICH scene showed the Sacrifice of Isaac but also understood WHY it is adjacent to the altar. That is to say, why Christians saw the sacrifice of Isaac as a foreshadowing, a type, of the crucifixion of Jesus, even in the episodes that weren't depicted!

In case you haven't read Genesis lately, let me remind you that Abraham and Isaac and the servant journey for 3 days to the mountain. Isaac carries the wood for burning the sacrifice on his own shoulders - those are two elements that are never, or almost never, depicted, though they bring the parallel into sharper focus than just saying Abraham:Isaac::God:Jesus. Earlier viewers, of course, knew the whole story.

One of my difficulties is selecting passages that like this one are brief enough to read quickly, obvious enough that students can work out the parallels the Early Christians saw without having to do a lot of following up cross references, and (most important for my purpose) have important visual traditions. As an example of something I can't do much with you can think about the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes; while they're vital for understanding all sorts of stuff about Christianity they have very little importance in the visual tradition. Talking doesn't make a great picture.

Here's an entry from a good while back on the same subject.

Pitiful to say, I'm blogging with someone else's picture of the Sacrifice of Isaac - my interiors at San Vitale were not very good.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:52 AM

March 9, 2008

Bologna in the Rain

Just back from a weekend trip to Emilia Romagna with the class - Bologna and Ravenna. It rained a lot until this morning, but things were still productive. I think the next time I teach here we'll have to spend a whole weekend in Bologna!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:11 PM

March 7, 2008

Field Trip

Not just the daily on-the-hoof teaching, but off to Bologna and Ravenna for the weekend with the troops!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:02 AM

March 6, 2008

Meet the blogger...

I also met a blogger today - something that I, who usually live in scenic Geneva, NY, seldom do.

Zadok the Roman invited me to meet him outside the Cancelleria, where he had a class this afternoon. We got caffé, then he showed me the Sala Riario (named after the cardinal who built the palazzo) and the Sala dei Cento Giorni, painted by Giorgio Vasari.

I had never been further than the Bramante courtyard. Here's the best picture I can find on the web of the Sala dei Cento Giorni, which is as good an answer in paint to the question "What is Mannerism?" as the Villa Giulia is for architecture. The name of the room comes from the funniest anecdote in Renaissance art history (a field of striking solemnity and self-importance, I usually find). Vasari, now better known as a biographer than a painter, showed the room to his old master MIchelangelo and bragged that he had completed the work in 100 days. Michelangelo said, "It shows." I rather liked it, but then I have decadent tendencies. Paul III surveying New St Peter's dressed as the Jewish High Priest really made me happy! There was a scene of the distribution of cardinals hats to semi-nude men in advanced states of ascetical skinniness that made no sense at all - that's Mannerism for you!

I enjoyed meeting Zadok. He had to stay for a lecture in the glorious Sala Riario on the Internal Forum from James, Cardinal Stafford. Sad to say, even princes of the Church use PowerPoint. I skedaddled.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:38 PM

The Crypta Balbi and a new Mithraeum!

I had a number of firsts today - I'll talk about one here and one in the next post. "Layers of Rome" went to the Crypta Balbi this morning - one of my favorite museums in Rome, one of the few which covers the early Middle Ages unapologetically. What's more, it's a very new museum and full of delightful conceits of post modern museology - like this grand space in which we see a wire frame reminder of the architecture of the porticus with a few fragments of decorative stucco which would have been applied originally over brick cores (and click to go to the Flickr photo stream to see a view from the rar of this reconstruction). Beyond the wire and stucco facade of the portico is the heavy travertine and tufa rear wall - all this sheltered under a very high tech steel and glass roof. We went to the lowest level, to the top, and out to the exedra - where we saw a recently excavated mithraeum!

This is the second mithraeum the class has seen (we've also been to San Clemente). This one is in almost as good a shape - and they pulled some interesting bits out, of which I didn't get any decent pictures. I hate shooting things in vitrines. One fun thing here is the pit between the couch area, which the archaeologists are reconstructing as a drain for the bull blood from the taurobolium, the bull sacrifice.

The Electronic Journal of Mithraic Studies says it was excavated in 2000, which is still pretty recent. Their photograph shows the pit still covered with a round drain cover (?). They also have a photograph (taken through the vitrine!) of the marble fragments found there - a tiny taurobolium relief is on the right.

Here's a reconstruction of a ceremony in the space which may help you make more sense of my photo.

The next time I teach the course here I might have to do a whole week on Mithraea per se.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:08 PM

March 4, 2008

On being a beginner, or Lucy Clink and the drawing class, without me.

I was taking the picture. Click to see two of the things we drew yesterday on the flickr photostream.

One of the things I have enjoyed about both semesters in Rome (2003 and now) is taking a class - professors owe it to themselves to be bad at something once in awhile; that helps us keep our 100-level classes more honest. You know, there was a time, now very far away, when I knew very little about art history - and it pays to be reminded of what it feels like to be a beginner.

Oh - yes, I've taken drawing before - but somehow it always gets dropped when things get busy.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:49 PM

March 3, 2008

The only thing worse than grading . . .

. . . is a LOT of grading!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:12 PM

February 29, 2008

Ibuprofen and a Ritter Sport for lunch

Want to know what kind of day I'm having? I just had 3 Ibuprofen (yes, I brought my own big ol' American bottle, none of this 12 euro-pills in a blister pack thing for me) and a Ritter Sport hazelnut bar for lunch. It's one of those days.

I started not by oversleeping or anything like that - instead, I checked the wrong appointment list for midterms. I thought the first appointment was at 10.30. Then, as I'm drinking caffé and looking at my appointment book for the day at about 9.29 I realize that the first appointment was at 9.00. I was looking at the wrong day!

So I run out the door leaving everything behind but a notebook and pen and start making calls and sending text messages. I reach everyone and they're all remarkably forgiving. I make it to the Velabro by 10.15 and get started. I get home after 7 appointments (one of them agreed to wait until Monday, since she wanted to catch a train to Florence at noon) and took my first Ibuprofen of the day. You see, my affliction is flaring up this week and I should have taken a does before I left the house. I may even try some of the prescription anti-inflammatory if it's not better by tomorrow - I have a few more appointments tomorrow morning.

The Ritter Sport helped. Chocolate always does.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:45 PM

February 27, 2008

Midterms

I'm with a cup of tea and my feet up - I gave 5 midterms this morning and have 3 this afternoon. I chose the Velabro because of this pedagogically annoying scaffolding. So far two students have chosen to talk about the Temple of Portunus, scaffolding and all, which has been encouraging.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:19 PM

February 26, 2008

via Cenami, Lucca, Italy

So I'm walking around Lucca and I hit the via Cenami a few times and I keep asking myself why the name is so familiar and then I think AHAH! Giovanna Cenami! Which probably doesn't ring a bell for very many of my regular viewers. Do you know Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Wedding? Of course you do! That's Giovanna on the right. Big Lucchese banking family, though the poor girl may never have seen the incredibly beautiful city of Lucca - she lived in Paris. Which in the 1430s was a little less thrilling than it is today. Giovanni Arnolfini was a Florentine. So teaching Northern Renaissance at Agnes Scott paid off, and in Tuscany!

Lucca photo set.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:00 PM

February 22, 2008

Off for a weekend alone!

I'm off to Pisa and Lucca for a couple of days on my own!

This idea of traveling on the weekends was something I never pulled off when I taught here in 2003. I was too tired at the end of each week and too stressed about the possibility of needing to be handy in case something happened. The two worst things that happened all term - at least that anyone ever called me about on an emergency, Saturday basis - were: someone got locked out of his apartment and didn't have his landlord's number on his cell phone; some students got back to Rome from an excursion after the busses switched from the regular to the night schedule and couldn't afford a taxi back to their relatively inaccessible apartment, so I had to run over to the station and loan them some cash. Nevertheless, I was ready at all times to do my best to avert a Midnight Express scenario. I guess I have an overly-active imagination, especially for someone without children of his own.

So I never got out of town that year except on group trips. Not that I really minded - Rome is a city for exploration, and I'm still far from having seen everything I know I want to see, let alone all the things I run across by happy serendipity. And having Rome to myself on weekends was as good as going away.

This year, though, I have a colleague to share the worries - yay, Nick! He's on duty this weekend.

And, we've recently had a pep talk about travel in Italy from a William Smith Alum - Nicole Franchini, WS '81 - who has lived in Italy for over 20 years and writes travel books.

So, with those two encouragements, I decided to at least get out of town and go somewhere (1) that I teach a lot and (2) have never been. Pisa and Lucca won! I still would like to go to Milan, where I've never seen Sant'Ambrogio. I've been to Venice, but there's a huge exhibition of Roman and Barbarian stuff - I'd link to the page but it's egregious flash and takes over your screen - here's a review.

Oh well - I'll have some pictures on Sunday!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:58 AM

February 21, 2008

The midterm is posted

I'm giving oral midterm and final in Layers. The final exam asks them to do what I do, act as a kind of hyper-informed and reasonably organized tour guide.* That performance will be on a subject/site of the student's choice for a group of me and at least 4 or 5 other students. The midterm will be one on one, and for a set neighborhood. Here's the assignment:

Midterm:

1. Take a small area in Rome.
2. Prepare yourself by visiting and reading to have a 30 minute conversation with me about its layered nature.
3. Be ready to give detailed information about at least 3 of the buildings or sites in the area - though you need to be able to talk in general about all of them and about the area as a meaningful unit.

This region of Rome was called the Velabro or the Forum Boarium. A creek came down from the hills and ran into the Tiber - in historical times (by the 5th century) it was drained and became the main cattle market - Forum Boarium - of the City.

This region stands on the left bank downstream from Tiber Island, roughly between the Tiber, the Capitoline, The Palatine, and the Aventine. It is bounded buy the Lungotevere, via S. Maria in Cosmedin, via D. Greca, Ara Massima di Ercole, via S. Teodoro, Via D. Fienili, vicolo Jugario, and Via Foro Olitorio. Among the buildings you may want to consider are the Round Temple, the Temple of Portunus, the Arch of Janus, the Arch of the Argentarii (silversmiths), S. Maria in Cosmedin, San Grigorio al Velabro, and the House of the Crescenzii. There are a number of Fascist era buildings on via Petroselli. The Theater of Marcellus is NOT available for this assignment - it's too far upstream. The Circus Maximus is out, too.

Claridge considers this area between 247-263. To do well you will need to do more than reading Claridge! Draw on the techniques you have learned in class, on other readings, and on your own careful observations. Drawing sketch plans is an excellent way to learn the names of buildings!

Here's the map:

View Larger Map

*back in 2003, if I hadn't gotten a tenure track offer to go back to Hobart & William Smith I think I would have stayed in Rome and tried to go pro.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:00 PM

February 18, 2008

The Bones of St Peter

We had another amazing-layers-of-Rome day today - the excavations under St Peter's, also known as the least pleasant place to try to arrange a tour in Rome that actually purports to be open to the public. Yes, you have to pay in advance. No, you can't necessarily choose the day you want to go. Oh, well. Luckily 1 of my 2 groups had an English speaking tour guide (a PNAC student). I haven't heard how group 1 went, but they had an Italian speaker (though she soundly vaguely Hispanophone to me while she was handing out the tickets).

I think my folks were pretty prepared. I'll put it this way, they had very few questions other than "where is John Paul II buried." That part made me feel cheerful about the semester so far.

Still and all, the tomb of St Peter is pretty amazing for students in a course like this. Folks are welcome to believe that Christ is not God and that these aren't actually the bones of St Peter, but there's just no arguing that there was considerable pilgrimage to this tomb at the traditional site of the burial by the end of the 1st century, within 30-40 years of Peter's death. And the only reason not to be sure it was earlier is that what we have left is the first remodeling of the original tomb. Talk about the hermeneutic of continuity! I still would have preferred to do this before San Clemente, but that's the Office of the Excavations for you.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:50 PM

February 14, 2008

The unexcavated level at Pompeii - a way to get students excited about learning?

I figure that some students think I'm a little over the top about it, but when I think about Pompeii I get excited about how much more there is to learn - how much work there is still to be done! Whenever I teach the city, let alone visit, I always stress how much unexcavated territory there is - and remote sensing can do only so much!

Here at the Villa of Mysteries you can see the house on the higher ground, which represents the level of the soil before excavation started. There are still big chunks inside the walls that are untouched - not that they don't have enough to do re-digging in a more scientific fashion lots of areas that were kind of garbled in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Still, academic life sometimes seems to me a series of mood swings - everything has been said (and usually in German); nothing has been done. I'm sure the middle ground is more accurate, but looking at a wall like this makes me think telling students the second to get them excited about the life of the mind is not such a bad plan.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:42 PM

February 12, 2008

MKB for scale

Mary Kate studied the Ara Pacis with me before and insisted that we need an image in the HWS Visual Resources Collection with someone in it to show scale because she had gotten no idea of how big the figures in the reliefs are from studying it on screen - so here she is standing in front of the Italia/Tellus/Rhea Silvia relief (take your pick for the identification of the central female). Talk about embodiment! Now she'll be a virtual presence in Art 101 and Roman Art!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:47 PM

Back from Break and Ready for more Roman Art

We had a longish walk down south down the Via del Corso from the Flaminian Gate to the Piazza della Colonna (Column of Marcus Aurelius) and then a windy path to see the obelisk in front of Palazzo Montecitorio (formerly part of the the Augustan Sundial). My pedagogical goal with the long walk - after all, we passed within a couple of blocks of the Ara Pacis on our way south - goes to the difference between teaching with slides in a darkened classroom and teaching on site: in Rome we can embody the past, use our bodies to stimulate our imaginations. We don't look at pictures, we look at real things and we have real experiences of distance and time and topography. One of the great problems of studying ancient Rome is imagining away the intervening centuries, but I hope that task is easier for the crew after today.

Because there's nothing more easily exhausted than a 20 year old, we took a cappucino break before heading in to the new Richard Meier pavilion to see the Altar of Augustan Peace. (Alright, I'm being cranky - I was ready for a little something warm myself.)

This was my second time inside the Meier building and my 3rd visit to the area - I have decided that I like the Meier building a good bit - though it looks too big from the north - probably entirely because of the auditorium the client added to the project. I'll go back and take more pictures with the Nikon.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:36 PM

January 31, 2008

The semester has fully begun...

The semester is fully underway and students have lots of assignments! They had an exam for the intensive portion (5 days a week, longer hours) of their Italian language and culture classes yesterday and today. The ones in digital photography are taking pictures of St. Peter's, the ones in my class are writing about portraiture, and everyone's reading Marshall McLuhan - and three museums this week!

Monday we went to the Vatican Museums - utter overload, of course. I concentrated on the huge sarcophagus set-up in the Pio-Gregoriano collection, trying to prepare them for the Mathews book. The advantage of a big load of real things is that it sometimes helps students to understand two important things. First, that ancient art was not all one-off pieces of creative sculpture, but was often semi-industrial production customers bought off the shelf - in other words, if you see 27 Jonah sarcophagi (and I only exaggerate slightly) you begin to believe what your medievalist professor keeps hammering on, that art is not always about self-expression. Of course, if they actually went to a Cezanne blockbuster and saw dozens of paintings of exactly the same thing they might understand that they've been lied to by the world about the Romantic Artist as Genius of Expression. You don't paint a dozen haystacks and mean anything particularly expressive by them. Second, they come to understand the art historical study of iconography a bit more clearly. Very often when our students see only the tiny selection of images in a textbook they learn to parrot our idea of iconography, but they don't really understand how the profession worked out the patterns. A BIG dose of realia helps there.

Tuesday we went to the Museo Nazionale Romano Palazzo Massimo al Therme (you can click on Flickr and see my pictures from my preview visit last week). Again, we ran through the traditional narrative of Roman sculpture - verism, naturalism, idealism, and back. I was especially pleased with the sudden introduction of the carved iris and pupil in the galleries of the 150s - they saw that novelty clearly! So then I set them free to choose two busts to analyze in terms of patronal intentions. We'll see how that turns out. We also got to run through the Rosso Pompeiano show. They liked the garden room - and then we elevatored it up to the top floor for Livia's garden room! It's hard to do comparison on the hoof, but these two are physically close enough to pull it off, I think.

Wednesday, Nick took the photo class to the Museum of Rome, the Palazzo Braschi, where there is a great exhibition of photos of St. Peter's from 1850 to the present. There are splendid photos - everything from very early work to stereo cards (three set up with viewers!) to things taken last year. More than that, though, the photos make a great starting point for a course whose secondary concentration is how photography is used to construct a sense of identity and a sense of place. I tagged along just to look!

Today, we're using the tickets from the Pal. Massimo to get into the Palazzo Altemps. The tickets are good for 3 days for a couple of buildings in the city, and since we already have them I added an optional come-along-if-you-want-to session. I know I have 3 takers already!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:32 AM

January 28, 2008

Everything's better in Rome . . .

When, during the fall of 2006 I was deciding about whether or not to apply to co-direct the Rome program this year one of my concerns was that right about now I feared I would be losing my mind because of - um - anticipating certain news. My colleague the baroquista convinced me to go ahead by reminding me that, after all, everything's better in Rome, even waiting to hear the final tenure decision.

She is right.

And I survived the final hurdle - the Board of Trustees decided not to reject various and sundry recommendations and the decision of the president of these Colleges.

I would like very much to thank everyone who helped me and pushed me and prayed for me and such.

Oh - and I got to kiss the arm-bone of St. Thomas Aquinas this evening, too! It's his memorial and I made it through solemn vespers and mass at Sta Maria sopra Minerva without coughing too much and got to venerate the relic - everything's better in Rome!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:27 PM

January 27, 2008

The most amazing thing I saw on Saturday

I went to the Palazzo Massimo building of the Museo Nazionale Romano to preview for class next week. Gosh it's going to be a mess. I already know the permanent collection well enough to walk through with them, but it's somewhat disarranged for a travelling show from Naples, Rosso Pompeiano. They've hauled a bunch of paintings up from Naples.

The most splendid thing is what my horrid photograph shows - the garden room from the House of the Golden Bracelet at Pompeii. I had never seen it live. I had no idea. Here are some clearer photos, but no context. Here's some context, but the paintings have already been removed. The room is amazing and amazingly intact. I'm in love with the herms carrying pictures on their heads - one of them is on the right of my photo. The composition of elements is wonderfully complicated - what a neat room! It was worth the price of admission by itself.

Pal. Massimo doesn't have any space set aside for changing exhibitions, so they just scooted things around and jammed the Pompeian things in. It doesn't work all that well, but it's probably about the best solution to the problem.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:43 PM

January 25, 2008

The best analysis of Italian politics I've read all week

ME: There's no government?

Barman: Right.

ME: So what are we going to do?

Barman: God willing it'll last until January and we won't pay taxes...

I only wish I'd read this before lunch, when one of my students asked me the same question in a worried tone of voice. My explanation was much wordier, but not all that different.

Reading the following almost made me wish I'd stayed home this afternoon to watch the coverage. All in all I preferred Sta. Pudenziana - pictures to come tomorrow.

The fiery session later included one senator being spat on, fainting and being carried out on a stretcher, The Associated Press reported.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:03 PM | Comments (0)

January 24, 2008

Fascist city planning is - um - big

It was a LONG walk from the Metro Station to the museum. It didn't help that I missed the turn - but the main problem is that E.U.R. was designed for cars instead of people - and that's an incredible contrast to the city center. I think everyone got that point!

The Museo della Civiltà Romana is south and east of the city - towards the airport - in EUR, Esposizione Universale Roma, a region of development planned to host a world's fair in 1942 in conjunction with the 1942 Olympics Mussolini didn't get to host because of that World War! I believe he opened EUR anyway to celebrate year XX of the Fascist regime.

The whole zone is a monument to Rationalist City Planning, though the museum itself is in a stripped classical style, and there's no better way to feel the difference in planning scale for people who've been walking around Rome for two weeks than to walk from the Metro station to the museum.

So, the museum is a triumph of oddity - it has almost nothing 'real.' The collection is made up of high quality plaster casts (surely some of the little pottery things are authentic, but I've never slowed down to look) of some of the most important Roman statues and reliefs. They were assembled for two purposes - a 1911 exhibition celebrating the 50th anniversary of the unification of Italy* and a big 1930s exhibition about Augustus. Given that you could see almost all the real things in Rome, about the only reason to go see the casts is that they have the complete Column of Marcus Aurelius frieze arranged at eye-level, which is handy. In general, though, the collection is a fine example of creating national identity with the art of the past, certainly a topic of our BiDisciplinary course this semester. I wonder if that 1911 show travelled around the country?

But then there's the model of Rome! If you took Latin in high school you've seen photos or posters of it - it's omnipresent: Rome c. 300 CE. Click on the picture, go to my Flickr page, and look at the students admiring the model! Whereas their experience of EUR was a piece of embodied analysis, feeling the scale, here they get a bird's eye view of the City they've been trying to piece together for 2 weeks. I think it's the perfect conclusion to the Armature Project, and I heard enough of the right kind of reactions to think it worked again this time, things like "Ohhhh! That's where that is! Ah! There's the Servian Wall!"

*The defeat of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies by the Garibaldini and its absorption by the Savoys, at least - they didn't get Rome until 1870.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:51 PM | Comments (1)

January 19, 2008

Whew!

Whew - one of the messiest jobs of the season is out of the way - the students are moved into their apartments.

You see, we put them in a hotel in the Centro for 10 days or so every year for orientation and to build group ties. Then we break them up - this year into 4 apartments scattered around the city (though two of the apartments of William Smith students are in the same building, which will be convenient). Unfortunately, given the logistics we ended up making 4 trips from the hotel, one for each apartment-full. The van was packed each time! Nick rode with two of them and got them settled, then I went with the last two. So, we met landlords, got pointers about how to run the washers, stern talks about no noise after 22:00 (pray for me!), and keys for everyone.

Everyone was remarkably pleased on walk-through, and no one has called to complain yet. Pray for me some more!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:23 PM | Comments (0)

Ponte Fabricius, the inscription

Since both days included the bridges to Tiber Island, I thought I'd sum up the assignment with this view of the bridge - several more to see on Flickr -- click and view!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:47 AM | Comments (0)

January 18, 2008

The Mad dash.

Yesterday we started with Bridge I at Tiber Island, walked through the Ghetto to Largo di Torre Argentina, took a bus to Termini to the piece of surviving chunk of Servian Wall for Walls I to talk. Then we metroed to Spagna and the Spanish Steps where we looked down the via Condotti with the Streets group (see below). Then we walked to the Trevi Fountain for Aqueducts I.

Today we started again with Bridges (II) at Isola Tiberina (different link), cut through the Ghetto again to get a bus - this time we got off at PIazza Repubblica to hear from Aqueducts II, since it's a piece of the Baths of Diocletian, after all. Then it was on foot for Roads II to tell us about via XX Settembre, one of those places a long, straight Roman road (the via Nomentana) comes into town. Then by metro and bus we trecked off to the Porta San Sebastiano, where Walls II showed us the Aurelian Wall.

I'm a little tired. But in a good way.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:07 PM | Comments (0)

January 17, 2008

4 Present to 11 . . . and I photograph

The Streets Group (day one) chose to present about the Via Condotti at the Spanish Steps (not exactly an ancient street, but the name at least comes from the ancient water conduits - it worked). I

It POURED until just before the first presentation started, and then it started to clear. By the time we got to the Trevi Fountain (an outlet for the Aqua Virgo) the sun came out and all was white and gold and beautiful.

So, all in all a good start to the students' academic work!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:35 PM | Comments (1)

Always the security excuse

So I'm having trouble with flickr uploader again. I hate having to go to an internet cafe just to upload pictures, but there it is.

Oh, well - you'll just have to wait.

In the meantime, day one of presentations down - all in all good.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:03 PM

January 16, 2008

Like pulling teeth

Well, it's not that bad . . . but suddenly 3 of the 8 groups are up in the air about their selections, including one group supposed to present tomorrow. It's a little difficult to do logistics for running all over town that way. They need to choose! *NOT getting cranky. Not getting cranky.*

Speaking of 'running all over town,' Nick and I ran around some of town this morning with the rental agent for the apartments the students move into on Saturday. All looks acceptable - even good. Living situations are always a bit of a problem, but nowadays, unlike the program in 2003, we use apartments without resident landlords. That system was too complictated and generated far too much friction. This may work better - we'll see.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:05 PM | Comments (0)

January 15, 2008

Hard at work on their first assignment!

I'm blogging from GustoLab, watching a table of four getting to work on the streets of Rome

Here's the assignment in full:

If we look closely at a city we can perceive the armature or structural system supporting the daily activities of inhabitants. This armature in Rome is millennia old - some elements have been in continual use since 500 BCE. This project is designed to orient you to the City by becoming active observers of its parts and to orient you to the course by becoming active presenters of your findings to each other.

We will divide you into a number of groups of 3 or 4 students and ask you to work together to study an element of the armature of Rome from its classical origin to its present function. Learn as much as you can about the element, choose (in consultation with us!) one thought-provoking example to presentation to the rest of the us, digest the information as well as possible, and parcel out responsibilities for the presentation. EVERYONE in each group must present, and everyone should be ready to ask questions at other groups' presentations. Participation carries a lot of weight in all of our courses this term! Half of the groups will present on Thursday 1/17/08 (Giovedì 17/1/08) and the other half on Friday 1/18/08 (Venerdì 18/1/08).

The order of the elements here is intentional - we start with the bounds of the city, both real and symbolic. Then we think about lines which cross the map and which in 4 dimensional reality allow citizens to cross the City. Finally, we consider a set of linear elements which citizens never walked along, but without which life itself would have stopped - and almost did in the early Middle Ages.

WALLS and GATEWAYS
STREETS and ROADS
BRIDGES
AQUEDUCTS

While studying your element, think about being able to explain in the presentation:

1. When was the first one built, where and by whom?
2. the last one?
3. Why was it built? What were the political, economic, and social circumstances?
4. What is notable about the structure in terms of technical innovation, aesthetic design, quality of construction (materials used, permanence).
5. Who actually did the work?
6. How exactly did it function then, how does it function now?
7. What has happened to the structure since it was built? Is there any political/economic/social significance to this history?

Evaluation:
An acceptable presentation will present a digested view of what you've figured out from books and an internet search.

A good presentation will integrate the material, draw on your immediate observation, relate the site you show us to other sites we may or may not have seen already, and provide an idea of sources used to gather information. The audience will understand that the group members have discussed the contents of the presentation and how each contributor's portion works with the whole.

An excellent presentation will do all of the above and with style, showing care in both thought and preparation for the actual presentation, extending beyond the assigned questions to consider new territory.

I did a demonstration by taking them around the corner from the Campo dei fiori to look at what modern Rome has made of the foundations of the Theater of Pompey. Click and enlarge at point A on the map - look at the semicircles of streets and blocks . . . those rise up on the form of the theater, a semicircle of concentric and radial lines of masonry. There is almost nothing left of the building (unless you go in a few restaurants and certainly some cellars), but the ghost of the building still shows. The straight streets to the right (east) of the semicircle represents the side walls of the very large courtyard attached to the theater - which allowed patrons to stroll in gardens between acts or between plays. Pompey built the first permanent theater in Rome in 60 BCE - something which always surprises me. Plautus (died 185 BCE) and Terence (died 158) would have played only in temporary theaters, or on one of the flat spaces at the Forum Romanum! Pompey's innovation was to introduce a permanent building on the Greek model (sort of) to the City, which at least shows Roman assimilation of Greek institutions and almost certainly should be understood as Roman triumphalism, especially when combined with the decorative statuary Pompey certainly imported as well. Oh, and Julius Caesar was assassinated here, which allowed me a second link to the Forum tour last week.

View Larger Map

So, the group across GustoLab is hard at work deciding what to say and where to say it! I'm looking forward to the end of the week.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:15 AM

January 13, 2008

NOW I'm a happy professor

I typed sono molto contento the other day, but this morning is better. It's Sunday in Rome. It's chilly. I have a cough. I'm footsore from walking too far in wet shoes yesterday. I was not in the mood for the Porta Portese market this morning. However, I was out of bed and ready to go at an appropriate hour. I texted the group for whom I have telephone numbers so far.* Moments later I get a call saying that they organized themselves last night and are standing on the platform for the number 8 tram on their way to the flea market.

On their own!

Self-reliance!

Yay!

That's a good sign. I raise a 2nd cappucino to a less stressful day.

*Grrrrr...though they now all have cellular service a few of them haven't given us their numbers! Nick's latest group email on the subject used all caps - readers who know him can interpret that!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:14 AM | Comments (0)

January 12, 2008

Almost all of us

The group, without Nick. He was taking the picture. They look pretty chipper for people who have only been in Rome for 2 nights and have just walked around the Forum for over 2 hours!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:53 AM | Comments (2)

January 11, 2008

First Lesson!

Well, flickr is hating me right now, so no pictures of the Forum . . . but we all went to the Forum Romanum this morning - and I have a nice picture of the Arch of Titus through the morning mist. You'll see it soon!

We have a great guide for the morning, Cristina Giannicchi, who will also be with us for the Vatican Museum and the Colosseum area. The Forum is so confusing a site that I get buried in details; it's really worth leaving to a professional, and Cristina did a fine job of picking up the themes of the semester. She stressed the positive nature of reuse and recycling of architecture - that the parts that are preserved more or less intact were those used by the Church later, and the other parts are what fell into utter ruin. My class will find that handy! She also set up the folks working next week on Roman roads and streets really well!

I've earned a weekend of rest! I'll spend some of it visiting the apartments to figure out locations, bus routes, and transit times and I want to preview the Vatican Museum. I feel like a trip to Sta. Prassede, too - especially if the weather's nice. Then there's the flea market in Trastevere, again if the weather's nicer than predicted. We'll see!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:17 PM | Comments (1)

January 10, 2008

Sono MOLTO contento!

I have wireless in the GustoLab! Yay! Mille grazie, Pasquale! Poor guy - he had to configure 29 students' laptops . . . but in the process, he figured out how to get Macs to play nice with their wireless router. Passwords everywhere.

The real problem turned out to be that the Scuola is running a tight ship on the internet. As of 2005, internet cafes, and GustoLab counts as one, have to be able to demonstrate who is using the browsers and where they're going. Terrorism, you know. As though a terrorist who couldn't get a decent fake i.d. should be practicing mass murder, anyway.

Otherwise, what a day! All kinds of paperwork, slightly jet lagged students . . . but caccia e pepe, saltimbocca alla Romana, and cherry pie on the way for dinner! So we have the one student with celiac disease, one freshly-declared vegetarian (I can't TELL you how many times I asked in advance!), and one student who "just doesn't like cheese." No, he's not allergic, or lactose intolerant, but just doesn't like it.

*I hope it hasn't broken my ability to use it at hotspots anywhere else in town, but hey! This is really useful.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:02 PM

They're here!

All 29 of them - even the one who hasn't returned an email since the end of classes; we honestly didn't know if he was coming or not. He had never told anyone about his flight information.

But they're here, and we meet 15 minutes to start Orientation. The first tour - the Forum Romanum - is tomorrow.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:00 AM | Comments (0)

January 8, 2008

Gorgeous day in Rome

but it's 62 at the Ramada in Geneva . . . oh well, I'm here for more than just the temperature! I'm here for the two meals I had today, for instance. Lunch was an utterly perfect bowl of soup of mixed beans and cereals with a little olive oil across the top. Dinner was a pizza at about my favorite place in Rome - though I like it better when I'm there at 1 p.m. sitting in the sun . . . but after all, I'm here for more than just the temperature!

I believe that the students taking the group flight have left JFK. I've called the bus company - so I've done most of my part to get ready for their physical arrival (other than actually showing up to meet them at Fiumicino). This time tomorrow we'll be having a welcome dinner - and then gelato at Giolitti! (which, despite their webpage, really IS a classic early 20th century gelateria - a little touristic, but excellent gelato)

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:06 PM

January 7, 2008

GustoLab

I'm standing here using a stylin' wall-mounted computer sippin' un caffe and admiring our partner institution, the Scuola Leonardo da Vinci . . . they have recently renovated space in their building (un vero grotto, my friend Raffaella assures me) into an amazing space for learning about food and wine - GustoLab. It also provides a place for students to hang out, something that was sorely needed for the Rome program. Any 2003 alums out there - no more office hours at Cafe Paparazzi!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:36 PM

January 4, 2008

Closer!

The students arrive next Wednesday . . . and the day looms closer and closer! Nick and I had a good meeting this afternoon to discuss some readings; luckily, we agree that more is more. I think we have all the group meals/food events worked out for the semester. Getting there!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:11 PM

December 22, 2007

On my way!

I really ought to create a category called: Rochester Airport free wireless, yay!

Yes, I'm on my way!

Geneva - Rochester - Atlanta - Chattanooga

then in about 10 days

Chattanooga - Atlanta - Frankfurt - ROMA!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:47 AM

December 20, 2007

Trapped in an icy, bureaucratic Hell

I really wanted to be out of here by now, on my way to balmy Tennessee and the bosom of my family. I knew it wouldn't work, so I didn't rush it. It's really not working now.

I am going to vent a bit - please be assured that I apologized several times for the crankiness that I let show to the functionary on the phone.

1. I take a number of maintenance medications for allergy and asthma
2. I leave 1/1/08 for 4 months abroad from Tennessee, having gone to celebrate Christmas with my family without returning to Geneva, NY
3. The last time I taught abroad I took a 4 month supply of my drugs with me, thus saving shipping fees and assuring myself of a wheeze-free spring
4. These Colleges are changing insurance carrier as of 1/1/08
5. I informed (as fully as possible, I thought) the H.R. folk of my needs and plans in October. I have been assured on a number of occasions that everything would be fine
6. I got all my prescriptions rewritten in 4-month form
7. Today, having not received my expedited insurance card yet again, I call H.R. and am told that I can download a temporary card and that it should work
8. I go to the pharmacy. Of course it doesn't work. I call H.R. They tell me now (not an impersonal "they" - I speak to two of 'em) that I should get a month on my old insurance and that somehow after 1/1/08 the rest will be filled and will be shipped to me in Rome (no persons involved, so far as I can tell from their explanation)
9. I get cranky
10. I apologize
11. I point out that whoever is going to do this in January will be paying a hefty copayment + shipping - do they want me to leave cash? No one has an answer
12. I am told to email the H.R. director with the names and dosages of the medications and that she will contact New Carrier and ask
13. I come home cranky to await word

Further - Hell Thaws

The H.R. Director made a great push and things will work out - I wrote a check for the copayment and she will receive my prescription drugs and ship them to me in Rome! Yay! Thanks!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:17 PM

December 19, 2007

Books and travel

I know that I have too many books. But you know, I use these damn things! How many can I take . . . and do I have the budget to ship some of them?

Further: the good thing about digging through all my shelves? I found TWO Christmas present books I'd bought this summer and put away! Yay!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:21 PM

The biannual horror

I finished grading last night at about 9 and went to the Registrar's web tool to input the final grades for the last few folks in my 101 stack only to discover that one of my students is NOT on the roll. That's never happened to me! In fact, I'm not sure how it happened! He's been there all semester, he did all the work, and he got some flavor of B. He was certainly enrolled in the course's Blackboard site - and that happens automatically at the first of the semester, which implies that he WAS registered for the course at some point. I can add students myself, but I usually don't do that until they have officially added the course. I can imagine that I slipped up and put him into the Blackboard version of the course without checking the Registrar's list first, but if so it's a novel mistake for me. Argh!

--Update As best as the Registrar's folks and I can figure it, said student probably presented me with a drop/add sheet - which is usually my precondition for a manual addition to the Blackboard site - and then failed to turn it in. They noted that he had failed another class at the same time slot as mine, evidently for never having attended. Youths. What are you going to do?

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:39 AM

December 13, 2007

Oh, the administration of it all!

We have, sad to say, an odd number of female students coming to Rome for the semester. Thus, we have to keep being certain that there are 3-person rooms in hotels, etc. We dodged the even/odd bullet with males; we had 9 coming, but one - um - withdrew from these Colleges somewhat abruptly. Oh - and I'm meeting today with a student who suffers from Celiac disease. Gluten intolerance. Why, I am crankily muttering to myself, would someone with celiac disease choose to study in pasta-land for 4 months? In an amazing small-world incident, I had a friend with celiac disease visit me in Rome in 2003 - so I emailed him and he responded with some links, including these cards to print out and show to waiters.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:42 AM

December 10, 2007

Gothic Revival in the Finger Lakes

This is what my students in the Gothic course have been working on for their final project - Gothic Revival in the Finger Lakes. Take a look! They're not finished (grrrr!), but the project is closer than it looked on Saturday, when I wanted to kill myself.

I'd like to turn this into an ongoing project, adding to it from course to course. I'll try to get the IT folk to move it to a more permanent URL, too.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:09 AM

December 5, 2007

The Horror of Students Abroad

I've been trying hard not to read much about the horrible murder of a British student in Perugia, especially when the police arrested her American roommate. Here's a depressing op-ed piece in the New York Times from a young woman trying to go on being an American student in Italy.

...Amanda is a girl my exact age, 20, from my hometown, Seattle. Because of her story, which has dominated the news in Europe, and not just in the tabloids, life as an American student abroad is not at all what I expected.

I came here imagining I'd have to answer the numerous questions about the war, our unpopular president and our cultural exports that still dominate Italian television. Italians love to argue. And while I have had many late-night discussions about America's failings, it's been nothing like the storm of more personal attention that has come with Ms. Knox's arrest.

. . .

Since this murder, to be a college student from Seattle has become shorthand for something else. Ms. Knox has been called "una bugiarda" (liar), "L'Americana," or my personal favorite, "La Luciferina." Even worse, her image-destroying online postings, in which she appears to be inebriated, have become part of this media circus. Italians have gotten all too well acquainted with "la studentessa di Seattle" (thanks again for the great press). Laughing about her constantly changing alibi, they now often refer to her just as "Amanda."

. . .

American college students already have to live down a stereotype of their own making. Hordes of them drunkenly parade -- or literally pub crawl -- past Renaissance masterpieces on the streets of Florence at 4 a.m., shouting clichés like "Ciao, bella!" and "La vita è bella!" Add in our often laughable pronunciation of Dante's beautiful language and our sinfully casual dress -- the North Face fleece college uniform sharing the streets with Dolce & Gabbana-strutting Italian babes -- and you can see why it's an uphill struggle.

It's bad enough that the dollar is at a record low and that President Bush is about as popular here as Chinese food. Not to mention, I'm always trying to explain that "The O.C." isn't real life and that's not how most people in the United States live.

Now throw in the blue-eyed studentessa, a poster girl for college debauchery. To read the articles about Amanda Knox, you would think that all American students are hash-smoking party girls with little memory of their weekends.

When I tell people I'm going to be teaching on a term in Italy or that these Colleges have an annual program in Italy they often (even 'usually') ask "Oh, in Florence?" There are two reasons we have our program in Rome rather than Florence. One is that stuff in Rome is considerably more interesting for every period other than the Renaissance itself, and there's plenty of interesting Renaissance stuff in Rome if that's what one wants to study. The other is that there are far too many American students in Florence at any one time for there to be much hope of contact with Italy and Italians. We have our problems in Rome, but the American bubble is much less pronounced. We hope. I pray.

I've worried about helicopterish parents pulling students out of our program at the last minute because of all this, which hasn't happened so far. We have been very lucky - and blessed with pretty reasonable students - in the 5 or 6 years worth of programs since I've been paying attention, and our biggest problems tend to be internal group dynamics (roommate issues) and health (flu epidemics). Pray for us that those remain our big problems this year!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:39 AM

December 3, 2007

First Mondays

First Monday: the regular meeting of the Faculty of these Colleges went a tad long. I managed to make it past the quorum call, past the departure of almost everybody, all the way through. I kept reminding myself that if the tenure decision is favorable this is the last meeting I'll have to attend for 3 semesters. If the tenure decision goes against me, it was the last Faculty meeting I'll ever bother to attend here. Either way - I put up with an extra half hour. It's not as though I have anything more exciting to do tonight other than grade papers.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:31 PM

December 2, 2007

Roma Aeterna!

The reality is starting to sink in - a month from now I'll be in Rome. My colleague Nick Ruth and I will lead 29 Hobart & William Smith students on a semester-long adventure. He will teach a digital imaging course, I will teach an art history course, and we'll team teach an experiment: Inventing Rome, Inventing Romans - sort of a mass media course or a visual culture course. We'll find out. Here's a page with rudimentary course descriptions for HWS Rome 2008.

Some of you have been reading my maunderings since the days before my blog fried its database, the year of my first time to take students abroad - HWS Rome 2003. I had an amazing time. I still hear occasionally from a few of the students who let me learn with them that year - and more than occasionally from a few. Drop me a line, any of you who come across this! You're welcome to visit!

However, when I got back I swore that I would never do another semester abroad alone. Being teacher, dean, head of residence life, and chief tour guide was too much for me, even with a group of students who were by and large cooperative and cheerful. By the end of March I got clinically cranky. Having Nick and his amazing wife Nissa and fun children Silas and Sasha there too will help a LOT - at least I won't have to make all the decisions alone.

For reasons administrative, curricular, and psychological this has been one very hard semester. I have resisted blogging about Rome so that I wouldn't get sucked into thinking more about then than about now. Today is the time to start thinking at least as much about then as about what's going on here!

Even sharing the program with Nick I'll still have my moments of stress - after all, no one could construe waiting to hear the tenure decision as fun. My senior colleague the Baroquista reminded me this time last year when I was agonizing about applying to run a program at all, "you know, Michael, everything's better in Rome," even waiting for the phone call. Now, though, I'm looking forward to it all . . . an apartment in the Centro storico, walking students around until they can see the Baths of Diocletian despite the missing parts, Easter vigil mass with mosaics by candlelight, and GELATO.

So - if you're going to be in Rome this spring, leave a comment or drop me a line (please note the new email address to the bottom right). I'd love to see you!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:26 PM

November 29, 2007

The Arabic situation is popping up everywhere

Inside Higher Ed has a piece on some problems in teaching Arabic in America

A report released earlier this month by the Modern Language Association found that the number of students taking Arabic in higher education institutions rose by 126.5 percent from 2002 to 2006 — to a total of 23,974. The number of colleges offering Arabic instruction also nearly doubled, from 264 in 2002 to 466 in 2006. The highest rate of growth in enrollments, meanwhile, has been at the community college level, where enrollments grew 135.8 percent over four years. Leaders in foreign language learning hailed the results as promising news – proof that interest in such a strategically important and yet tricky-to-learn tongue continues to grow.

But beyond the numbers lies a significant problem. “Although there’s a great deal of hoopla about spending money on the teaching of critical languages and this and that, the infrastructure that would really support the development of good, highly-trained, pedagogically-trained university instructors isn’t there,” says Catharine Keatley, associate director of the National Capital Language Resource Center, a joint project of Georgetown and George Washington Universities and the Center for Applied Linguistics.

To put those numbers in perspective, go here for a chart of enrollments for the top 15 languages offered in America. As a classics major I'm pleased to see that there are more people taking Latin than Arabic, and that Arabic is barely outpacing Greek. As someone who worries about language competence in American government and military, this would worry me, except that I know that 4 years of Greek and Latin would be great preparation for pushing on into all kinds of difficult languages - certainly better than one year of bad Arabic.

The Inside Higher Ed piece asks the obvious question about who is teaching Arabic, given the insane rise in demand. Adjuncts, of course.

Inside Higher Ed doesn't ask the question that occurs to me more and more often - what do we mean by Arabic in American education? What if the native speaker adjunct is Moroccan and our textbook series is Egyptian? How close is Iraqi Arabic to Yemeni Arabic? Does anyone really speak Modern Standard Arabic? Read my previous post on the topic and wonder. Follow the links there and you may come to agree with me that the situation is something like teaching Americans Latin before sending them to work in Latin America.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:32 PM

Visitor tracking and pit of your stomach emotional weirdness

I read something last week that reminded me of the power of visitor tracking - I forget what - and I mentioned it to my collegial non-blogging but regular reader and occasional commenter next door office neighbor. Then I showed her what I get from Sitemeter for free. You can skim down in the right hand column and click on my Sitemeter badge and see some stuff too, I suppose. I hadn't really looked at the hit tracker much lately, but sitting here at home with my foot elevated (grrrr, sez the Gouty Professor) I happened to look again.

Someone googled me - http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Michael Tinkler. I click on the little link and discover that said googling was done from these scenic Colleges' own server - by a Windows user. This visitor spent a couple of minutes on my site and then clicked out via one of the dog pictures from last week.

So why am I feeling - um - observed? Because I figure that many people on campus who do read me have me bookmarked or can remember "Crankyprofessor.com." Those who are coming to look for the first time may well be - gulp - people reading my Tenure Box, a process I assume is going on right now. I made no mention of the blog in my tenure case, but one of the outside reviewers did, which might tip the committee off.

I don't think googling candidates for jobs or promotions is an invasion of privacy. I never tried to be particularly anonymous here; perhaps I was naive, but when I started blogging in 2002 (thanks to Amy Welborn and Megan McArdle, the latter of whom actually said something like "why don't you get a blog of your own?") I didn't consider possible professional implications. However, I've always assumed that I'm writing in public, and have consequently done my best to avoid annoying my friends and loved ones any more than I do in person.

Of course, maybe it's just the professor for whom I dog sat, looking at the cute picture of his dog in the snow.

Yeah.

I'll think about it that way.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:40 PM | Comments (1)

November 28, 2007

The Cranky Professor considers changing his name . . .

James Gillray, "The Gout"

Just back from the doctor and the pharmacy, I am considering changing my nom de blog to The Gouty Professor. Remember when I wrote that I was trying to listen more attentively when colleagues tell me to go to the doctor? Lo and behold, there turns out to be a reason I'm still limping for the fifth day in a row. Though the Nurse Practitioner is confirming my uric acid levels with a blood test I'm taking the medication as though the diagnosis is correct. What's more, my diet and genetic predisposition probably pale before iatrogenic reasons - hydrochlorothiazide for blood pressure is probably the main culprit,

Perhaps I shouldn't grade any papers tonight . . . I have far too much fellow-feeling right now with Henry VIII for the grading distribution to be very high.

Holbein, Henry VIII

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:39 PM

November 21, 2007

Not all hires work - presidential level changes at Occidental College

Prof. Soltan recently looked at arguments about why presidents in higher education pull down the big bucks. Among the arguments put forward (by a president, of course) was that presidents don't have the job security of tenure and don't take sabbaticals. Prof. Soltan disagreed. Here's an example of what often happens when a president returns to a faculty appointment, this time at Occidental, a first rate liberal arts college in California:

After only 17 months in the post, Susan Westerberg Prager announced her resignation Monday as president of Occidental College amid reports at the Eagle Rock campus that she had clashed with the school's board of trustees over not being an aggressive-enough leader.

Prager, 64, a former dean of UCLA's law school and the first female president at Occidental, said that she had not been fired from heading the 1,877-student liberal arts college. In an interview Monday, she said she had not developed "a strong compatibility" with the board chairman and senior administrators.

"I've been unable to accomplish that. And because I think so well of the quality of this place and its educational program, I think it's best for me to step aside," said Prager, whose resignation, effective Dec. 31, surprised many on campus. She expects to become a history professor at Occidental in 2009 after spending much of next year completing research at UCLA.

Dennis Collins, the board chairman, said in an interview that no particular event or controversy led to Prager's departure and that she had not been fired. "I think over time it became increasingly apparent to Susan that it wasn't moving in the way she wanted, and it probably made sense to acknowledge that," he said.

It's the old institutional fit argument, but I guess she fits in the history department. I'm sure her new peers are dying to know at what salary. She's never taught history at a college or university. She was a law school professor and dean.

Prager earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in history from Stanford University and her law degree from UCLA, where she was editor of the law review and later served as law dean for 16 years. She became the second woman to serve as president of the Assn. of American Law Schools, the leading professional organization in her field.

In 1999, she left UCLA to become provost of Dartmouth College but returned to UCLA in 2001 as a law professor. Prager's research has focused on California legal history and marital property law.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:17 AM

November 12, 2007

And I'm sure they're worth every dollar!

The Chronicle of Higher Education special on executive compensation (subscription only) is out - here's the New York Times version. Here's probably all you need to know, unless you're interested in who makes what:

But officials at high-pay institutions defend the salaries, saying they result from intense competition to hold onto talented executives necessary to help build institutional wealth and prestige. They say that running a large university is increasingly similar to running a corporation.

Let me point out that I had literally never heard of the institution with the 2nd highest pay - Philadelphia University. Never heard of it. The Times web page doesn't provide a link - you have to google it yourself - which I suppose means Philadelphia University is too low profile to generate a search in the Times archives? Odd. Now I haven't heard of every college and university in America, but still!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:16 AM

November 6, 2007

A New Virgil

These Colleges hosted a world premiere last night - the first reading from a new translation of Virgil's Aeneid, to be published next week. Why another Aeneid? We always need one - and this translation is superb. Fred Ahl, a classics professor at Cornell, spent 14 years getting Virgil into English dactylic hexameter - and it works!

I was a little surprised - I was raised to believe that hexameter isn't good in English; Fred is very convincing. You can't start a line with an unstressed syllable, which can be tricky (no unstressed articles or first person pronouns, for instance), but it works! It was very listenable. VERY. And he has worked very hard to maintain sound effects - the Laocoon passage was brilliantly hissy (preserving anguis and sanguis from Latin). Ahl says that he has stayed within 5% of the syllable count of the original - one of his goals is that students of Latin be able to use his translation as a reference.

Evidently, about 15 years ago Oxford had a couple of proposal on the table for new translations; they made their decision with a blind competition between the samples that had come in. Fred won. I think we win.

Follow the link and you can hear him read, even!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:51 AM

November 5, 2007

Dendrochronology - it's not just tree rings any more!

Serendipity! I explained dendrochronology and even mentioned the lab at Cornell to the students in Medieval Art and Literature: the Vikings on Friday - we were talking about how to date and determine the source of building materials for longboats. Today, via my friend at Mirabilis.ca, I read this helpful article about Cornell's enterprise, the Malcolm and Carolyn Wiener Laboratory for Aegean and Near Eastern Dendrochronology. I think I'll email them each a copy.

Here's a taste:

Trees of the same species from the same geographical area have fairly similar ring patterns, Manning said, because they are exposed to similar climatic conditions. By starting with living trees and then finding samples from slightly older trees used in buildings and still older trees from more ancient sites, archaeologists have been able to overlap tree-ring data to create chronologies that date back thousands of years.

Radiocarbon dating, statistical analysis, researchers' trained eyes and prior knowledge of events in the area are then used to match new samples with tree-ring chronologies from the same area. Manning and his staff in the lab have used such techniques to verify, for example, the likely origins of a Circle of Rembrandt painting (referring to an elite group of students that worked directly with the artist). He showed that the oak board of the painting came from the same tree as the board of another painting, whose origins are known and which hangs in a museum in Krakow, Poland.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:30 AM

November 2, 2007

Web-based Calendaring Bleg

My colleague and I are starting to work quite hard on planning the Rome semester; since there are two of us (and 30 students) we're interested in using some web-based calendaring - either Yahoo or Google. I have both and am now playing with both - any ideas?

It seems (at first fiddle) that Google is working on a "type in the box" method, while Yahoo uses pull-down menus for time slots. Yahoo looks a tad clunkier, but I'd get used to it.

I hate the calendaring functions of our campus webmail, or we might do it that way. These are both more elegant.

How well does iCal (or the new iCal) play with others? My colleague and at least some of the students are Windows folk.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:29 PM

October 20, 2007

Word (mis)choice of the weekend

I'm trudging through a pile of papers (plowing would sound too swift), many of which concern a statue associated with an inscription. So far everyone has referred to the text as "a quote" rather than "a quotation." I'm marking it wrong, but I fear the prescriptivists have lost, if not formally surrendered, another redoubt in quote/quotation.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:42 PM

The Final Bosses are in town

I have drifted off of a committee but got drafted for something - evidently, I'm no longer a faculty observer ('representative' would be much too strong for our role) at the Buildings & Grounds subcommittee of the board. Oh, well - interesting while it lasted. I can get back on that in a couple of years, perhaps. Meanwhile, someone responsible for keeping the spouses occupied noticed the topic I'm scheduled to cover for Parents' Weekend next week and asked if I'd do a version for the Board Spouses. I am always willing to talk about buildings. Is that a weakness? So I did the latest version of my song and dance about the Chapel, and it was fun (other than having to move the digital projection setup around the chapel to find a wireless hotspot so my laptop would work!).

The picture is from a postcard I scanned - postmarked 1907. Hobart and William Smith folks might notice the entire absence of the big tower connecting St. John's Chapel and Demarest.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:27 PM

October 19, 2007

Rainy day in Upstate New York - but at least it's not snow!

We had showers and rain off and on today - students were walking around without umbrellas and just getting wet; it is still quite warm. I said to a number of them that "it least it's not snow."

So I'm home and watching the Weather Channel to see what's up (more rain - more!) and find out that it IS snowing in the Continental U.S.

Oh.

Run!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:04 PM | Comments (0)

October 17, 2007

Now that's a departmental collection worth visiting

Lots of school collections are 'teaching collections,' meaning that we know they're not really all that great, but they've got fun examples to show students.

The School of Oriental and African Studies in London might be an exception - its collection is on show now.

Yes, there's the inevitable not to Edward Said in the article, but blip over it.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:44 AM | Comments (0)

October 15, 2007

If you're really not answering our advertisement, please don't make me read your folder . . .

REALLY good advice on the tenure track job search from Tenured Radical. A snippet: "It isn't a lottery; it only seems like one. The Shirley Jackson kind."

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:30 PM | Comments (0)

October 12, 2007

"Write what you know!" "Learn by doing!"

These mantras of modern education kill another innocent.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:50 AM | Comments (0)

October 2, 2007

A controversial deaccessioning - Randolph (-Macon Women's) College

You seldom see the word "dastardly" used anymore, but here we go:

“This is just a dastardly thing to do,” he said. “I’m just at a loss of words … this is a terrible, terrible deed done to the students, the townspeople, and everybody who enjoys the collection.”

Randolph College, the Randolph-Macon Women's College until this past July, is spending its endowment too fast for the taste of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, and has decided to sell four paintings. They're hoping to pick up $32 million. The publicity might not hurt going coed, either. Change your name, show that you have less commitment to frou frou things like art collecting - that'll bring in the guys. The quotation above is from the local story in the Lynchburg, VA, News & Advance. More personal info than the New York Times version, but the times does have a picture of the George Bellows painting they hope will bring $25 million.

The Bellows, though, has more than monetary value - it has symbolic importance to the collection. All the better to sell it to show the board's new direction. From the local story, here's Ellen Agnew, who resigned as associate director of the museum in August:

She calls “Men of the Docks,” the “cornerstone of the collection.”

It was the first painting purchased under the direction of Louise Jordan Smith, the school’s first art professor, to form the permanent art collection.

“Its significance is beyond measure in what it symbolizes - the vision, the foresight, the dedicated purpose of Louise Jordan Smith and the students and the Lynchburg community.”

Ahah - here's a better version of the picture.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:28 AM

September 22, 2007

A Nice professorial Saturday morning

The Hobart Crew coach had the clever idea of reaching out to faculty by offering a morning of rowing instruction to faculty recommended by members of the crew - so 8 of us rolled out this morning to the scenic Seneca-Cayuga Canal-side Hellstrom Boathouse for rowing! We had some explanation first from the coaches, then spent a quarter of an hour on rowing machines learning a little technique and getting pointers from the rowers.

Then we helped lug a second rowing shell down to the water and put it in. They divided us and (luckily!) 4 experienced rowers rowed with the 4 professors in each boat. The students did all the instruction - and they were quite good at it! We practiced strokes while still at dockside, then eventually pushed off and rowed around a bit, eventually building up some speed!

We got down as far as the Marina, then turned and came back, racing (and crushing!) the other boat on the way).

It was heaps of fun! I spent a little time (6 months or so) rowing single sculls in high school, but this was quite different.

Maybe there will be pictures later.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:02 PM | Comments (0)

September 19, 2007

The Rhetorical Weirdness of "Endangered Languages"

I find the rhetoric of folks talking about "endangered languages" very annoying - almost as annoying as Historical Preservation Fundamentalists (save our collapsing Historic Gas Station!) and always end up wondering about motives. It's the same annoyance as my general distaste for use of the biological model to describe inanimate objects. Art doesn't evolve, folks. Only things that can reproduce evolve. People make art. Art doesn't develop - artists change the things they do.

Here's a splashy article on language extinction, complete with video, from National Geographic News.

O.K. - about the rhetoric. Languages are not living or dead - they're languages. People are living or dead. People die. Species flourish or go extinct.

Members of the Language Preservation Community, or whatever they want to call themselves, have interesting goals - preserving human knowledge that is encoded in particular languages - that seems to ignore what many of us (most of us?) think languages are for - communication per se. You see, knowledge about specific remedies (their marketing point for making us care about vanishing languages) is there, it could be shared in the languages other people speak. If we're just talking about new and linguistically exciting names for things, then there's only interest to people who like many languages.

It seems to me that their suggestion, that with the "extinction" of a language the knowledge is no longer accessible because the nomenclature would no longer be used and shared, isn't much use. Now if the knowledge of natural cures for ancient ills is no longer shared because contemporary children prefer watching Australian television to learning respectfully from their bilingual elders, then the Language Conservationists may be right but they're also completely incapable of offering a solution. I feel the same way about Western Civilization myself, after all, and that has little to do with language.

But then people like me have always been thinking that the world was going to Hell in a hand basket. Surely Sumerian scribes thought so. Dressing up your plaint in fashionable extinction rhetoric doesn't make the position much stronger.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:45 AM

September 13, 2007

My framework of Rome list

Someone asked in the comments to this post for the list - so here's the assignment.

Everyone gets a street name or group of names.

Take your place name and research it – look it up on Google maps, Mapquest, Google Earth, Wikipedia, or in any number of real reference books. Look at what the street runs into or out of - look what it cuts through or is parallel to. Think about WHY Italians might name a street after this event or person – especially in the newly unified Italy of 1870 and after. Do some of these names or streets go back to ancient Rome? Medieval Rome? Renaissance or Baroque Papal Rome? Be prepared to take us to your site on Google Earth next week and show us what’s what!

Via XIV Maggio
Via del Plebiscito
Via IV Novembre
Piazza Venezia
Via Giovanni Giolitti (Giolitti isn't just a gelateria!
Via Nomentana / Porta Pia / Via XX Settembre
Via Flaminia / Piazza del Popolo / Via del Corso / via di Ripetta / via del Babuino
Viale Gabriele d’Annunzio
Via delle Botteghe Oscure (my favorite street name in Rome)
Piazza Navona
Corso Vittorio Emmanuele II (secondo, not due)
Via Giulia
Via del Governo Vecchio
Via della Conciliazione
Ponte Sant‚Angelo (get the date, see what it connects to)
Ponte Regina Margherita (get the date and look what it connects)
Via del Mare
Via Appia Nuova (and Antica!)
Via Cavour
Viale Luigi Einaudi / Piazza della Repubblica / Via Nazionale
Via Garibaldi - it may look at first as though it's in a marginal part of town for such an important figure, but think about its vistas.
Via Cristoforo Colombo
Via Vittorio Veneto
Via Solferino / Piazza dell’Indipendenza
Via Goito / Via Cernaia / Via Pastrengo / Via XX Settembre – form the four sides of the Ministry of Finance
Via Raffaele Cadorna (not Luigi!!) // Via Belisario
Trastevere and its relationship to the River
Piazza del Risorgimento - what's it close to?
Via dei Gracchi // Via Cola di Rienzo / Piazza del Risorgimento
Roman Ghetto (Via del Portico d’Ottavia / Via del Tempio)

I'm not perfectly happy with the list - I need to build up some more sequences of streets or parallel groups of streets. One of the points of this exercise is to help the students start learning some of the big names and events of modern Italian history, especially some of the characters who have streets and piazze named after them in every city in Italy. Another is to encourage them to begin looking at Rome systematically - they're also being quizzed on the Seven Hills of Rome (ever done the old Latin teacher's Hand Exercise?).

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:20 PM | Comments (2)

September 12, 2007

Talking about stained glass

I have a confession to make - I don't really care about stained glass - but it's available in quantity in much of America. So, I've learned to deal.

My Gothic class is part-way through their second assignment - take a window at St Stephen's, Geneva, and explain the iconography. Tonight I heard from 6 folks, covering Ss. Cecilia, Francis de Sales, Boniface, Lawrence, Louis of France, and Margaret of Scotland. This was a random assortment of students based on their availability (the rest will talk on Sunday afternoon), but it went quite well! I got to talk about how to visit churches, gothic architecture up close, hammerbeam construction, and workshops (there are at least 3 and maybe 4 glass workshops represented in the building).

All in all a satisfying evening - they're off to a good start!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:05 PM | Comments (0)

Vikings in the News: re-excavations at Oseberg

The excavation of the Oseberg Ship Burial in 1904 produced one of the memorable Viking ships we still have. It also produced two female skeletons, which are now being re-exhumed. I had no idea, but they were reburied in the 1940s in hopes that one of these days (like now) we'd have better technology to learn from them.

The genetic testing will answer one problem - are the two females Queen and slave or Queen and female relative. The general suggestions are that a slave might have been sacrificed to accompany the early 9th century (and not yet Christian) burial and that a relative might have died of disease at the same time as the main occupant.

Reuters has a good story with a nice slide show of the process!

I'm showing this to my students today. One of my constant themes is how much work there still is for them to do when they grow up and become scholars!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:17 AM

September 11, 2007

Argh! While you're not looking books are hiding themselves!

I can't find a particular book. Yes, I took good notes - but it's full of pictures. I want to look at the pictures! I have the only copy on campus checked out. I want to teach some stuff out of it tomorrow, and now I'm feeling crazed. It wasn't in the office. It isn't in the home office. It isn't beside my bed. It isn't underneath the Wall Street Journals in my newspaper box. Argh!

My mother assures me this problem is genetic.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:46 PM | Comments (3)

If they don't finish this paving soon . . .

I'm going to kill someone.

I did not go to be early last night (one of those restless evenings where I just wasn't sleepy). I'm scheduled to attend a breakfast meeting with Director of the Library Candidate #3 at 8:30, but really was ready enough to teach today that I didn't NEED to get up before about 7:45. The road crew started bulldozing gravel in Washington Street right outside my windows at 6:35.

Oh, well - I'm making the empty hour shine - I'm working on a project to pass out to the Rome-bound group tonight. I'm making a list of street names in Rome which are great moments or persons in Italian history that are generally unknown to Americans. We just don't cover 19th century Italian history, do we? Not that we really cover much European history at all in the shattered remnants of high school, but I bet I could get a correct answer from all of them if I asked "what happened in history on July 4th?" September 20th, probably not. Via XX Settembre is similarly transparent to Italian students - the day Italy captured Papal Rome in 1870. They each get a proper name and get to find it, show it to us (thank you, Google Earth!), and explain the significance. We're also doing some other geographical stuff like Hills of Rome. Should be fun!

(see here for the list)

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:25 AM

September 7, 2007

Two Weeks down

Vikings is going quite well - my colleague was unaccountably delayed today (well, she was talking to a student, but I didn't know that when class started) so I got to lead off with one of my favorite ways to make students do a little comparative mythology - names for the days of the week. I had given a fill-out-your-own-chart assignment on Wednesday and we put some results on the board. I'll use Italian for my Romance example, since it's on my mind. The Germanic is Old Norse.

English / Italian / Old Norse / the 7 planets visible to the naked eye
Sunday / Domenica / Sunnundagr / Sun
Monday / Lunedì / Mánandagr / Moon
Tuesday / Martedì / Tysdagr / Mars
Wednesday / Mercoledì / Óðensdagr / Mercury
Thursday / Giovedì / Þorsdagr / Jupiter
Friday / Venerdì / Friádagr / Venus
Saturday / Sabato / Laugardagr / Saturn

Lots of fun!

So - the Christian Mediterranean languages used Lord's Day for Sun Day and Sabbath for Saturday - the 7th Day. We see the tension in the Greco-Roman Pantheon between Jupiter and Saturn - each included, each gets a day. We begin to see some evidence for the idea that Thor was originally higher than Odin in the comparatio Romana - otherwise why is Odin identified with Mercury while Thor is identified with the day of Jupiter? By the way, isn't it fun that modern German uses Mid-week (Mittwoch) instead of Woden? And what better sign of the late evangelization of the Norse than that rather than observing the Sabbath they're doing laundry (Laugar).

I use this handy and accessible entry to the wonderfully complex world of comparative mythology all the time - and it's always pretty effective.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:57 PM

Meta-academics

Haven't I been here before? Yes, once again, free wifi at the Greater Rochester International Airport keeps me pestering you with my opinions.

I'm off to talk about collaborative digital image issues sponsored by NITLE. I know, I know, but it's right up my alley.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:37 PM | Comments (0)

September 6, 2007

Should Economists rule the world?

Short answer? No. Political scientists, either. Now art historians - has anyone tried that? Not that I'm volunteering for any new assignments this semseter . . . .

via Tyler Cowen.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:35 AM | Comments (0)

September 5, 2007

It's the little things that keep us going . . .

Dr. Virago is having a good week - yay, her!

I, too, had one of those pleasant satisfactions of academic life - a compliment that didn't lead to any more work. A student who has had 2 courses from me (and made some flavor of A on pretty much every assignment) asked about doing an honors project with me this year on something that was (a) reasonably doable and which (b) I could reasonably be expected to direct. He had done a good bit of reading over the summer, even. But I could say a polite 'no' because of my impending Rome term - these things do not work via email. I counteroffered an independent study (not that I have time for that, but I really like him and think it would be interesting). He thought for a few days and decided that he likes his current 4 classes too much to drop any of them, and doesn't want to do an overload. So, there we are - we both think the other would be good to work with, but neither of us actually has to do any more work this semester than is already laid out. Yay, me!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:26 AM | Comments (0)

September 4, 2007

School's In

For those of you slackers who didn't start until today - we had classes yesterday. I'm grading the first round of quizzes already.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:07 AM

September 3, 2007

What this country needs is another doctoral program in history.

That fine headline leads into Ralph Luker's consideration of yet another proposed program for Ph.D.-granting. Go read!

So, there's a population and a geographical rationale for the proposal. Is there a market rationale for it? Don't even ask. If it aims at having a conveniently located program for community college faculty in central Florida to get a terminal credential, maybe. That's one of the things that a strong M.A. program used to be about. [my emphasis]

Then follow his link to his earlier piece, "Wherein I Name a Dozen or More Doctoral Programs in History that Ought to be Shut Down." The credential creep from M.A. to Ph.D. has not been salutary for American education, anymore than the insistence that all students should have a college prep high school diploma. Not everyone should go to college. Not all teachers need a terminal degree.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:29 AM

August 31, 2007

A Committee of One!

I am drunk with power - I AM THE LIBRARY COMMITTEE! Because of a withdrawal and a rotation and someone resigning because he thought he was about to be replaced by a woman for better gender balance I find myself constituting the entire Library Committee. I need to get together with the acting librarian and vote for something.

I think we'll be spending some money on art books.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:36 PM

Trelleborg Ring Forts as Valahlla

Today in BiDis* 291: Medieval Art and Literature - the Vikings we're starting Snorri's Prose Edda
and I'm going to talk about imagining Valhalla. The current cover of the Penguin translation (Jesse Byock) has a detail of Odin on Sleipnir from the stone from Alskog Taengvide. Unfortunately, the cover crops out the woman or Valkyrie greeting him with a drinking horn (well, you can see the horn, but not her). So we'll talk about that stone and a few other ones, but then we'll turn to the Trelleborg ring-forts. Wikipedia has a pretty nice entry on the forts, but I have better photographs. I'm going to try to help them understand how visions of Heaven (or Valhalla) condition human buildings and how human buildings condition later visions of Heaven. This will work pretty well for the Gothic class, too, I have to admit.

*that's a local thing - here at these Colleges we have a class of course called BiDisciplinary - team-taught (almost always) courses which often (though not always) cross the Humanities/Social Sciences/Fine Arts/Sciences boundaries. They are a fossil of a former curriculum, in which students had a First Year Seminar, a sophomore-level BiDisciplinary course (I think it was sophomores!), and a senior capstone seminar in the major. My friend Laurence and I teach these because we like teaching together, and the format still exists; our course is actually BiDepartmental, because we're both humanists, I guess. This is a curricular conversation the faculty needs to have.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:01 AM

August 30, 2007

Early Medieval Archaeologists in the News

Richard Hodges, a really notable British archaeologist of the early Middle Ages, has just taken the post of director of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology - neat! He's done lots of interesting things in that controversial area of early medieval towns or urban assemblages. I'm teaching about the whole emporium idea this week in the Vikings course, having read Goodbye to the Vikings? this summer. His material on San Vicenzo al Volturno (much of it with John Mitchell) is really important.

I know nothing about his reputation in the field as a human being (it's not my end of the world), but he's obviously one of those archaeologists who's good at team building - follow the link and look.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:51 AM

August 29, 2007

Smart and good are separate qualities

The conclusion of a review by Dr. Abigail Zuger in the New York Times of David M. Friedman's The Immortalists
Charles Lindhbergh, Dr. Alexis Carrel and Their Daring Quest to Live Forever:

But for a demonstration of the bizarrely particulate nature of human intelligence, which allows scientific brilliance and moral idiocy to thrive side by side, forget Jekyll, Hyde and Frankenstein: this is the book to read.

I didn't know about Lindhbergh's work in what we now call biomedical engineering, but it makes a lot of sense. I'd come across Dr. Carrel before in some eugenics context. This sounds like a book I'd like to read - yet another cautionary tale about why letting smart people run things isn't a great idea.

I like "bizarrely particulate nature of human inteligence," too. That's a useful way of thinking of things.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:34 AM

August 28, 2007

Three out of three and a half down.

And what was I thinking last year?

I'm teaching Art 101 (cave painting to however close to the Renaissance I get), as per usual. But I changed the damned textbook. Why, O Lord? Why? Now I'm having to retool all kinds of things - not that the art's changed, but the specific examples chosen are different.

I've already whined about the two new courses - Art 218: The Age of Chivalry and BiDis 291: Medieval Art & Literature - the Vikings. Yeah, one of those two is team-taught, but that means thinking twice as hard so we can both keep up. I'd read almost everything we're teaching before we even started talking about it, but it's been awhile for some of them. But, hey, we showed the dragon-slaying scene from the Fritz Lang Siegfried on Monday - what's not to love? And Laurence and I always have a good time - and the students seem to love it, too. Not to mention the inevitable unintended fashion show - Monday was floral - my tie, her capri pants.

Then there's Chivalry. Or Gothic. Or High Medieval. I reactivated a course already on the books, so that's my excuse for the utterly-un-Cranky title. Tomorrow I get to do Romanesque - Compostela or Toulouse? Those of my readers who remember the late Thomas W. Lyman know my answer to that one. Pietas. Not to mention dedication dates.

Then there's the half course. The Rome 2008 group is doing a half-credit course-to-prepare thing called Italy Now! My punctuation. We're making them do things like eat Italian olives and see Italian movies and learn the 7 Hills of Rome before they go. I don't know that it will make it better than 2003 (truly, I had a great group), but it might make it easier for the students. We won't start meeting until next week, so I haven't finished a full cycle of my classes yet.

All in all, it's going to be busy but fun.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:05 PM

August 26, 2007

Neurosis is its own reward

So here I am at the office, Sunday before classes start. We can now make our image presentations from home using the superb software of Artifact, the Visual Resources Collection of these Colleges. Sadly for you, access to Artifact is restricted to Colleges' users - I'd love to show you the elegant interface.

However, I'm here, because I like to check things. If I ironed shirts I'd always be running back to check on the iron. Luckily, science has solved that problem for me. So I not only am making my presentation for the first meeting of Art 218, Age of Chivalry - Gothic Art & Architecture but I went in to try it out in Houghton House 212, because some remodeling was supposed to be completed by now. At the very least, I wanted to lower the blackout shades before any young folks got near them. I often think we should drop the drinking age in America, but I would be happy to see a requirement of 25-or-older for operating the kind of chain-drive-shades-that-run-in-tracks we have. I don't mean to be condescending, but the young always seem to rush the process and we end up having to call Building & Grounds to disassemble the tracks and get things back in place.

So there I am, trial run of the first version of tomorrow's class. The computer starts up on the first try, which is pleasant. The digital projector, no.

I try several things from the podium that often work. No luck.

I walk over and try to start it manually from its own power button. No luck.

I finally climb up on a chair and look at the damned thing. It is suspended on a pipe from the ceiling. Someone (I'm looking at YOU, A.V.! Feel free to blame the painters or the fire alarm installers, though) has UNPLUGGED the projector and forgotten to plug it back in. Of course, the cord is neatly entwined with other cords around the suspension system, so it wasn't exactly dangling where one could see it from a distance.

But - go back and click on Houghton House - we have high ceilings. Even while standing on a chair I can't reach the ceiling-mounted power outlet. Now because we're the Art Department and we're always fiddling with things hung on the walls and the way we light them, we usually have a ladder standing in a corner of the house. Today? No. I looked everywhere. I even asked a colleague who's here painting, the only member of the studio side of our faculty who didn't move to the new building. He couldn't find it, either.

Well, I'm absolutely certain that AV is way too harried today and tomorrow to get over here to plug something in before my class at 12:20 tomorrow, so I found a sturdy table to stand on and plugged the damned thing in.

Success!

And my images look lovely!

Though, of course, I now see they're not really what I need. There's nothing like seeing things room-sized to realize you need other images to explain them. Back to preparation.

However, now you see why neurosis is sometimes its own reward. I'm the first person scheduled to teach in the room this academic year, and that would have been exactly the kind of way to start a semester that would have killed me.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:13 AM

Hammocks? Who knows!

There are three hammocks hanging on the porches of houses on Pulteney Street where some of our seniors live off campus. Hammocks? Hmmm. I wonder what that's about? Oh - and no hammocks are hung on the porch of the house with the old sailboat in the driveway, so it's not just a nautical-theme decorator scheme!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:23 AM

August 25, 2007

Park Work

Well, Park Place is still a mess of bricks and sand and gravel, but we had a little work day in Pulteney Park anyway.

We're a community-service-oriented liberal arts college of note (that's what we get for hiring a former director of the Peace Corps as our president), so the 2nd day of Orientation starts with breakfast, a rally on the Quad, and then dispersal to sites all over the area to make themselves useful. I got enough work out of them that the flower beds are tidier, at least, and interested at least one of them in my theory that the statue is a monument to isolationism.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:55 AM

August 22, 2007

The Campus is filling back up

This is the first day the campus has seemed to me to hum a little - the new faculty are being oriented, the orientation leaders for the soon-to-arrive first years are being trained, craftsmen are busily finishing summer renovations. We start on Monday!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:21 PM | Comments (1)

August 14, 2007

Travelblogging

I really don't know how frequent business travelers stand it - some very cordial TSA contractors just finished a 15 minute swabbing of all my possessions (yes, I'm doing carry-on luggage this trip - connecting through Washington National sounds like a formula for delays and loss to me; not to mention my neat little Harmannn weekend rolling thing I got for Christmas doesn't need to be checked). Air travel is getting less and less pleasant.

All these are truisms, of course, but I've been home all summer, or at least since Kalamazoo. Now, with a day less than 2 weeks until classes start, I'm off for a too-quick trip home for a gathering of folks more or less my sister's age - one of them is visiting Chattanooga from England with her children for an extended stay, and we're having a party. Or two.

I restricted myself to reading material for one of my two new courses - the other will at least start with setting the stage kind of review stuff, so I'm good there.

My colleague the Anglo-Saxonist and I are teaching one of our occasional "Medieval Art and Literature: Name that Topic" courses - and this year it's The Vikings! So, Njal's Saga, the Volsunger Saga, a Penguin collection of Viking romances - lots to read in bed. I've stolen some time from the tenure case this summer to read up on the Lewis chessmen (one of my favorite cultural fusion examples - walrus ivory, 12th century dating by ecclesiastical costume and proto-heraldry, shield-gnawing warder/berserkers, and a game that originated in India) and to read more about rune stones than I really think I cared about. Luckily, we've got a local stave-church enthusiast and a boat-builder in Ithaca. There will be plenty to keep the students busy.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:59 AM

August 13, 2007

What makes medievalists weep . . .

Another Damned Medievalist is having a hard week, but in a smart way. It's all about prosopography. If you don't know what that is, you should go read. If you do know what that is, you should definitely go read.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:52 AM

Two Swords readings?

Medievalistas . . . does anyone have a suggestion for a good, short treatment suitable for a 200-level course on Two Swords, church and state, whatever you want to call it in the High Middle Ages? Something like those "Problems in Historical Interpretations" books that used to be all the rage of core courses.

My Gothic Art & Architecture class is not going to come to me with a whole lot of background in medieval history - I can just tell by skimming the roll as it appears now online.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:22 AM

Dresden Old Master Gallery appears in Second Life

The Dresden Old Master Gallery has created a virtual version of itself for an online environment. Cologne Cathedral is following suit.

I think I feel an assignment for my Gothic Art and Architecture course coming on!

(Oh, yes, it really is called that - it's the Gemaeldegalerie Alte Meister of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden. I don't know (it's not my part of the field), but this may be one of the places our English phrase for those old painters comes from. I always thought it was really funny, though, that they really WERE the Alte Meister.)

This is the story in Wired.

Here's their regular website.

Here's the Second Life version.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:07 AM | Comments (1)

August 12, 2007

You know you had an industrious Saturday . . .

. . . when you have to empty your office recycling bin into the big one downstairs by the copying machine in order to have room to maneuver on Sunday.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:15 PM | Comments (1)

August 7, 2007

How can you tell if you attend an alternative college?

Well, maybe having a college archivist with a single name will clue you in.

A faculty member at the New College of California said he is glad college president Martin Hamilton is leaving the college.

"It's good that the president is leaving," the school's historian and archivist, known as Kush, said. "(This situation presents) an opportunity for a new New College to be born."

According to Kush, Hamilton is formally resigning as of Sept. 15, because "many different complications...have overtaken (Hamilton) and his administration."

Kush said a time of crisis for the school is also "a time of renaissance," adding that in the future he wants the college to work more as a community and less like a hierarchical system.

The New College of California was founded in 1971 and came to the San Francisco's Mission District in 1976, according to Kush. [My emphases]

Have you been following the New College of California accreditation thing? Let's just say that the institution doesn't remind me at ALL of the New College of Florida.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:20 AM

August 6, 2007

Columbia plans to expand its campus

Why would Columbia hire such a talented urbanist as Piano and then allow him to produce something so bland?

That's the concluding sentence in a scathing review of Renzo Piano and SOM's master plan for Columbia University's expansion, its 7 BILLION dollar expansion. It sounds really dull. I look forward to coming across some photographs on the web.

I'm afraid the project reveals more about higher education in America than our aspirational language. Columbia University has no vision of the future, and hiring a big name architect won't give them one. Or, Columbia has a vision of the future, and it is to become the juggernaut it knows it deserves to be. Look at Yale's recent purchase of a big pharma research park. Look at Harvard sprawling across the Charles. The Ivy League has gone way beyond the ivory tower model Piano decries at Columbia to embrace the city - but in the way of the real estate developer and the research park.

I don't know that we can expect much else from self-perpetuating corporate bodies with that much money.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:13 AM

August 4, 2007

Il faut cultiver nôtre jardin

One of my favorite ways to procrastinate things to do this time of year is to order books for the Library, especially now that we do it online rather than on little yellow index cards. There's a lovely 'special instruction' field, too, aimed at the acquisitive faculty member who can justify a purchase by giving the names of other faculty members whose courses might be served by the said book. I blogged about the number I've successfully ordered here.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:28 AM

July 30, 2007

Reference styles

I was talking to my sister last night and mentioned that I was cleaning up footnotes (and trying to figure out how to refer to a manuscript diary from the archives). She pointed out that my experience of reference styles is unusual - I've always been in school, more or less. She has a B.A. and two masters. Each time in school separated by several years. She was annoyed to find out this last time (2005-06, was it?) how reference styles have changed.

I have to admit, it can be annoying. I recently broke down and bought a 15th edition Chicago Manual of Style. My old copy was 12th, and things have changed. You know, like the whole INVENTION of the Web.

The general principle of making-it-possible-for-readers-to-find-your-reference-for-themselves hasn't changed, but the way we go about doing that sure has.

I hate inline citation because I like chatty footnotes. Oh, well.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:39 AM

July 27, 2007

Fun facts to know and tell . . .

While I continue to put together my - um - case, it occurred to me to ask my friend the Acting Librarian how many books I had ordered for the Library. She can with the flick of a key or two answer the question for life since 2002, when we started using the current computerized system - and with Library of Congress headings!

I got to these Colleges (as did my friend the Acting Librarian) in the fall of 1999. Since the 2002/03 fiscal year, this is the breakdown:

B - Philosophy, Psychology, and Religion: 87
C - Auxiliary Sciences of History: 5
D - History: General and Outside the Americas: 40
E - History: United States: 1
G - Geography: 3
H - Social Sciences: 13
J - Political Science: 2
N - Fine Arts: 81
P - Language and Literature: 29
Q - Science: 1
R - Medicine: 1
T - Technology: 1
U - Military Science: 3
-------------------------
Total: 267

Luckily, she attached a list - the one Q book is Bede, The Reckoning of Time, (De temporum ratione) tr. Faith Wallis. Interesting, hunh, that N is not the largest category, despite my appointment in the Art department. After all, my own dissertation got cataloged in the Ds at Emory. Interdisciplinarity, thy name is "Michael C. Tinkler."

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:48 PM

July 26, 2007

It's coming - the Disestablishment of the Universities

Stanford University spends $76 million on undergraduate financial aid, a sum that sounds generous but amounts to a mere 0.5 percent of the value of its endowment. The university spends just 4 percent of its $14 billion endowment toward operating expenses. If the 5 percent payout rule required Stanford to spend another 1 percent of its endowment, and that money was directed toward financial aid, students would enjoy $211 million in additional support. That is precisely the cost of letting all 6,600 Stanford undergraduates attend tuition-free.

The University of Texas’ nine campuses enroll 147,576 undergraduates who each pay on average $5,903 in tuition. All of U.T.’s undergraduates could attend school tuition-free if the system spent half the amount the university’s endowment grew just last year.

That's Lynn Munson at Inside Higher Ed.

It's a good article. I didn't know that we were exempt from the 5% rule! That explains a lot. Click and read.

via Prof. Soltan, who, being a critic of 20th century literature, reaches for Freud. Me, my favorite analogy is the disestablishment of the monasteries and its analogues on the continent. Imperfect, but suggestive.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:21 AM

July 25, 2007

Archive Bloggery and resizing photos

Something that I do not do particularly well is resize photos to fit on web pages. For some reason I have to resort to pencil and paper and hard thought about proportions every time - I guess I should do it more often.

This morning I was busy posting (and thinking of how to resize) a couple of photographs on the Abner Jackson Journal blog, a blog the Hobart & William Smith Colleges Archivist Linda Benedict and I are working on. I've mentioned it here before, but it's on my mind at the moment (and MUCH more amusing than Chicago-style referencing, which I could also be doing - but hey! This was Faculty Research Grant-funded Scholarship and it counts, too!).

Jackson was president of Hobart College from 1858 to 1867 and kept a daily journal. Some students and I transcribed it (that's where the funding came in) and Linda and I are now uploading it. We're also putting up pictures, though until the blog comes onto the campus server we're not making a lot of internal links from entries to the photos; we know about broken links.

This is what I put up today - a pair of pictures of Linden Hall. Through the second half of the 19th century (from at least 1858 until 1892) Linden Hall was an entertainment space in downtown Geneva which the College and college groups (such as the sophomore class on at least one occasion that springs to mind) rented for events. The Washington's Birthday celebrations were usually there, for instance, and at least part of the graduation celebrations (either the exercises or the dinner) were held there.

We didn't have any photos of Linden Hall in our own archives, but my neighbor and friend Karen Osburn, archivist at the Geneva Historical Society, found and scanned these two for me. Thanks, Karen!

One of the interesting things about treating the journal as a blog is the utility of categories (one of the things I do is categorize entries - Linda's uploaded most of them so far). Unlike a book index, categories are live links - so if you go to the blog and click on Discipline or Clubs, Societies, and Fraternities, or Campus Planning or Fundraising you may see how little life for a college administrator has changed in 150 years. I think that folks who are interested in 19th Century America might find this interesting. As a Southerner living here now I find the relative lack of trouble caused by or interest in the Civil War fascinating - though we ARE missing 1865 from the journals.

Here's Linda's own blog, Alone in the Archives, in case you've never clicked on it from the blogroll, where you'll find it filed under the HWS blogs.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:59 AM

July 17, 2007

Antioch for Franco!

During the campus convulsions of the late 1960s, when rebellion against any authority was considered obedience to every virtue, the film "To Die in Madrid," a documentary about the Spanish Civil War, was shown at a small liberal arts college famous for, and vain about, its dedication to all things progressive. When the film's narrator intoned, "The rebels advanced on Madrid," the students, who adored rebels and were innocent of information, cheered. Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, had been so busy turning undergraduates into vessels of liberalism and apostles of social improvement that it had not found time for the tiresome task of teaching them tedious facts, such as that the rebels in Spain were Franco's fascists.

George Will on why he won't miss Antioch.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:39 PM

Why we blog - and badges!

I apologize for the slow posting lately - I'm in a frenzy of deadlineness. I'm trying to get several things finished before the tenure box goes in - and then there's actually writing the tenure case. I have a teaching philosophy, but I'd rather enact it than write about it (and isn't that just the kind of sentence I need to use?).

And I've had a house guest this week who comes up periodically from Atlanta to read things at the Cornell Library (mainly in the rare book room) that he can't get elsewhere. He stays with me and drives down to Ithaca every morning. Having a human being (sorry Argyle) to talk with reduces some of the blog-urge. Oh - he blogs occasionally at Reformation Professor. Ah - grad school friends. You forget sometimes how much you miss them.

And then there's the Hand List of Words for Talking about Medieval Badges.

I did most of the reading in dictionaries for this year before last and left the text file sitting on my hard drive. I was looking up some words again and realized that I had those already and might as well post them somewhere I can get at them. Take a look. I'm up to cockle-shelled, an adjectival derivative of a cockleshell shaped badge. The example the OED gave was of a St. Michael badge (Mont St Michel also used the cockleshell, being sea-girt and all).

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:02 AM

July 16, 2007

Gordon Gee - The Million Dollar Man

That's the headline from the Toledo Blade story about the Vanderbilt-to-Ohio-State move. Here's the best paragraph (though there are many other interesting ones).

His new contract runs seven years, and his annual salary is $775,000. Plus he reportedly will receive an extra $225,000 a year as a bonus if he stays five years, along with a yet-to-be-disclosed benefits package. The deal would amount to a pay cut. At Vanderbilt, a private school, Mr. Gee has been the highest-paid university president in the nation, and Ohio taxpayers would be justified in worrying about what else OSU might be about to offer him.

The article talks about the salary and compensation of his predecessor, so the Toledo Blade knows what to watch for.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:49 AM

July 9, 2007

Lions, tigers, and BLACK BEAR ON CAMPUS, oh my!

Gosh am I glad I'm working from home today!

Campus listserve at 10:56 -

The Geneva Police Department is currently tracking a bear. It was most recently spotted at Glenwood Cemetery heading north. Houghton House grounds are adjacent to the Cemetery. Please be cautious and remain indoors until the situation has resolved. I’ll send another e-mail when we have more information.

Ummm. My office is is at Houghton House - the big building just south of the arrow.

at 12:21 -

The bear is still being tracked. At this point, we can confirm that there is a North American Black Bear cub weighing about 125 pounds in the woods behind the pole barn on St. Clair (behind the first-year parking lot). The Department of Environmental Conservation is working in concert with the Geneva Police Department to safely cage it. There have been reports of a second bear sighting although this information has not been confirmed. The Colleges community is urged to exercise caution, be aware of your surroundings, and to preferably stay indoors. As soon as we have more information, I’ll send another e-mail.

at 1:51 -
The Geneva Police Department reports that the bear cub is no longer on the Colleges’ campus. GPD and the DEC will continue to track it and will follow up on reports of a possible adult. At this point, it’s unlikely that anyone will encounter a bear on campus. Continue to use caution and report any bear sightings to Security at extension 3000. Unless we have another on-campus interloper, further news about the bear(s) will be posted on the Daily Update. Thanks for your patience!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:36 PM

July 5, 2007

How the Other Half Lives. Well, not half. The Superrich of the University Set

Bayer HealthCare, a subsidiary of the German pharmaceutical giant Bayer A.G., announced its decision to leave the New Haven area in November and put the site up for auction. Mark C. Bennett, a Bayer spokesman, said there were 17 bidders. Both he and Dr. Levin declined to say how much Yale was paying for the property, but a Yale official confirmed an Associated Press report that the price would be about $100 million. Dr. Levin said that money was not a problem and that Yale would pay cash.

Cash. $100 million in cash.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:22 PM | Comments (0)

June 27, 2007

A little lunchtime blog maintainance

I've just added a new flickr badge - it's way down there in the right column - pulling random pictures from the Gothic Revival flickr group. If you have fun Gothic Revival pictures come join us and contribute!

I meant to do a little more archival research on my own Gothic Revival article today but got diverted - so until tomorrow I'll stick to thinks in print. I'm rereading something on style in architecture by J. Mordaunt Crook. Isn't that the greatest name in scholarship? The book is pretty wonderful, too. That helps.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:54 PM

June 26, 2007

The Carnival of Bad History

Jonathan Dresner brings you this week's Carnival of Bad History!

I've added a link in the right column to the History Carnival Aggregator, too.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:40 AM

June 25, 2007

Archaeolgist Stuff-lust

Fascinating story about an Old Persian cuneiform tablet with a sudden archaeologist GRAB paragraph.

"This shows how important it is to keep the Persepolis Fortification texts together, to keep the Archive intact,” Stein said. “Unexpected discoveries are still being made, and the meaning and reliability of every piece depend on its connections with the whole information system of the entire Fortification Archive.”

Um.

Right.

Because technologies for sharing images of objects are SO unsatisfactory in the 21st century.

Archaeologists come in several flavors; one of those flavors is The Collector, who truly, truly believes that every single fragment of the past must be preserved intact in HIS (or her) museum. I don't believe it's true. Sorry. You could send the clay back to Iran and still move forward. Start by explaining why it's been in Chicago since 1933 and you're just getting around to talking about it in public lately . . . ?

Those of us who depend on the publication speed of archaeologists can think of a few answers to that one - none of them pretty.

via Mirabilis.ca

Further:
Check the comment! Very interesting - I'm sorry I didn't publish it immediately, but it ended up in the junk folder because of the inclusion of multiple urls. Luckily I don't empty the junk folder without checking! Here's a bit: Indeed the Oriental Institute had already unilaterally begun the return of the tablets to the Iranian authorities. On the other hand, The University of Chicago does dispute the right of claimants with a judgement against the government of Iran to sieze this kind of material and sell it to satisfy the claim.

I appreciate hearing the defense that the U of C doesn't want people with claims against the Iranian government seizing and selling the materials - breaking up the collection. That's reasonable. And if Iran really doesn't want them back, that's fine.

However, the paragraph I quoted in my original posting isn't about the legal situation - a scholar made a claim about the necessity for maintaining the archive intact for study. I understand how important it is to study each piece in the mental context of the complete archive, to know that what you're reading came from a certain place, but I wonder about the necessary to keep them all in the same room in order to study them.

Why would it be useful to keep it all in one room? Well, it's possible there are serendipitous discoveries made when scholars glance across the room and see tablets they hadn't previously thought to connect. I guess I unconsciously envy people who study discrete objects which can be held in one room! My primary interest in buildings means that I've always known that I can't have the things I love. Well, at least since the days of the Rockefellers and the Cloisters it has become less possible to buy buildings, disassemble them, and rebuild them for our convenience. However, that impossibility may have set me free from stuff-lust.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:36 PM

What is "Arabic" and how do you go about teaching it?

Mark Liberman at Language Log has a great post with lots of updates about the state of Arabic mastery among State Department personnel in Baghdad and then expanding out to the question of what kind of Arabic to learn and what is Arabic anyway. I apologize that the link seems to take you into the middle of the post - click and scoll up to start reading, because the whol thing is very interesting! Among other things, he links to a fascinating article (link is to a pdf) about the problems of diglossia for Arabs and Arabic literacy; it's a long paper, and Liberman chooses several anecdotes and excerpts (tempting enough that I read the whole thing - I keep asking people who know Arabic how far apart the dialects really are; the simple answer, "pretty far").

So why is this of more than casual interest for medievalists? Read Liberman's next to last paragraph:

This situation makes the task of foreign learners more difficult, since they need to learn to deal appropriately with a very broad range of mixtures of "high" and "low" languages. This is true to some extent in any language, but the range of diglossia in "Arabic" appears to be significantly greater than in most other modern situations. You need to imagine a situation in which "Latin" is used to refer not only to classical and patristic Latin, but also to the spoken versions French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese (with none of them having any standard written form).

I don't need to imagine a situation like that - I read about it all the time. It's called "the 8th and 9th centuries in Western Europe." Roger Wright, a student of early Spanish, pushed a lot of medievalists to start thinking about what Latin was before and after Alcuin and De litteris colendis, the Carolingian edict on how Latin was to be taught and pronounced when read aloud. To simplify, Wright says (and the field has come around a long way to him) that before Alcuin, written Latin was an elaborate spelling convention for proto-Romance. The whole question of when proto-Romance ceased to be one thing and became proto-Spanish, proto-French, proto-Italian and such and the degree to which these things were separable from Late Latin is wildly controversial, but it's exactly what Liberman is asking us to think about while thinking about diglossia and dialect problems in Arabic.

The situation of Latin/Romance diglossia in the West in the 8th and 9th centuries is important to me because early on in the dissertation my historian advisor asked something along the lines of his famous "but did the hand that guided the plow understand Augustine's sermon?" Did anyone other than clergymen understand the monumental inscriptions I was looking at? Did I need to posit a tour guide to translate them for lay visitors to buildings? How seriously could we take the idea of programmatic intention if no one could read them? Funny - I blogged about this in late June last year, too.

So, back to Arabic. What do we Americans think we're doing when we teach Modern Standard Arabic on the college level? After reading the Maamouri piece I'm beginning to wonder if we're teaching Latin and then sending our students out to deal with a lot of speakers of Spanish, Italian, and French.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:19 AM

June 24, 2007

Antioch and Higher Education Institutional Failure

Colleges are self perpetuating institutions in at least three ways:

We have self-perpetuating boards. Boards of trustees replicate and pay for many of our little habits. Most boards, like the boards of most non-profits, are expected to pony up monetary contributions regularly. If board members can't recruit future members who will help they're not doing their job.

We have self-perpetuating faculties - we (I speak personally here) usually do all the work of hiring our replacements, and in theory we ought to send a few folks to grad school to replace us or people like us someday (I don't think that's responsible in the current world, but in theory we might). If we can't convince people to come work with us and can't manage to retain a certain proportion of the annual intake, we're not doing that part of our job.

We recruit students. Without students neither boards nor the faculty they employ have a real function, unless they can afford to dispense with students and become think tanks. While Harvard could, if it liked, realign its budget to stop charging tuition at all, most of us have some more serious reliance on the annual income from tuition.

Antioch failed on at least the third criterion and probably on the first. It would be vaguely conceivable that an utterly committed board could support the quixotic mission of a college with an enrollment of 130 (the latest Princeton Review figure). They didn't. They will close. There are odd little schools here and there which survive with a tiny enrollment. The people at Antioch who can make the decision are tired of trying, I guess.

Several of the most interesting colleges in America are teensy weensy - but hey! They know it and work it. And they weren't formerly 2,000 people with the physical plant to match. I would never take a job at a college so small. I can't afford it - I have no spousal income to fall back on should it close down. TIAA-CREF will only take you so far at my age. But if you're curious, here's a quick list.
Magdalen College - wacky Catholic with a Vatican II Laity emphasis.
St. John's College, Annapolis - wacky secular college, the oldest surviving Great Books program.
Thomas Aquinas College - wacky Great Books college, Catholic edition. I like their reading list. I'd rather die than live in Ojai, CA. Well, not die, but you know. SoCal? Me?
New College of the University of South Florida - there's even a public version of the experimental college. I'd take a job there, because the funding will never quite go away and because one of the smartest people I have ever known went there and flourished.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:22 PM | Comments (1)

June 15, 2007

Sometimes I think I'm in the wrong line of work

I've already brokered the first sale for tomorrow's yard sale. I asked our local baker to put up a sign in his window. He asked what kind of stuff was going to be on sale. I mentioned a neighbor's rolling dishwasher. He said to his wife (a colleague of mine, who happened to be hanging out in the shop yesterday) that their upstairs tenant had asked about a dishwasher. I mentioned it to my friend. She stopped by the bakery to buy a cookie and to offer him the dishwasher - $75, deal done. Should I ask for a commission?

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:10 PM

June 12, 2007

Moving and Loss

I'm not thinking about the existential misery of moving and leaving things behind, the immediate horror of having moved and not being able to find stuff!

Another Damned Medievalist was asking recently about note taking - most recently about EndNote and how to keep track of stuff.

I change systems periodically, which is what I'm cussing now. I know that I had a certain book (J.D. Beazley's The Pan Painter. Marburg, 1974) in hand sometime last year, took notes on it, and put them somewhere. I am morally certain they're on paper in a manila folder. Where is it!?! I only moved across the hall.

Just goes to show I should have stuck with keeping things in .doc files (though I've been gradually shifting to .txt files) and searching.

The upside? I've just consolidated a bunch of stuff - tossed piles, made a pile that MUST go to school, made a pile that MUST be used this summer, and filed a bunch of stuff. There's still stuff in boxes, but all the boxes are smaller. So, progress of a sort. I've also re-requested the Beazley from Inter library loan (yay for online ILL requesting!).

Sad to say - the only thing I really need from it is to know what the shepherd boy is carrying in the Pan side of Boston Museum of Fine Arts 10.185 (click and scroll for a detail). It's some kind of little whip or flail, but what's it called in Greek? Beazley told me. I wrote it down. I swear.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:16 PM

June 6, 2007

Eyewash for Islamic Studies

This is the most minor initiative with the most unrealistic goal I've almost ever seen:

Prime Minister Tony Blair announced Monday $2 million in funding to back Islamic studies at British universities as he urged the public to listen to the religion's moderate scholars rather than to its radicals.

Blair's government hopes the funding will lead to a major shift of the focus of Islamic studies from an Arab and Middle Eastern perspective to that of the plural society in Britain.

Two million dollars? That won't get you an endowed professorship, a decent lecture series, graduate fellowships, or even a serious infusion of books into the libraries. And Blair hopes it will lead to a shift, let alone a 'major shift,' in the academic field? Puh-leeze.

Here's the Washington Post story.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:22 AM

June 3, 2007

Rainless Reunion!

This year the rain held off until Sunday afternoon - we've just had a drenching thunderstorm (and much appreciated, too). The weather was great for the Reunion, neither hot nor oppressive.

No one from the class of 2002 who had many classes from me came back! Oh, well. I still enjoyed the food, the drink, the band, the fireworks!

If you enlarge the photo I think you can see the wing-shaped tent attached to the academic building pretty well - it's a great piece of the tentmaker's craft and comes out for all big academic occasions - convocations, graduations, and reunions.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:35 PM

June 2, 2007

Why do we put up with this? Oh, that's right. June, July, August.

Oso Raro on academic personnel politics - sudden departures, protests, job searches, compromise candidates. Read the whole thing - the conclusion is well-worth laminating.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:49 AM

One of my own schools steps up . . . Emory Advantage

A frequent commenter pointed out below that Emory, too, has a program - and I find that Coca Cola stock is indeed the gift that keeps on giving.

Emory Advantage is Emory University's financial aid initiative to help students from families with annual assessed incomes of $100,000 or less who demonstrate a need for financial aid. The program reduces the amount of money borrowed to pay for an undergraduate Emory degree. The goal is to make an Emory education attainable for any qualified student, regardless of income.

Of course one has to read the details - but it seems that families with an income under $50,000 get a full grant and $50=100,000 get loan cap of $15,000, after which grants replace any needed funds.

Emory Advantage program

previously noted on the same economic diversity front: University of Chicago program.

Harvard spending endowment to get more economic diversity into the application pool.

Hamilton College eliminates merit scholarships.

Davidson changes loan balance in aid packages.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:35 AM | Comments (0)

June 1, 2007

University of Chicago and Economic Diversity

The University of Chicago just got a $100 million gift to offer full and partial tuition scholarships to more of its students. The donor remains anonymous, but they've said that he is an alum from the 80s (yikes - I'm from that era! I think I gave $100 to Rice this year!) and "really enjoyed classes like Greek literature, which were part of the university's core curriculum."

Economic diversity is something that elite higher education seems to be starting to address.

But like many Ivy League schools, economic diversity remains elusive at U. of C., as just 12.2 percent of students come from low-income families who qualify for Pell grants, far lower than the national average. Nearly half the student body comes from the top-fifth of income earners.

"It's very hard to break through the assumption of unaffordability,'' said college enrollment dean Michael Behnke, who sees the scholarships as a powerful recruiting tool.

previously noted on the same economic diversity front:
Harvard spending endowment to get more economic diversity into the application pool.

Hamilton College eliminates merit scholarships.

Davidson changes loan balance in aid packages.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:14 AM | Comments (1)

May 28, 2007

Paper Journals

Derek Lowe has a very interesting observation about science journals:

What I've noticed is that the most widely read ones remain in paper as well as digital subscriptions. It's becoming a clear sign of respect for a journal's influence. That means Science, Nature and the like are always still to be had physically. Chemistry libraries always seem to have JACS, Angewandte Chemie and, interestingly, Organic Letters in hard copy, which is probably a good sign for the latter.

I'm on our Colleges' library committee and hear the librarians' side of the horror that isd journal subscription at least twice a year. We do our best, but we're poor. We live on the digital thing. This is an helpful little item to forward to our collections development librarian (a woman for whom I have great respect! If she had the money she'd buy everything we want.).

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:45 PM | Comments (0)

May 23, 2007

More environmentally conscious? Hmmm.

When folks say that young people are more environmentally conscious than they were at that age I think of things like this. Young people today.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:34 AM | Comments (0)

May 22, 2007

$100 Million in Art for Colby?

Colby College, the second-oldest liberal arts college in Maine, received a private art collection valued at $100 million that includes the work of American artists Georgia O'Keeffe, Edward Hopper, Mary Cassatt, James McNeill Whistler, and others.

. . .

The collection consists of 500 prints, paintings, and sculptures that will be housed at the college's Museum of Art in Waterville. More than 80 works from the gift are currently on display at the museum, which is being expanded to accommodate the entire collection.

Oh my - that's a big donation of art to a college museum. Here's the museum's site. Here's a page of works from the donation.

I saw the announcement of a new museum building at some liberal arts college up that way, but I'm not turning it up (the expansion mentioned in this story isn't what I was thinking of, I don't believe). It's not Bowdoin, either, I don't think. Hmmm.*

via Cronaca.

*It is Bowdoin - read here. $20 million museum renovation and expansion - the link thanks to a commenter.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:40 AM | Comments (1)

May 16, 2007

Balcony time!

This is the slightly less cranky version of me - grades in, summer weather (at least yesterday!), time for a glass of white wine on the balcony. This is the first day in I don't know when that I haven't had something SCHEDULED - a meeting, an interview, an exam, grading, writing under a 2-week deadline. Today I can start thinking about slightly longer projects. Just slightly, but every little bit counts. And maybe I'll hang a picture?

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:46 AM | Comments (2)

May 15, 2007

La la la!

Just finished grading!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:19 AM | Comments (0)

May 13, 2007

Me and the Kalamazoo/Battle Creek Airport

I survived another Medieval Congress - what a week. However, as per usual, I'm in airport hell. Last year Delta cancelled my flight - on a weekend when there are 3,000 extra academics in Kalamazoo, all of whom need to leave on Sunday, Delta canceled a flight. This year I got bumped (of course they're all overbooked - see the above # of academics) and am now waiting until 1:30 or so to leave. Wireless helps - and I'll be here long enough to finish my grading.

We were session #236 out of 632:

Medieval Humor: Laughter in and Laughter about the Middle Ages
Organizer: me
Presider: Simon Trafford, Institute of Historical Research, University of London

Playing the Fool on Misericords - Paul Hardwick, Trinity and All Saints, Univ. of Leeds
Laughter: Breaking the Silence - Darren Trongeau, DePaul University
Objects of Adornment? Detached Body Part Pins and Pilgrimage Badges - me.

The session went very well - there were more than 30 people in the room, they all stayed, they clapped enthusiastically, and they asked lots of questions! All 3 papers were quite good - Oz Hardwick talked about foolishness and the Fool on misericords in England. He had great slides. Darren Trongeau talked about Merlin's bizarre laughter in Silence - a 13th century romance. Merlin wouldn't tell anyone why he was laughing and it drove everyone around the bend. I talked about the anthropomorphized body part badges again; I've figured out what I think about them now - it's no longer an exploration. In the q&a after the talks someone asked if I knew of any British examples of parodic version of the Vigin Mary and I said that I didn't. Luckily I own my copy of Brian Spencer's Pilgrim Souvenirs and Secular Badges, so I didn't feel nervous about saying "to the best of my knowledge...." Afterwards a curator from the British Museum came up, gave me his card, and told me that they're currently preparing a catalog of their several thousand badges, that they do have one, that the metal tests make it conclusively English, that it's never been published (so I wouldn't have known), and that he'll email me an image!

That's one of the best reasons to go to conferences - the things you learn from people who you'd never meet otherwise.

I was also part of a roundtable discussion of blogging - Weblogs and the Academy: Pedagogy, Professionalism, and Technical Practices. I enjoyed seeing and talking about blogs with some of the folks on my link list! Lisa Spangenberg had some great advice (the link in the right column goes to the top page, I think - I'm linking here to her IT site given what we were talking about). There was a pseudonymous blogger on the panel who lives with a particularly strict IT department and campus human experimentation protocol; she couldn't have shown us her class blogs even if she wanted to without redacting names, which is way more trouble than it's worth! Scott Nokes convinced me that I need to set up a parallel all-medieval-all-the-time blog (see my Flickr Gothic Revival group for an attempt to do some medievalist outreach)). Here's his take on the panel - I agree it was poorly attended compared to the breakfast, and compared to last year. Maybe blogging isn't hot any more? There were two non-blogging-but-high-technology-course folks from Western Michigan University, Kim Laing and James Ryan Gregory. I've always wanted to try an online course - Kim had some interesting speculations about who persists in them (the non-technophobic, to put it simply).

Thanks to Elisabeth Carnell and Shana Worthen and for organizing.

I heard lots of great papers, saw some amazing images, drank some spectacularly cheap wine at the expense of publishers, and danced the night away in a carnivalesque dissolving of barriers (I hope folks post some of those cameraphone shots of the break dancing Cornell grad student). Medievalists may be stodgy, but we're not stuffy!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:10 AM

May 10, 2007

Leavin'

Laptop hard drive backed up - check
Paper printed in duplicate - check
Dog walked - check
Ticket in pocket - check
Bye! Back Sunday - if not before.

later . . .
Oh, who am I foolin'? Free wireless at the Rochester Airport! Yay! So...

Business cards - DAMN! I knew I'd forget something.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:46 AM | Comments (1)

May 9, 2007

Processional Statues and Carnival Badges

It's amazing what you can find on Flickr if you search! I've spent the early morning coffee time being frustrated in what I haven't found in the world of high art - I've been looking for some paintings or prints of later Medieval or early Renaissance processions with a crowned Virgin Mary. I'm sure they're out there and I'm just being obtuse. I began with our Visual Resources Collection and moved out through a pile of image collections - and then I searched Flickr for similar things under a Creative Commons license and found a procession in Hoboken - JUST what I need. Feel free to come see what I do with it on Friday morning at Kalamazoo!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:28 AM

May 8, 2007

Danke Schoen, Herr Professor!

“Danke Schoen, darling Danke Schoen,” I sang in a smooth baritone, “Thank you for all the joy and pain.”

You ARE keeping up with all the episodes of Herr Professor Doktor Boethius P. von Korncrake in Kalamazoo, aren't you? I leave for the shark tank day after tomorrow, myself, if the self-recognition in his story doesn't kill me.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:21 PM

May 7, 2007

Ah, Spring!

My colleague Stan Mathews went into the wood lot with a chainsaw and rescued this stand of cherry trees from the scrub before construction began on the new studio art building - and see the pay off? Sometimes even academic projects respond to a little direct action.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:32 AM

May 4, 2007

"What can I do with a major in art history?"

Here's a new answer to an old question - "You can grow up to own a major league baseball team."

MIAMI — It might not seem obvious, but Florida Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria says there are some connections between his job and his college major — art history.

Loria, who graduated from Yale in 1962, says a baseball team is built the same way as an art collection.

“The baseball team is about quality. The works of art that I have been involved with, that I have both owned personally and have gifted around the country, are works of great quality. And I think that’s where the two cross,” Loria said Thursday at the Miami Art Museum.

The story gets the name of the artist whose work Loria is donating wrong - it's Fernand Leger, not L Deger (there's something weird going on in the online typesetting, and it happens more than once - I'm supposing there's a diacritical mark gone bad). Still, this is an alternate career path for art history majors.

I had no idea. Loria made all his money as an art dealer.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:22 AM

Weirdest Diversity Statement Lately

"Reflecting the global diversity of Duke's Fuqua School of Business, the students involved come from multiple countries on four different continents," wrote Dean Breeden in an e-mail update sent to students and faculty May 2.

So is that a good thing or a bad thing? Or is the Dean trying to make lemonade out of lemons from globally diverse sources? Here's an article about a cheating scandal at Duke's business school. The second page considers some of the ethical problems of business school group work.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:00 AM

May 1, 2007

What is College For? And why don't we want frauds running the Admissions Office?

Prof Soltan says, "I actually agree with Ehrenreich that too many Americans feel compelled to go to college. But I think she's got the reasons all wrong." I agree with Professor Soltan on both counts. I agree with her about all sorts of things (click and read the parts in red especially carefully).

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:03 PM

April 25, 2007

Yale Shoots Itself in the Foot

The stupidest response to the recent shootings at Virginia Tech has been rescinded in a reversal for dim deans everywhere. The new, more nuanced policy reveals that the willing suspension of disbelief is taken very seriously in New Haven.

Stage weapons will again be allowed in University theatrical productions, in a reversal of last week's ban, Yale spokeswoman Helaine Klasky said Tuesday morning.

Administrators decided Monday afternoon to require that audiences instead be informed of the use of stage weapons before the start of every performance, she said. In the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre, which left 33 students dead last Monday, Dean of Student Affairs Betty Trachtenberg had told students that they would be required to substitute obviously fake props for realistic stage weapons in theatrical productions.

Can you imagine the stupid prologues announcing that no real weapons will be in use on stage and that no actors will really be in danger during the production? I can. I can imagine that a committee of deans is drafting sample language now.

Look, if you're scared by even seeing "real life weapons," as the Dean of Students Affairs suggests, you probably shouldn't be exposing yourself to the moral dangers of representation on the stage.

I have so seldom been grateful that when I was setting up my blog categories I used scare quotes (a lamentable practice, I know) on the Higher in 'Higher' Education.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:35 AM | Comments (3)

April 21, 2007

Looking for Inspirational Books for the Rome 2008 Group

We're choosing books for the students to read next fall in preparation for Rome!

I need some help finding an elegiac and inspiring general introduction to the wonder that is Rome.

I've given my co-director* Judith Testa's Rome is Love Spelled Backwards, but he thinks it's a little to tour-guidey. The book is, I agree, itinerary driven.

Here's an Amazon Listmania list I constructed back in 2002 - and have occasionally edited - Things to Read and Watch before you go to Rome.

I'm sure they'll read a history of Italy (probably the illustrated Oxford history). Luigi Barzini's The Italians is a fine book, though it's got to be pretty old now. I'd have them read something by Paul Ginsborg, but they're really very modern in focus and dense in prose - though he's really helpful for understanding Italy.

I'd really like to figure something out that captures the layering of Rome - civilizations, culture, religion - but without being organized as a guide book. Any suggestions?

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:09 AM | Comments (5)

April 20, 2007

What a difference a week makes - Monday and Friday

Monday, April 16th - almost to Houghton House and class - I wanted to slit my wrists and be done with it.
And today, Friday - it's Spring! Argyle has collapsed on the Hobart WWI memorial overlooking the Quad-full of students. I counted 7 kinds of sporting goods - baseball, bocce, frisbee, football, lacrosse, soccer, and whiffle ball.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:34 PM | Comments (0)

April 19, 2007

Pantheon Tales

I'm teaching the Pantheon today in Roman Art & Politics. It is the greatest building in the world.

I haven't seen Hagia Sophia yet, and it might be as great, but that's the only contender I can think of.

The Pantheon is a triumph of simplicity and complexity - and my job today is to get them to see both while understanding the fundamental mystery of the building - we don't really know what it was. For such an amazing building there are precious few references to it in surviving Roman writing. Its name doesn't tell us much, because it replaced a previous building called The Pantheon - hence the inscription naming Agrippa as the builder, even though the building we see was built by Hadrian. That's a stumper.

Oh - and I'll address the second thing out of every student's mouth when walking into the building - "I've heard that when it rains the rain doesn't fall through the hole in the roof."

Nope. There's even a drain in the middle of the floor. Sorry.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:57 AM

April 18, 2007

The Run up to the end

Some semesters wrap up neatly and others just stop. I can't tell yet about this one, but it's getting crazy. Three courses (one of which has turned into constant email correspondence about image selection for their final presentations), an honors committee, a conference paper, a community board meeting (which I think conflicts with the honors thing), judging a physics competition (really! Me! Second year in a row!) , faculty parliamentary queries, admissions office open house, and MOVING. Am I forgetting anything? Lots. Pray for me or wish me luck, as your taste runs.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:31 AM | Comments (0)

April 17, 2007

The Growth of Wealth

From CNNMoney.com:

Richest households pass 1 million mark

Report finds households with net worth of at least $5 million grew 23 percent to 1.14 million in 2006.

I wonder how many of those are TIAA-CREF households? Time, compound interest, and sound management . . . .

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:48 AM | Comments (0)

April 16, 2007

Saving Brutalism - Paul Rudolph building at Yale

Yale is renovating the Paul Rudolph Art and Architecture building (1963). Funny, but the editorial from the Boston Globe manages to ramble on about the thing and never use the words Brutalist or Brutalism. I don't know how much Rudolph embraced the term, but he was certainly part of the movement and this is a key building for illustrating the approach to - um - dealing with the user. Here's the building. Let's just say that this is not a building that inspires much alumni sentimentality - here's an article on the building from the Yale alum magazine. No pictures there. I'm really having trouble turning up any good exterior views to post.

What I found on Flickr - what you see here - is an interior view. Yes, Brutalism is the style that brought you the exposed, battered concrete wall with which we are all now so very familiar.

The Cannon Chapel at Emory (here's a page of pictures - go look, they enlarge!) is an example of how good poured concrete can get - and it's by Paul Rudolph. The ridging, especially in contrast to the interior at Yale, is sensitive - hardly brutal at all.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:33 AM | Comments (1)

April 14, 2007

Prof. Dr. von Korncrake at the Zoo

Between trips across the hall to see if the carpet has been laid in my new apartment (I've told the students who I'm offering to pay to carry my belongings that it will be more like rearranging the furniture than it is like moving) I'm fiddling with the beginnings of my paper for Kalamazoo.

Then I click over to Herr Professor Doktor von Korncrake and read his story.

Simultaneity.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:10 PM

April 11, 2007

Your Research Pounds at Work - the Perfect Bacon Sandwich

Now this is useful science - none of that silly ol' theory stuff.

Researchers at Leeds University spent more than 1,000 hours testing 700 variants on the traditional bacon sandwich, which many Britons refer to as a bacon butty (eschewing the term sandwich, said to have been coined to honor the fourth Earl of Sandwich’s habit of eating meat between slices of bread around 1762).

For the answer to the question of what is the perfect bacon sandwich, click here. With pics.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:08 AM

April 9, 2007

The Consolation of Blogging

Have you visited Korncrake - the website of Herr Prof. Dr. Boethius P. von Korncrake? I recommend his work.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:23 PM | Comments (0)

Teaching the Specialty - Charlemagne and me

This week I get to luxuriate in 9th century architecture and art. I decided - entirely selfishly - to spend a day or two in my first-half-medieval-200-level-course with Charlemagne's palace complex at Aachen as the hinge. My students have gotten used to the idea that we jump from coin inscriptions to monumental inscriptions - denarius to apse mosaic - and this will be no exception. The 806 denarius from Frankfurt with KAROLVS IMP AUG (Charles Emperor Augustus) on one side and XPISTIANA RELIGIO (Christian Religion) on the other is a big one for me - and it gets compared in my classes to the dedicatory inscription that ran around the inside of the palatine chapel, where Charlemagne is called princeps rather than emperor. Fun fun fun!

Click to see! This image is taken from Georg Dehio/Gustav von Bezold: Kirchliche Baukunst des Abendlandes. Stuttgart: Verlag der Cotta'schen Buchhandlung 1887-1901, Plate No. 40. I found it at the Wikimedia Commons, which has some of the strangest stuff. This plan was first published in 1887 and has to be use with caution. Historians and engravers had a bad habit of regularizing angles that offended them!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:23 AM

April 6, 2007

Two in one week - Lydian Etruscans and Human-sacrificing Central Americans!

Yep - trust the text, distrust the 20th century sceptics.

Herodotus might have been right about the Etruscans.

The Spaniards might have been right about human sacrifice among the Aztec, et al.

Me, I find Homer pretty convincing, too . . . but color me naive humanist until the data comes in. That doesn't mean I'm not subtle, but I'm finding systematic distrust unproductive and wearing.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:04 PM

April 2, 2007

Let's run our educational system like a business..."reviewed by senior managers"

Read and tremble, professors:

A spokesman for Bournemouth University said that a formal investigation looked into this case and that its recommendations are being put in place to ensure that all students have been assessed fairly.

He said: "The university is absolutely committed to achieving and maintaining high academic standards throughout the education process from entry requirements through to the standards set and monitored internally and externally for the award of our degrees.

"We remain confident that we are able to continue to provide the standard of education expected of us.

"In fact, we have achieved the highest possible outcome in relation to the quality of our provision from the most recent Quality Assurance Agency Audit."

This is where the newfound national obsession with outcome assessment over all leads.

The most terrifying passage:

Archaeology professor Paul Buckland, who has 25 years' teaching experience, decided that 13 second year students re-sitting exams in his Reconstruction of Environment and Economy course deserved to have failed.

A second marker ratified his decision.

However, the marks were later reviewed by senior managers and 10 of the students were told that they had passed. [my emphasis]

REVIEWED BY SENIOR MANAGERS. Not by senior professors, deans, whatever . . . managers! Managers! Oh, well. The mask is off. The University in the West is over.

Remember, the assessment movement comes from panic that if we can't prove that we're providing value added educational experiences or some such that people won't pay tuition any more. The process has gone further in Britain because pretty much all higher education is government funded. The camel is in the tent and stomping around.

There's no good way to explain to outsiders - students we want to recruit, parents who we want to pay for the process, legislators we want to give us more money - what it is we're going to DO because we aren't sure ourselves. So, instead, we've fallen back on the idea that we'll assess whatever we ARE doing and show you how well we do that thing, whatever it is. I've read a lot of assessment statements in the last few years, and that's what they boil down once I subtract the buzz words and managementese. The underlying assumption that what we are currently doing is the right thing seldom gets much attention.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:34 AM | Comments (6)

March 30, 2007

The Rotunda and the Lawn

When I was blogging about UVa the other day I remembered that not everyone has a good visual memory ('visual learners' my foot). Google images didn't turn up what I wanted, but a flickr search did. This is from Steve Cholewiak, who kindly agreed to let me upload it to the blog. Click and see his other photos, especially his amazing high definition range photos of a clock tower at Purdue! Ain't the internet great?

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:22 PM

Harvard Spends some endowment on financial aid and gets applications

Harvard's shift in aid policy seems to be paying off - though I'd really like to see a breakdown on that 26% -- how many are eligible to attend free of charge? Recruiting a really sizable percentage of your class from families that make less than $60,000 per year would be a more radical move at Harvard than race-based affirmative action. Clearly the percentage is less than 26% - some percentage of families make between 60-80K. Another interesting thing to see will be the yield - the percentage of students who decide to show up in the fall. Will that shift?

March 29 (Bloomberg) -- Harvard College rejected 91 percent of applicants for the coming academic year, the highest rate in the school's history, after an expansion of financial aid encouraged more students to seek admission.

A record 22,955 students applied to be part of the incoming freshman class at the college, the part of the Cambridge, Massachusetts, university focusing on undergraduate education. The school sent out 2,058 acceptance notices in December and today, according to a statement posted on its Web site.

Harvard, which has the largest endowment in the U.S. at $29.2 billion, increased financial aid for the school year starting in September to allow students from families earning less than $60,000 to attend free of charge. Undergraduate tuition, room and board and other mandatory fees will rise to $45,620 for the year.

"The new Harvard financial aid initiative continues to send a clear and unambiguous message that Harvard welcomes students of excellence regardless of their financial need,'' said William Fitzsimmons, dean of admission and financial aid.

About 26 percent of the incoming class is eligible to attend free of charge or at a reduced cost offered to students whose families earn $60,000 to $80,000 annually. Harvard increased its financial aid pool to $103 million for the year, the most in the school's history.

See my posts on Hamilton (no merit awards) and Davidson (no loans in aid packages).

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:51 AM

March 28, 2007

Attack of the Fundraisers - on Jefferson's Lawn?

Now this is a sign of the long-term change in the University in the West from self-perpetuating educational institution to self-perpetuating fund-raising instrument if nothing else is. One of the Lawn Pavilions at the University of Virginia is about to open up and a non-academic administrator wants it.

A controversy has erupted at the University of Virginia over whether UVa’s top fundraising officer will be allowed to live in one of the Lawn Pavilions, prestigious residences typically reserved for UVa’s best and brightest professors.

“The Lawn is not supposed to be a sales gimmick,” said fourth-year student Allison Murphy, who lives in one of the rooms along the Lawn. “It’s supposed to represent the educational foundation of the university community.”

The controversy stems from the desire of Robert D. Sweeney, UVa’s senior vice president for development and public affairs, to live on the Lawn when Pavilion VI opens up this summer. Because of a little-noticed policy change instituted by UVa’s Board of Visitors last month, President John T. Casteen III has the power to nominate any UVa vice president for a Pavilion slot.

“I think Mr. Sweeney is a good person. But I just don’t see him being around at all to interact with the Lawn community,” Murphy said. “And even if he was, I’m not sure the students would really gain much from that interaction.”

One Pavilion is already filled by a UVa vice president. Patricia Lampkin, vice president and chief student affairs officer, lives in Pavilion III. Murphy said she found that acceptable because Lampkin has a strong link to the student body.

Mike Slaven, another student living on the Lawn, said he thought it would be “inappropriate” for Sweeney to move into a Pavilion.

“I think it’s not just the fact that he’s never taught classes, but the fact that he’s a fundraiser that’s upsetting people,” Slaven said. “As the university relies more heavily on private gifts, some people are uncomfortable with the extent to which the university relies on fundraising and the compromises it is making to get there.”

Of course, it would help the case of the anti-fund-raisers if the occupants really were "UVa’s best and brightest professors" rather than (mainly - see the list at the end of the article) deans of schools, but still - I understand the point.

Here's a nice photo tour of UVA with pleasant pics of the Lawn.

Here's a more interesting panoramic photo.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:32 AM

March 26, 2007

Joy of joys - advisement week!

The biannual month of joy begins - advisement for sophomores and juniors (seniors are graduating - they don't need any more advice - yay!) this week, first years next week, registration next week and the following week.

Here's the note I sent my advisees:

Hey, folks -
Here's my schedule for the week. I am giving you precedence over the first year advisees (they can deal with me next week).

Choose a time and email me back. First come, first serve.

Handy hints:
1. Look at the description of your major and minor (gosh I hope you have one!) in the catalog - what are you missing?
2. Are you going to do a term abroad? How does that change your pacing for major/minor and goals? Is there something you haven't addressed yet, and do you need to take care of it BEFORE you go abroad?
3. Are you going to do a term abroad? What are the prerequisites and when should you take them? If there is a language pre-req or a specific course for a term abroad spots are usually held for those accepted for the program, but you do have to register for them.
4. Are you doing a term abroad in the Fall? You DO have to register for those courses to be taken abroad!
5. Make a list of 6-8 possible courses with their section number and meeting times. The best way to do this is the trial schedule on the back of the paper version of the Schedule of Courses. PLEASE don't come to see me without a list of courses. Don't make our time together a frustrating scramble to find 4 open courses.

I always give them something like a real schedule so they can see that much as I love them they are not the only items on my agenda. For instance, this week I have lunch with 2 job candidates and then 2 consequent job talks to attend. I have classes. I have dog walking to manage. I have a faculty lunch to attend. I have a board meeting. Next week I'll be reminding the first years that I have a faculty lunch talk to give and that they can't expect to find me in my office early that afternoon.

Oh, well - let's pray they all pay attention to my point 5.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:12 PM

March 25, 2007

Creative Misunderstanding

Working on the paper for this weekend clarified something for me - I think. I think what's going on in the literary tradition of some French farce death-bed scenes is a creative misunderstanding of a long-established iconography (I hate saying 'visual iconography,' but that's what I mean - the art stuff).

My paper was more or less descriptive - a 'hey, look at this as an example of The World Turned Upside Down' kind of job. As I got closer to finished with the paper as it stood I realized that the upside down part was a misunderstanding of the visual material, maybe deliberate maybe not, by the poets.

Now I've got to plow back through my Harold Bloom to remember everything I've forgotten about the anxiety of influence. Not to mention misreading. I started this life as a comp lit guy - and Bloom really is right (well, as close as humanists get to 'right') about this stuff. His taxonomy of misready (see the first link) is very helpful - and art historians have never made as much of it as we should have. Bloom had the misfortune to do all this work shortly before the great tidal wave of French post-Heideggerianism (or late fascist theory - I have a very low tolerance for de Man's apologists) swept everything before it. I teach a seminar on historiography and have wondered about this overlooktion in some detail.

What I've got is a concrete image - a death-bed scene involving a bulging sack - with one clear meaning in high and late medieval iconography and a very different interpretation in the farces. The sack in the pictures is, so far as I can tell, invariably involved with the death-bed of misers and represents their ill-saved gains. The poets play a different game - devils come to capture the soul on its escape from the body in a leather sack - thus taking the presence of demons and sacks and misreading. Rereading.

This is not an uncommon process - it is a very neat example of it. And funny. What more can I want?

Here's the visual tradition - the death of the miser from Moissac, France - c. 1120. Now I think the demon is holding the money bag because he's taking the gold to Hell to melt and give to the miser to drink (i.e., punishment fits the crime). That's mere intuition.

This painting is almost contemporary with the 1496 farce I talked about - Bosch's Death of the Miser of 1485. Be sure to choose the link for details.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:33 PM | Comments (1)

March 23, 2007

One scholarly appearance down...

One paper down, 2 to go between now and graduation. Went well. I'm tired.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:55 PM | Comments (2)

March 22, 2007

Let's run this college like a business!

Here's what happens when you run a start-up college like a start up business - Tom Monaghan's pet board fires Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J., from Ave Maria University - and asks him to clear his desk and leave campus the same day. Don't these people understand the 'not in front of the children' principle? Traumatic personnel decisions (as opposed to firing embezzlers) are best left for June, July, and August. Instead, they do it during the month between sending out admissions offers and the due date for deposits for the fall. And if they don't believe that parents notice this kind of thing? With a current enrollment around 100 I don't expect Ave Maria to have a bulging 1st year class of 2011.

The law school furore was not a good sign. I like this entirely non-Catholic-blogsphere coverage.

*Amy Welborn's
entry with lots of comments
*Whispers in the Loggia part 1, with press release. Part 2, with comments from Fr. Fessio
*For semi-insider coverage (well, this is someone who stayed in Michigan), Fumare.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:58 AM

March 20, 2007

CPUSA Trove to NYU

The Communist Party USA has donated a huge collection of material to NYU - lots of fascinating stuff to sort through and eventually study.

I'm a little bemused the New York Times files it in the ARTS section. I guess they're thinking that it's like a museumy-kinda-thing?

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:12 AM

March 19, 2007

And Speaking of Colleges and Need - Hamilton Eliminates Merit Scholarships

Davidson drops loans from its aid-packages for those who can demonstrate need (see my post about that), and Hamilton College (which is in Clinton, NY, while Colgate University is in Hamilton, NY - welcome to the Wonderful Geography of Upstate NY Colleges and Universities) has decided to eliminate merit scholarships.

Here's their press release:

HAMILTON, N.Y., March 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Hamilton College will no longer offer merit scholarships, beginning with the first-year class that enrolls in the fall of 2008.

"We are discontinuing our merit scholarship program so that we can provide more need-based aid," said Dean of Admission and Financial Aid Monica Inzer. "We believe we are the first college or university in the U.S. to abandon its merit scholarship program."

Approximately 5 percent of Hamilton's $21 million financial aid budget is spent on merit aid, according to Inzer. The new policy will reallocate about $1 million each year for additional need-based aid.

Inzer said demographers predict a college student population with greater financial need in the coming decade, and colleges and universities must prepare for that reality.

"We have been and plan to continue being a college that meets the full demonstrated need of each student we accept," Inzer said. "Our intent is to grow our financial aid resources over time, and this is another step toward accomplishing that objective."

Hamilton has awarded a limited number of merit scholarships since 1997. On average, 15-20 students out of a first-year class of 470 have received merit scholarships of up to half tuition.

Inzer said Hamilton is in a strong position to make the change in policy now. She cited the college's record numbers of applications and the increasingly stronger academic credentials of entering students. The college recently announced that it had received 16 percent more applications than a year ago and 8 percent more than its record total in 2001. The average SAT scores for entering students is approaching 1350, and nearly three-quarters graduate in the top 10 percent of their high school
class.

"Hamilton has a reputation for being a school of opportunity," Inzer said. "A larger percentage of Hamilton students receive need-based aid than nearly all of our peer colleges. This change in policy will help us sustain that legacy."

More than half of all Hamilton students receive need-based financial aid. The average financial aid package (grant, work-study, loan) for those students exceeds $26,000. The College's current capital campaign seeks to raise $35 million for additional student scholarship endowment.

Students currently receiving merit aid and those members of the Class of 2011 who receive merit scholarships will have those commitments honored for the duration of their undergraduate career at Hamilton. My emphases

Note that while Davidson has about 33% of its students demonstrating need Hamilton has more than half.

Hamilton's total estimated cost:
Undergraduate Fees (2006-2007)
Tuition and Fees: $34,980
Room and Board: $8,910

Davidson and Hamilton each have about 1,700 students.
Davidson - about $420 million in endowment.
Hamilton - about $658 million.

And the facts here at These Colleges - about 1,900 students (and headed to 2,000 if we have our way), merit based scholarships, and loan packages.
Costs 2006-2007: tuition $33,730
room and board $8,828
fees $958
total of $43,516
Endowment - about $156 million. Huge sigh. Wanna kick us some change? We have a capital campaign on.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:25 PM

Davidson Eliminates Student Loans

This is an interesting press release! Davidson College is eliminating loans from student aid packages -- all 'need' will be met with grants and student employment. Need is a tricky thing (and Davidson, specifically, drove my mother crazy about aid in the spring of 1980 . . . she would've killed me if I'd wanted to go there after the correspondence she had with the admissions/financial aid folks), but this is certainly one way to make college more affordable for some people - some folks will graduate debt-free.

Read carefully, though. The offer isn't as generous as it sounds at first.

Here's part of the press release:

DAVIDSON, N.C., March 19 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In an effort to make a Davidson education affordable for all students, Davidson College (http://www.Davidson.edu) and its Board of Trustees announced today a new financial aid policy that will eliminate loans at the institution. As a result, all Davidson students will have their demonstrated financial need funded entirely through grants and student employment.

"We believe this new policy is the necessary response to the financial situation facing many applicants and their families, and know it is consistent with a core value of the college," said Davidson College President Robert F. Vagt. "A Davidson education should be affordable for all students, regardless of means. This is an historic change for Davidson and for liberal arts institutions across the nation. With the support of
the entire college family, from students to faculty, trustees to alumni, we are confident this bold reform will prove to make a significant difference for our students, our institution, and our community."

Taking effect in August 2007, this new policy makes Davidson the first national liberal arts college in the country to adopt such a policy, eliminating student debt for its graduates. Davidson will meet 100 percent of the demonstrated need with grants and student employment, but families retain the option to take out education loans as part of personal financing.

Davidson will maintain its strict commitment to practicing need-blind admissions, meaning the family's ability to pay for a Davidson education has no bearing on whether or not the student is admitted.

Currently, 33 percent of Davidson students receive need-based financial aid, with packages inclusive of grant, loan and campus employment. Nationally, college students borrow $53.8 billion per year to cover college costs. My emphasis.

I note that 67 percent of students can't show need. I bet a bunch of them ARE taking loans. Because Davidson is only talking about "demonstrated need" a bunch of people will still graduate with a pile of debt.

Like me. I was offered some kind of named scholarship at Davidson and received a separate, polite letter telling me that because I could not demonstrate need the scholarship would pay $100 per semester (or year, I forget). Even in those far off days $100 wouldn't cover books for a semester. My mother inquired. The tactful admissions officer pointed out that should my father die suddenly I would certainly be able to demonstrate need and the scholarship would kick in. Hence, I was strongly encouraged to go elsewhere or face Mother's wrath. Which is something to behold.

Oh - bear in mind that this is what Davidson thinks 67% of their students can afford without any help (demonstrated need):

The fees for the 2006-2007 academic year are as follows:
* Required student charges (tuition, student activity fee) $30,194
* Room (double) $4,536
* Meals (full board) $4,054
* TOTAL: $38,784

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:13 AM

March 16, 2007

"Because really, bitchery doesn't seem so petty when it's poetry."

You all read Big Arm Woman, don't you? Go read aboutHaiku Friday.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:38 PM

Where do we go when we die?

Argh!

Help!

Anyone have a nice medieval or patristic theological reference to the soul escaping through the MOUTH?

You see, Heaven and Hell are irrelevant at this point - I'm dealing with the exit strategy and I thought it would be more clear cut. I'm an art historian (waaah!) and hate finding proof-texts in theology, but that's what I'm looking for.

You see, I'm writing a paper. It wasn't really my idea - but a friend of mine wanted to go to a conference and she didn't want to go alone, so she persuaded me to submit an abstract to a conference on Humor & Laughter in Literature and Film being sponsored by the Binghamton University department of Romance Languages. So here I about to talk in public again about something so late medieval that half the books I looked at to write it have "Renaissance" in their titles.

Still and all, it's fun. The low-hanging fruit in humor is the World Turned Upside Down (which has the advantage of being the keynote speaker's topic, so he might come to our session). I messed with literary devils this summer and fall so I pulled out another one - death bed scenes. André de La Vigne wrote a massive play on the life of St. Martin of Tours for production in 1496 (oh my gosh - they knew where America was already. What am I doing?). It had a cast of 200 and took 3 days. Along with the solemn business of the life of Martin de La Vigne wrote a farce (which I'm talking about) and a morality play - the farce served as an entr'acte and the morality was played at the end. I'll mention it in passing.

So there's a death bed scene in which monks say sad things about Martin and Martin says uplifting things about Heaven. Then there's an expiration scene - Martin's soul, in the shape of a dove, flies up to Heaven. Between the two is the farce!

The farce shows how the devils carry the soul of a wicked miller down to hell. It is an inversion (upside down time) of the saint's deathbed. Now what I'm messing with is this - a trainee demon, who has never attended a deathbed, shyly asks Lucifer from what orifice the soul proceeds at death. Lucifer replies "from the backside." So what we see when the death scene takes place is an angel above the bed waiting for the soul and the trainee demon underneath the bed - it is the canonical deathbed scene distorted (turned upside down).

Take a look at Bosch's 1490 version of the Death of the Miser. There's an angel behind the Miser and a variety of demons - but they're lying in wait especially above the canopy.

Or at Moissac in the 12th century - here's a view of the porch.

Here's a detail of the death of the Miser (Dives) scene - go to the center right and see the bed, the miser dying, the weeping wife, and demons above the bed grabbing the little baby, the soul, coming from his mouth.

See my point?

Yes, it's belabored. Welcome to academe. Can I make it last 20 minutes? Damn straight. I don't really have time to drag in literary sources.

So what the Burgundian folk of Seurre, the town that hired André de La Vigne, saw was Martin dying a bona mors, an entr'acte about a BAD death featuring a demon under the bed (oooh - childhood fears?), then St. Martin's good death and a dove flying up to Heaven.

You'd think I could've found what I was looking for in the works of Caroline Walker Bynum, but no. I'm dim. Call it the end of a week off and help a guy out.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:10 PM

March 15, 2007

When Humanists equationize

Perishing field + perv dept chair = problems.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:07 PM

February 28, 2007

Do you have signed permission to ask that question?

The New York Times has a fascinating article about Institutional Review Boards and the humanities and social sciences.

Institutional Review Boards began as a federal mandate to control human experimentation - but the definition of 'experimentation' has broadened. A lot.

Bernadette McCauley, a historian at Hunter College, said she ran into trouble a couple of years ago when she tried to help students working with the Museum of the City of New York on an exhibition about Washington Heights. She asked if a few nuns who had grown up in that neighborhood and whom she knew from her research would talk to the students. And that, Ms. McCauley said, was “when things went haywire.”

The review board discovered the request and lambasted Ms. McCauley for failing to consult with it, she said. The board also demanded proof that previous research for a completed book did not use any archival material involving living people and banned her from doing any research.

Don't you love that audit of her previous book? The possibility for abuse without appeal is enormous. For instance:

Debbie S. Dougherty and Michael W. Kramer, two former members of a review board at the University of Missouri, Columbia, who wanted to study review boards, had to first get their own board’s O.K. Although they thought their project was exempt from board approval, the only entity authorized to make that decision is the board itself, and the only appeal if the researchers had rejected the ruling is also the board.

An unintended consequence of this? Well, more historians might actually work on, you know, dead people. That part I could get behind.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:17 AM

February 27, 2007

Where I Work

Houghton House in the snow - I'm here 5 or 6 or 7 days a week this semester, since my classes are all here rather than what we art-folk call On Campus. Here's a little potted history of Houghton House from the departmental website.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:18 PM | Comments (0)

February 23, 2007

Higher Education in Independent Palestine

Is it a civil war when the two universities in Palestine are like this?

Islamic University is closely identified with one of the main Palestinian factions — Hamas — while Al Azhar is a stronghold for its main rival, Fatah. For three days this month, from Feb. 1 to 3, the side-by-side campuses became a battleground for gunmen from the two factions while the universities were on winter break and largely deserted.

Though the New York Times headline, "Palestinian Universities Dragged into Factional Clashes" [my emphasis], seems inaccurate when one reads this part:

The Islamic University, founded in 1978, has nearly 20,000 students, a majority of them women, and caters to those who seek a religion-based education. All the women wear black abayas, or long robes, as well as head scarves, and some wear full veils.

Many Hamas leaders in Gaza have some link to the university, among them Prime Minister Ismail Haniya.

At Al Azhar, established in 1990, there are more than 12,000 students, and most offices feature a large photo of Yasir Arafat, the longtime Palestinian leader and Fatah chief who died in 2004.

As competition between Hamas and Fatah has increased, students from the two universities have waged occasional stone-throwing clashes, as happened last spring.

A large photo of Arafat sounds like the al Azhar university entered into factionalism. Let's not be disingenuous - if I.U. was already tied to Hamas, can't we wonder whether Fatah FOUNDED al Azhar?

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:11 AM | Comments (1)

February 1, 2007

Rome 2008!

Tonight I went to an information session run by our Center for Global Education aimed at students interested in studying abroad during the Spring semester of 2008. That's because I'm headed back to Rome next winter!

Some of my readers have been following this blog since that wonderful semester in 2003 - 21 students and me in Italy (sad to say all those archives died in the great db crash of a couple of years ago). This time there will be about 35 students, me, and Nick Ruth (and his lovely family) - yay! a co-director!

Here's the official web page for our program. I'll post more interesting versions of the course descriptions here soon.

This is my first blog announcement of the program. There were lots of minor complications in our program application and official word of approval was annoyingly delayed at the committee level (I still haven't quite figured that one out). Almost everything is clear now (well, except actually setting up the program!), so I suppose it's time to publicize!

We had about 25 students this evening. The provost's ideal number for 2 professors is 35, so I guess we'll find more. I know we'll find more - the Rome program is always oversubscribed.

L'anno prossimo a Roma!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:55 PM | Comments (0)

January 29, 2007

The Campus Visit and Academic Hiring

This morning a new variable occurred to me in the story that is understanding academic hiring.

Could any candidate see past the situation that confronts her or him in Geneva lately? Here are the Weather Channel's predicted highs and lows for the next 10 days as of this morning, Monday, January 29, 2006:
17/13 - Mon, 1/29
21/15 - Tues, 1/30
22/17 - Wed, 1/31
28/21 - Thur, 2/1
32/18 - Fri, 2/2
19/13 - Sat, 2/3
17/14 - Sun, 2/4
20/14 - Mon, 2/5
22/14 - Tues, 2/6
26/17 - Wed, 2/7
What I'm wondering is not from our side but from the candidates' position. Let's take 3 departments - Political Science, Anthropology, and Art. All three have tenure track searches this year. Because of the variability of national conference timings, Political Science brought its candidates to campus between Thanksgiving and exams; Anthropology/Sociology has candidates on campus about now (they had folks here last week and may have more this week - I'm not really keeping up with that search). Studio Art won't even have conference interviews until lateish February and we may still have candidates coming in March.

In many job searches some candidates do have other options. Do departments who regularly have campus visits in January have a harder time attracting their first choices? Since the timing pattern is national (but weather is regional) one could look at a much larger pool than our tiny employment situation by checking Cornell and Syracuse University.

Oh, the variables are too complicated to say anything important - people decide to take one job over another for all sorts of good, bad, and purely personal reasons - but I have to wonder. And I feel sorry for any candidate trying to make a fair assessment of what it's like to live in Geneva year round on the basis of this month - oh, and for any department trying to convince candidates that it isn't always like this.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:28 AM | Comments (0)

January 23, 2007

Do you want to know when I dislike living here?

I hate living in Upstate New York when I have to go back out to evening meetings night after night in sub-freezing weather. Weather.com lists one day with a temp above freezing (and that at 33 degrees) in the 10 day forecast. I have a meeting tonight (Human Rights Commission), tomorrow (faculty mini retreat about an ongoing review of Reviews - you know, "what is it we do to review faculty for tenure and is it working?"), and Thursday (information session for 2008 terms abroad).*

I'd rather come home, eat supper, and read. Perhaps weeks like this wouldn't be any better in a more temperate clime, but I wouldn't have to wear so many layers every time I walk outside.

Friday? No break - I leave 12:30ish on a Library Committee Field Trip to SUNY Geneseo. What is it that I'm supposed to be doing with my time in order to get tenure? I forget. Maybe they'll explain on Wednesday.

*o.k., o.k., I should be quite so cranky. I realized later that the info session for 2008 isn't until Thursday the 1st of February.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:10 PM

January 19, 2007

First Weekism - Roman Art

I think my Roman Art & Power class is off to a good start - I have a bumper crop of Latinists and Grecians who seem very interested. Only one of them has any art history background, so far as I can tell, so I'm getting to build some vocabulary and art historical method into the early days. Yesterday we did a good bit of naturalism vs. idealization, which is especially fun with Roman portraits. It's very easy to think that faces like this one are warts-and-all veristic, the closest thing to a photograph in the Ancient World, but I find it more useful to remember that one can overemphasize wrinkles and warts to emphasize the subject's maturity and wisdom - two personal characteristics the Romans valued very highly.

All in all it never pays to assume that vision is telling a simple truth. It's not that it can't tell the truth, but that truths worth telling are seldom simple.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:55 AM

January 18, 2007

Building Community in a Collegium

The pitiful state of American higher education got me an invitation to quite a nice cocktail party tonight (with cheese leftovers for Miss Argyle).

Yes, we have something like 160 faculty members (let's not argue about the numbers -- can there be anything more depressing that FTE arguments? I've always wanted to demand a show of hands for the faculty who came to these Colleges as a tenure track hire. I sure didn't, and I've been Presiding Officer of the Faculty [Meeting] already).

So, the Committee on the Faculty* (CoFac, the de jure voice of us when talking to the Other, be it the On Campus Other** or the Trustees) decided that what we need are more social events. I flatter myself that the humble efforts of the untenured folks to hold regular Happy Hours influenced the decision. So, there we were, drinking free beer and wine and eating some cheese and crackers. Argyle thanks you very much that you didn't eat all the cheese. Cheddar floats her boat. I had many lovely conversations, shook the hands of cute babies, and generally whooped it up.

So what made me cranky?

Well, I counted three non-City of Geneva-residents: a resident of the county seat who is also a member of CoFac and didn't have an entirely free choice; an Ithacan who is currently seeing a Genevan; an Ithacan who explained to me when I saw him at the Colleges'-Christmas-bash-for-everyone-in-town that he was turning over a new leaf.

In other words, the usual suspects were there. I was very pleased to see the effort and the result - 50 souls isn't a bad turnout at all - but I am disappointed to have been the only person from my department, whatever the excellence of the reasons of those who weren't there. Maybe the Faculty Lunch Junior/Senior Speed-Dating concept will help.

*Ooooh - the chair of CoFac blogs here.

**I do not favor the frequently-heard locution The Dark Side to refer to Them. It is not a sign of inherent evil that their priorities are different from ours (and often wrong-headed and wrong) but only a sign that they are not Us.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:36 PM

January 15, 2007

Best Course Evaluation Comment EVER!

In response to the question 'evaluate the class sessions' --

Long and dark.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:57 PM

Worst First Day of the Semester EVER!

So - the day started with an ice storm. And then a power failure that lasted from about 9:20 until shortly after noon - neatly making it impossible for me to show slides or digital images in either of today's classes (luckily I had LOTS of handouts to go over!).

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:55 PM

January 12, 2007

Ah, one of those twice-a-year horrors...

Syllabus making! Hurrah! The only thing worse is textbook adoption.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:02 PM | Comments (0)

January 2, 2007

Rewrites

School doesn't start here until the 15th, so I'm trying to get some work done not related to classes. I'm finding myself wishing that I talked more like the way most academics write - my conference papers do not convert easily to sonorous academic prose. I write and talk pretty much the way I write here - too breezily. My learning, whatever weight it may have on its own, lies light on the page - or hangs out in the footnotes. I just wish there was a living to be made in adult ed.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:15 PM | Comments (0)

January 1, 2007

Start the new year the way you want to continue . . .

Coffee - Check
Email - Check
NetNewsWire - Check
Chatting - Check
a little something looked up on the library catalog - Check - so I'm already working! Yay!

Country ham (thanks, John Sims!) and black eyed peas to come at lunch time, and the New Year will be well under way. The dog - luckily she hasn't woken up yet. She's started her new year the way she will continue; she got up, said good morning, changed spots, and went back to sleep.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:38 AM | Comments (0)

December 27, 2006

Presidential History

I'm about willing to hear historians speculate on the Gerald Ford legacy or Gerald Ford as a president now - after all, it's actually a legacy rather than current events once someone is dead. How could one evaluate Jimmy Carter without his most recent publication, for instance? If there's not some distinction between history and journalism I don't want any part of the former.

Though from my point of view most American history is current events, and talk of presidential i.q. and presidential rankings are the intellectual equivalent of squabbling in the departmental mail room. That's a medievalist for you, though.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:32 AM

December 19, 2006

The price professors pay for progress

I submitted grades electronically yesterday. This process that saves many steps - I don't have to go by the Registrar's office in person, the Registrar's folks don't have to key in the grades, students can check their grades online rather than waiting for reports in the mail. The price? The first query came at 5:04 p.m.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:12 AM

December 15, 2006

The Cobbler's Elves fail me again

I left a bowl of candies out on the counter with the blue books, but alas, no elves took me up on my offer last night. I guess it's their busy season, too.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:34 AM | Comments (0)

December 13, 2006

Why we grade . . .

This is the funniest web page I've read for a while - cover letters from Hell from Killian Advertising. Next semester I will show it to my students to help explain why I care about their writing - and why they should, too.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:17 PM | Comments (0)

December 11, 2006

Hard December

Sorry for the slow posting, but this is a fairly bad endgame as semesters go. The only best thing that's happened to me this month is the airfare for my family trip - it's only going to run me $240 round trip from Rochester to Chattanooga. I don't think I've ever done that well!

I shouldn't whine so much - my department had a wonderful and sweet surprise farewell party at my house for a colleague who is leaving us (kinda, sorta, for a year's leave of absence and then probable final resignation). We managed, despite some email bumbling on my part, to keep it a surprise. That was a good thing and happened this month.

Alright, alright - I'll go home and light a scented candle or something and grade.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:37 PM | Comments (0)

December 4, 2006

Advent as a Penitential Season

I have no problem keeping Advent as a season of penance - I'd better get credit off of time in Purgatory for grading. December has started badly for me - bronchitis on top of a pile of papers. At least the exhibition project for the first year seminar seems to be in good shape. Some of them were up until 3 last night posting, but the overall exhibition looks good. Now we have to prod them to revise things. It's a pity my colleague and I feel cautious about copyright issues, or we could show you the results - but we're still in the problematic days of a new technology.

My colleague told me on Thursday (I think it was) that the Victoria & Albert in London is no longer charging for academic and non-profit printing of its images - at least its digital ones. Read the report at Cronaca.

Onward through the pile of 101 papers!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:38 AM

December 1, 2006

The end of the apostrophe

Arnold Kling mentions the problem of preposition usage in Wizard of Oz Diplomas. I can sympathize.

I have come very close this semester to putting in writing on the assignment sheets what I have so far only suggested in jest: students could cut their losses by deleting all apostrophes.

You see, I don't allow contractions. College papers are formal writing and contractions are inappropriate. That leaves the apostrophe to form the possessive, which can be easily (if slightly wordily) avoided.

What it would also wipe out is the abomination formerly restricted to sign painters of inserting an extraneous apostrophe before plural S (go here for a Flickr search full of examples). Wouldn't it be nice never to read one of those again? My method of banishing the error would be mechanical rather than leading to any greater understanding of the underlying grammar - but hey. It's December. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:11 AM | Comments (0)

'Higher' Education - What is it worth? Not much if you don't bring much to it.

End-of-semester depression? Perhaps.

Read Arnold Kling on Wizard of Oz Diplomas. I, too, wish my students, almost entirely native speakers of English, could use prepositions idiomatically. Non-prescriptivists will say, of course, that their usage is their usage. You know, the same people who disagree with me when I mark a noun/pronoun number disagreement for "artist...their."

Read the New York Times on the difficulties facing people who attend and graduate from 2nd and 3rd rate colleges in India - A College Education with out Job Prospects.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:43 AM | Comments (0)

November 30, 2006

Class blogging rewards the fiddlers

I have two classes going at Movable Type to create online exhibitions right now (which I will not advertise for copyright reasons - if we keep it private maybe we're covered by fair use). This year I've added an oral instruction in both classes which seems to have paid off a little: web work rewards fiddlers.

I encouraged groups to choose a single person to be the enterer-of-information and to try to choose that person on the basis of a willingness to tinker. I think I see that happening in one group (of 8) in the First Year Seminar and 2 groups (of 7) in Art 101. This year in Art 101 when I asked how many people have ever had a LiveJournal or MySpace page account about a third raised their hands - I told them that if they've done that they can do this. We'll see!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:09 AM | Comments (0)

November 15, 2006

On Language learning, particularly Latin

I commented a few times on Rich Leonardi's post on learning Latin - he was asking for suggestions for what text to use next and stepped into the direct method (sometimes called "natural") vs. traditional method vs. modern linguistic method trap.

Me, I firmly believe in the direct method to be used by native or highly competent non-native speakers who are instructing little children (what? You don't want to hire someone as a live in tutor?), the traditional method of grammar and extensive memorization for anyone past puberty, and the modern linguistic method for someone working in a classroom with a modern linguist. Resources for all three types exist for learning Latin, though some are more available than others.

Rich Leonardi was wondering about the decision between the workhorse traditional Wheelock's Latin, Collins Primer of Ecclesiastical Latin, and Hans Orberg's Lingua Latina. I own the first two and was criticized for criticizing the third without having seen it (I swear I criticized the method, not the book or its otherwise unknown-to-me author). I do, however, own a different direct method course from a group called The Family of St. Jerome which denounces the 'traditonal' grammars in the same terms in which the advocate for Orberg's series denouced Wheelock. Let's see what the two have to say:

Rich's commenter Scott said about the non-direct method:

If you want to learn to _puzzle_ through syntax, and _decode_ Latin (rather than understand it as a language), pick up Wheelock's or Collin's.

The Family of St. Jerome says about the direct method over others:

...you learn from the very beginning to think in Latin and to avoid the usual method of "deciphering and decoding" by grammatical analysis and by constructing "translations".

Do you see a pattern here? You should. This is a pedagogical position that attacks other methods. That makes me feel better about attacking their approach (not them, their approach).

The direct method is indeed the way babies learn languages. Adults have great powers to puzzle through problems and decode - it's part of what separates us from the pre-pubertal.

That's why the "direct method" is not how adults learn languages best, even in a total immersion environment - and that's not an environment that most of us can pull off for home instruction. I tried it for Italian in 2002-03, including a 5 month stay in Rome. I had a 30 day immersion course and then during the five month stay 4 lessons a week - all with extremely well-prepared native speakers. Yes, I learned to speak Italian, but I'm still not sure if I did it as well as I did French at 19 - and I know my Italian vocabulary will never be as large as my French vocabulary. One of the serious problems of teaching languages for speaking rather than reading is that the repetition rate has to be much higher for aural (ear-aimed) learning; therefore there's just less vocabulary and fewer syntactic patterns presented in an oral/aural course than in a paper-based course. Here's an earlier posting of mine on spoken Latin in the modern world.

I learned Latin the unfair way - I went to a reasonably old-fashioned school that offered 5 years of Latin (8th-12th) and I took it all. I learned using Jenney - and not the new fangled edition with color pictures! Then I went to a college where the requirement for getting AP credit, if I remember correctly, was taking a course at level placed -- and I continued with Latin. We used to joke that the only requirement for majoring in classics was 4 or more years of high school Latin, and that rings reasonably true (though one of the two classicists here at these Colleges didn't take a classical language until college, but she's smart as a whip and had 4 years of German and at least some French in high school).

Have you ever heard the old saw "What's the best Bible version?" "The one you READ!" I feel much the way about the following. Anything you do and do consistently will work, but . . . here's a list of my suggestions for those learning Latin divided by the kind of learner.

First of all - decide on your target!
This is essential. Every professional language text author has made a selection of vocabulary to teach and has repeated the most important words frequently in example sentences to drill your memory. What's the goal? To read Caesar in 2nd year Latin? To let you read the Aeneid in 4th year Latin? To participate in the Mass? To pray the Breviary in Latin? Those are very different vocabulary lists! If you bought an old edition of Jenney and then tried to follow the Mass you'd be lost. If you memorize Scanlon & Scanlon perfectly you'll find Caesar very, very hard going - let alone Virgil.

Are you an adult who wants to read Cicero?
Why on earth? Oh - pardon me - I don't wish to question your motives! Latin is wonderful, whyever you want it.
1. Sign up for formal courses with someone who knows Latin.
2. Buy Wheelock and hire a tutor (I tutored someone through Wheelock once myself).
3. Buy Wheelock and join a self-study group - here's an online one called Atrium which I found through Rich Leonardi's follow up posting.
In at least the first two cases there's money involved - that is a fine mechanism to motivate an already interested adult to keep up with assignments. Adults need puzzles and interesting sentences to read. Some of us do better at memorizing verb conjugations than others, but an adult learner can see the pattern and extend the pattern much more readily than a 12 year old.
4. Don't buy Wheelock and do it all by yourself. It's way, way, way too complicated. So is Latin grammar in general - you need a guide.

Are you an adult who wants to understand the Mass?
1. Buy Scanlon and Scanlon's Latin Grammar and Second Latin - especially if you are a devotee of the 1962 Missal. They were designed, as far as I can tell, for previously unlucky (pre-1968) religious and laity who hadn't been tracked into Latin in high school. They're the two dullest books in the world physically, but they have a controlled and graduated vocabulary list based on the Mass and the Psalter. If you memorized every word in the Grammar you'll do o.k. with the missal and breviary. 2nd Latin is aimed at the same audience who now want to read philosophy, theology, and canon law.
2. Buy Collins's Primer of Ecclesiastical Latin, which is much the same thing. I've never used it to teach or studied its vocabulary lists, but it seems less complete to me. It's a one-volume version of Scanlon & Scanlon and mixes and matches its order. S&S has the virtue of restricting the vocab and syntax in vol. I. Back in September when I was contributing to Rich Leonardi's question post I spotted an online study community for Collins, though, so that would help.
3. Buy one of the direct methods sets for the sake of hearing it. The Family of St. Jerome (see above) not only offers a course, but has lots of recorded books of the Bible. Father Suitbert H. Siedl, of St. John of the Cross, O.C.D., has a German accent that drives me NUTS, but you may not react that way. Don't think you're going to learn Latin by listening to tapes anymore than folks learn Spanish in the car on the way to work who aren't massively linguistically talented already - but hearing won't hurt, especially if you stick to the Psalter while using the Scanlons' book. Oh - and the "direct method" in its pure practice depends on native or near-native speakers and frequent contact; that's why it just won't happen on your own. Sorry.

So you're an adult with long-ago Latin who wants to expose your children to the language?
This is the hardest category. You're going to have to recommit to learning some Latin. The target is also messy - do you want ecclesiastical (complete with Italianate pronunciation) or classical (with the modern reconstructed classical pronunciation one tends to learn in high school and college in America)? How old are they?

One resource I'd recommend is a phrase book, like the Family of St. Jerome's Quomodo Dicitur (How is it said?) - that kind of thing is fun and handy for answering questions. Children always want to know things no one can answer without reference books. Bolchazy-Carducci sells a computer based version called Words of Wisdom from the Ancients which looks very interesting - but they admit it's aimed at high school and college students.

For the ecclesiastically-inclined I'd recommend getting the texts of the standard daily prayers in Latin and starting there (there are any number of books or places on the web to find Latin prayers). You already know what they mean - but finding a decent word-by-word break down of the syntax is trickier. I think the best system is to teach children to parrot the prayers (but to separate the words carefully) and then move on to analysis. I managed to explain the dative better to a bunch of home school children using the Lord's prayer (give TO US our daily bread) and the Rosary (pray FOR us) than with anything else. Of course, the home schooled tended already to know English grammar. The prayers are a limited vocabulary to start with, but kind of an eccentric one. I mean, is it really useful for any reason other than praying the Rosary to learn the Latin word for belly/womb and no other body parts? Cotidianum is not a word I have run across often in Latin other than in the Lord's Prayer.

Buy a Cassell's dictionary - it has Latin/English AND English/Latin - it helps.

While googling I found this great bibliography of Latin for Kids - you have to scroll for the language resources - but just look at all the great books about the classical world! They have some neat things - the one which I'd like to try out is Minimus: Starting out in Latin, aimed at the 7-11 year old set, which comes from the British Joint Association of Classical Teachers. There are lots of resources in that JACT constellation, too. The JACT upper level books are a little 'direct' for my taste, but they're still sound.

No list of classical resources for home or school would be complete without a plug for and link to the Bolchazy Carducci folks! They publish masses of interesting stuff - including Artes Latinae, the mid-20th century linguistics-driven direct method system, which I understand is very popular with home schoolers. Again, I think the promotional literature overstates wildly the accessibility of this material to people without good guides (whether full-time teachers or occasional tutors). The current version includes options for "classical" and ecclesiastical pronunciations, which is an enormous concession on their part to the market. Bolchazy has grammars and readers and workbooks of all sorts.

The best thing about teaching the small is that you get to use games. Even when I taught high school I used chocolate kisses to teach the indirect object (Da MIHI basia mille!) but it can go a lot further. Use post-it notes to label everyday objects Door = porta or janua, floor = solum, chair = sedes or sella. When you get to hinge = cardo you'll realize that eventually you need to start teaching the oblique cases, because you can't get cardinal without cardinis, but hey - it's a process. This, by the way, is how I learned the names for Italian household objects - that and a picture Duden!

Animal noises! All language learning should include animal noises! Here's Dr. Weevil's quiz.

Omigosh! I forgot English Grammar for Students of Latin! This is a great series - buy it for every language anyone in your house is trying to learn. I, again, had an unfair advantage. Captain Tate, my 7th grade English teacher, believed in teaching the English subjunctive (after all, weren't we all going to be begin learning foreign languages that had a lot more of it left?) and diagramming sentences. In 8th grade Latin I Mr. Humphreys seldom had to explain the difference between noun and verb, subject and object. Imagine the luxury!

Thanks to TVG from Atlanta for asking me for more detail. I hope this helps!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:25 PM

November 13, 2006

The Best Thing I Learned on the Field Trip . . .

. . . and it wasn't that our students now consider Austin Powers an OLD movie (as in "I love watching these old movies and seeing the previews for other movies I've seen!").

There is a fullsize reproduction of Moses' Tabernacle in Lancaster, PA!

Who knew?

And if you knew and hadn't told me, shame on you!

The Fullsize reproduction of Moses' Tabernacle as found in the book of Exodus is at the Mennonite Information Center - and I may have to order one of the Tabernacle Model Kits. I'm certainly going to bring the website up next semester when we talk about the Codex Amiatinus, which has a lovely full-page diagram of the Tabernacle.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:13 AM | Comments (1)

November 12, 2006

Return

Gosh am I tired. I suppose they are, too, after the bus rides we've had. Today was much better than Friday, but . . . .

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:27 PM

November 11, 2006

DC Trip

Let's just say that the bus ride was a 10 hour bonding experience.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:53 AM

November 10, 2006

Arnaldo Momigliano and me

I'm trying to make all my reading right now do double duty - and since I'm teach 3 chronologically neighboring courses next semester that's not difficult. I just packed a book of Arnaldo Momigliano reprints for the trip down to DC - On Pagans, Jews, and Christians (1987 - most of these are articles from the last 15 years of his life). He was always good on history and historiography - and what he has to say about Judaism in the Roman Empire is useful to me for both the Roman Art & Power course and early Christian (which I call First Christian Millennium - up to but not emphasizing Romanesque). The articles on "The Disadvantages of Monotheism for a Universal State" and "Some Preliminary Remarks on the 'Religious Opposition' to the Roman Empire" are both essential.

If I have time on the way back I'll read more of Ittai Gradel's Emperor Worship and Roman Religion, which is looking very interesting (after about 20 pages).

Both of these authors are interested in what really goes on in Roman religion - and if we can even use the word religion usefully about Romans. Gradel is pretty clear that it's a word with an inherently christianizing meaning - which doesn't mean that it's useless or wrong, but that it must be handled carefully.

Two of the big topics of Roman Art & Power are Augustus's Altar of Peace and the emperor cult. One of the things I'm going to have everyone do this time through is write a short paper about a coin (shades of T.S.Burns, for those of you who've known me too long) and imperial cultus. Last time I didn't require the exercise, but one of the best things I got all semester was a short paper on a coin showing Augustus's wife (or widow, and that was the point - was she the wife or mother of the emperor at the time of the striking?) Livia as SALUS AUGUSTA, which means something like "Imperial Welfare."

This also helps me teach First Christian Millennium by reminding me in considerable detail what it is Christians are refusing to do in sacrificing to the emperor.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:33 AM

On the road!

Wish me luck - I'm off this noon-time to DC with 150 students (or so!), 25 of them my immediate responsibility. My folks will be hitting the Freer and Sackler Galleries and the National Galleries. The weather is supposed to be wonderful -- should be fun!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:41 AM | Comments (0)

November 9, 2006

Not ready for prime time, but take a look at some local history

I'm a medievalist. I live in Upstate New York. There's no medieval architecture. However, there's lots of Gothic Revival - and revival styles interest me.

I've been working on our chapel off and on for the last couple of years. One part of that project is the journal kept by Abner Jackson, president of Hobart College from 1858-1867. I'm very interested to see how much I can say about the intentions behind the building than I can ever say securely about Medieval buildings.

I had a little grant last year to have students transcribe the whole thing (we're missing 1865, damn it, but we got the rest of it) and now the archivist and I are mounting it as a blog.

Take a look!

We're posting photos and realia from the archives to enrich the document - and it's already starting to be fun. I'd like to publish it, eventually, but an online version may satisfy that. The illustrations would certainly be richer this way!

Oh - when I say "not ready for prime time" I mean that we've got it on the Wordpress free server right now, but there will eventually be a stable, campus URL for the site. Feel free to look and link, but the link will be broken sooner rather than later.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:25 PM | Comments (1)

Preregistration

Ah, the joys of advisement time, that happy, happy season of appointment after appointment!

Our stranglehold to force students to see their assigned advisor is to distribute the PIN numbers needed for online registration to the advisors. I have only two PIN numbers left on my desk. Two miscreants have never responded to my emails offering appointment time sign-up lists. Both of them are sophomores, and I expect them to contact me today. You see, sophomores may begin registering tomorrow morning. Last semester's PIN number won't work.

Sadly for them, my dog has a vet appointment this afternoon. I will not be available for appointments. This has been announced on the emails. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth during this learning experience.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:26 AM | Comments (4)

November 6, 2006

What I did on Saturday

Yay! We dedicated the new studio building and the renovated Carriage House this weekend!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:22 AM | Comments (0)

November 5, 2006

Pedagogy Questions

I'm participating in a mass-field trip to Washington, DC, next weekend (I think 50 of us are going). My colleague and I are taking our First Year Seminar to the Freer, Sackler, and National Galleries for form and content.

Content is obvious - there's great stuff to see, and it's better to see real art than to look at photographs.

Form may not be so obvious. Our students are mounting virtual exhibitions for their term projects. We would like them to pay attention to the way real exhibitions work. To further that ambition I'm preparing a handout (of course!). Here's what I have so far:

1. Pay attention to the relative length and relative detail of different kinds of explanatory material on the walls. Do the authors provide references on the wall? Why or why not? Be sure to look at a catalog in the museum store and see how the presentation of the same information is handled differently.
2. Consider the introductory wall text as an outline for the exhibition. What does the author do to set up later rooms? What kind of information is and is not included in the introductory text? Does the introductory text mention individual works of art?
3. Can you figure out an organizing principle for each room? Chronological? Thematic? Based on genre? Based on size? How does the exhibition designer help you? Is there a preferred route for you to take through the room, and if so how does the designer guide you?
4. What kind of details does the curator provide on labels for individual works of art? What is left out?
5. Does the exhibition have a conclusion or does it just stop with the last work?

Does anything else spring to mind? Remember, my goal is to help 18-19 year old students visit galleries more thoughtfully.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:36 PM

November 2, 2006

Apple Country

One of the delights of living in Upstate New York this time of year is apple-munching. I counted 10 varieties of loose apples at Wegman's today - all locally grown and most locally developed. Geneva is home to the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station and they do apples. Lots of 'em. I think my favorite variety developed in Geneva is the Macoun.

The Experiment Station is here for the same reason William Smith College is part of Hobart -- William Smith was a rich nurseryman who wanted to support his industry and support women's education. Though their own history page doesn't mention it, I have read that Smith sold them the property (which was adjacent or very close to his own nurseries) for a nominal sum. Subsequently, Smith tried to found a Spiritualist university (this is the Burnt Over District, after all), but failing that about a hundred years ago he came to an agreement with Hobart College to found a Women's Department, which became William Smith College. The link above (at 'William Smith') makes interesting reading.

So, about apples -- today I bought Honeycrisps, a variety developed at the University of Minnesota but still good. They have their own website. Honest. And trademarked advertising taglines. Nevertheless, they're tasty apples.

I'm nobody's baker (luckily I'm in the same department with frequent reader and occasional commenter Ms. Procrastination, so I don't have to be) - I eat them raw. The most I dress apples up is to slice them over a salad with bleu cheese and pecans (a touch which I shouldn't underestimate - it makes a beautiful salad).

Finger Lakes wines and great apples - I guess they're some consolation for the snowflakes I saw on this afternoon's dog walk.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:18 PM

November 1, 2006

All Saints Day - cutting the head off a Zombie Error.

Someone offered me a platform and I'm gonna say something!

The Colleges' organist runs a monthly event at the Chapel called "Music, Meditation and Munchies." She usually plays a selection of seasonally appropriate organ music (occasionally there are other musicians), someone (usually a faculty member) offers a brief reflection, and there are treats. Today is All Saints Day and here's what she's playing (subject to last minute timing revisions):

Jean Langlais--Prelude for a Saints Day
Clarence Dickinson--Joy of the Redeemed (based on O Quanta Qualia)
John Weaver--Sine Nomine (which intertwines the hymn For all the Saints with "When the Saints Go Marching In")

I'm giving the meditation. Mainly I'm showing resurrection, judgment, and entry into Heaven scenes from the tympanum sculpture at Autun, France, and the van der Weyden's Beaune Altarpiece.

However - since someone asked me to say something about All Saints I'm not going to resist explaining that Halloween is not in its origins a pagan festival. Yes, I'm going to play the old "Mediterranean Popes didn't give a damn about local Celtic festivals" card. It won't work, it never does, but there's no honor in letting people believe that medieval people believed the world was flat.

Yes, there were catch-all festivals for otherwise uncelebrated martyrs as early as the 4th Century in the eastern Mediterranean (I think that most of our sources are Syrian Greek or Syriac). That holiday was celebrated in mid-May, as it was in Rome in the 7th century. In 609, the Emperor Phocas gave the Pantheon to the popes as a church (I need to go read whatever the document is for that one!) and Boniface IV dedicated it as St. Mary and All Martyrs on May 13th of that year. By the way, it's a commonplace of people in my end of the Middle Ages, I don't know how well-supported, that this was the first temple building just flat turned into a Church. Oh, well - that shows that a feast of All Martyrs or All Saints was being celebrated by a bunch of non-Celts in the Mediterranean quite early.

Gregory III (who died in 741) dedicated a new chapel in Old St. Peter's to All Saints on November 1 - transferring (at least by implication) the date of celebration in the diocese of Rome (and perhaps Italy) to that day. Gregory IV around 840 extended the feast to the Church in the West, what we nowadays think of as making a revision to the Universal Calendar. Still no sign of Celts or hollow turnips.

So the juxtaposition of Samhain and All Saints Day is just that - a juxtaposition, not an adoption or adaptation by the Church of a pre-existing Celtic holiday, unless you want to think that there were Celtic pagans living in central Italy in the early 8th century celebrating Samhain.

Oh - here's another stake in the heart - the origins of the Christian festival of All Saints is not a metaphorical harvest festival or seasonal transition - especially the harvest of the dead - since the festival was in origins a May festival. Though the 9th century Pope might conceivably have had such an idea (though to believe so you have to also bear in mind the difference between November in Italy and in northern Europe in terms of Labors of the Months), the 4th century Syrians certainly didn't. It's not a bad metaphor (there are plenty of vintage=judgment metaphors in the New Testament), but that's not behind this date.

We'll see how it goes. As anyone who has been watching television lately knows, it's hard to stop a zombie - and even if you do, there are more coming up the street.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:58 AM

October 24, 2006

Sorry for the hiatus

I apologize to anyone who missed me, but I ran off to a conference and then had to play catch up.

The conference theme was drama in the Middle Ages, and I fell back on "those who don't do, teach" - I gave a pedagogical paper. It went over well, though - I have a good module for handling the high Middle Ages in European Studies 101.

1. Read Rutebeuf's Miracle of Theophilus
2. Study the north transept portal at Notre Dame de Paris, which tells a slightly different version of the Theophilus legend.*
3. Discuss ecclesiastical administration and organization, homage, written contract, Jews in the 13th century, magic, Hell, intercession and patronage, the role of the Virgin Mary, the Ptolemaic model of the cosmos -- the list, as one says, goes on.

It was well-received in the conference sense and, I believe, in the "ooh - I'm going to try that!" sense.

And I'd like to acknowledge Another Damned Medievalist for her two read throughs.

*sorry for the link to someone's flickr site, but I'm queasy about posting copyrighted pictures and am having trouble doing better.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:43 AM

October 17, 2006

Fr. Foster and the Silliness of Modern Spoken Latin

Gosh am I tired of the cult of personality that surrounds Fr. Reginald Foster who has recently been let go from a job for failing to generate revenue - and have been since the first profile I read of him in the New Yorker or the Atlantic or wherever it was and I realized that he was a a classic example (pun entirely intended) of the dissenting Catholic bureaucrat.

This is a man who made his living (and let's not forget that someone let this American live in Rome all these years!) off our tithe money and enjoyed saying shocking things about what he believed.

So he said 'em in Latin. Cute. Let me ask any of his followers - how many of you actually find an opportunity to speak Latin regularly? Me, I read it. A lot. Some of you might do that, too. Me, I read and speak Italian as much as I can - once a week if I'm lucky. If I went to a bit more trouble I could watch the news all the time in Italian (RAI might help me retain linguistic competence, even if it made me dumber by doing so).

Repeat after me - spoken Latin in the 21st century is an indulgence. If Fr. Reggie really loved the poor as much as he loved Cicero he'd be feeding 'em full-time. I don't think there's much wrong with indulgence, but I recognize that the possibility for a man with Fr. Foster's university degrees to wear workman's clothes and sit in the gutter with the poor reflects as carefully crafted a persona as my tweed and service on civic committees. This article suggests that Fr. Foster starts with about 100 students a year. One of the comments in this link suggests that he had an attrition rate of about 50%. This is not someone who is going to change the state of a langauge.

Spoken languages have to be spoken constantly to be real. Go read about the reinvention of Hebrew* to see how it can and did work. Compare that to summer Latin experiences separated by 11 months of monoglottery and get back to us about how much you luv Latin.

We all have our hobbies. Mine is listening to murder mysteries on iPod while I walk the dog. Some people like to talk about rubrics they'll never live out without becoming bishops themselves. Some people spend their energy on an attempt to bring back spoken Latin. Let's not pretend these enterprises are much more than hobbies or hobby horses.

By the way, I have nothing against Fr. Foster - he's evidently an amazing teacher or he wouldn't have generated the cult of personality. But if it were all about spoken Latin for itself, Americans would have responded the same way to that other Carmelite promulgator of spoken Latin, Fr. Suitbert Seidl

*My favorite version of this shocking story is Herman Wouk's in This is my God.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:58 PM

October 15, 2006

Bible in Art

I hate this time of the semester - I'm choosing textbooks for next semester and suddenly getting more interested in that than this.

On the other hand, I'm teaching the first half of medieval for the first time in 2 years (it's a long story involving a leave and team-teaching for why I haven't lately). I haven't decided yet, but I did decide to look at the handouts I use for Bible Knowledge.

You see, I gave up long ago. None of them know anything about scripture. None of them will have learned anything about scripture since they got to college which would be useful for understanding the cultural deposit. Therefore I have to teach them - or stop and explain every other slide.

So my Art 270, Art of the First Christian Millennium, begins with a Bible Knowledge workbook. I've been doing and redoing this for a few iterations (including the semester in Rome) and it's getting pretty sophisticated. I sat down just now and flipped through my currently favored textbook and checked and am pleased with how closely the images they chose match my list of themes to cover.

Click on extended entry if you want my current list of what will get you through a pre-Renaissance art course.

Infancy – Annunciation
Infancy - Visitation
Infancy – Nativity
Infancy – Visit of the Shepherds, Magi
Infancy – Flight into Egypt
Infancy – Herod and the Innocents
Miracles – healing blind man
Miracles – Lepers
Miracles - Raising of Lazarus
Miracles – Woman with Flow of Blood
Mission – Feed my Sheep
Mission - John the Baptist
Mission – Mary & Martha
Mission - Parables - Shepherds
Mission - Parables - Vines
Mission - Peter & Keys
Mission – Storm on Sea of Galilee
Mission - Transfiguration
Mission - Whoever has done it unto the least of these…
Passion – Christ before Pilate
Passion – Crucifixion
Passion - Entry into Jerusalem
Passion – Garden of Gethsemane
Passion – Lamentation / Deposition
Post-Passion – Ascension
Post-Passion – Doubting Thomas
Post-Passion – Emmaus
Post-Passion – Harrowing of Hell
Post-Passion – Marys at tomb
Acts - descriptiosn of early Church (esp house space)
Acts – Peter and Tabitha (unusual choice)
Acts - Pentecost
Apocalypse – 144,000
Apocalypse – 4 Horsemen
Apocalypse – Devil bound
Apocalypse – Firey furnace
Apocalypse - Heaven – Elders on Thrones
Apocalypse – Matthew version – in the sky
Apocalypse – One Enthroned on Rainbow
Apocalypse – Woman Clothed with the Sun

Marian – Coronation
Marian – Dormition

Genesis - Adam & Eve
Genesis – Cain & Abel
Genesis – Noah
Genesis - Abraham – 3 Visitors, Sacrifice of Isaac
Genesis – Jacob & Esau
Genesis – Joseph
Exodus – Red Sea
Exodus – Bronze serpent*
Samuel – Choosing of David
Samuel – David & Goliath
Samuel – Jesse’s Dream / Tree of Jesse
Kings - Ark of the Covenant
Jonah – under gourd vine as well as Whale bit
Daniel – Susannah and the Elders
Psalms – David as composer
Psalm 1
Psalm 22/23
Psalm 43/44
Psalm 150

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:11 PM

October 3, 2006

Parthenoning with Parents

This past weekend was Parents' Weekend at these Colleges; like a lot of schools the faculty put on brief samples of what we teach (here's this year's roster). I had 2 sessions planned. In case of rain I was ready to talk about Greek Revival Geneva and classical Greek architecture - but luckily it was reasonably nice out in the morning. I talked for a while about the Parthenon and some of the oddities or refinements in the building and then we went out on the Quad and made a Parthenon.

One of my regular commenters forwarded me the link to the exercise - and I strongly suspect him of the graceful line about Ottoman gunpowder. I think I'll steal that for the next time I do it.

The reason to do one of these living models of a building isn't for the fun of it - though it is fun - but because it helps students (of any age) understand the scale of the building in an appropriate way. You see, we are bodies (or embodied beings) and we move around and through buildings. Studying them on screen is even less satisfying than studying paintings on screen.* Video is bettter than still images, but moving around is better than sitting and watching. So we act out the building and then we understand how big it really is.

It also gives me a chance to make things said in the classroom a little more vivid - like how you can make right angles without contemporary surveying tools or how you can determine whether a foundation is level with a water-filled trench (I don't think I covered that one on Saturday, but I usually do).

Next year I want to do a Gothic chevet!

*Though paintings have many of the same problems of scale - and it's the same body problem. Scale shock is very real with 2-d works, as I talked about some time ago when I visited the Dada exhibition at MoMA.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:53 AM

October 2, 2006

Campus Adirondack Chairs

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned the little groups of adirondack chairs scattered around campus. Here's a picture I took this morning of the group on the side of the Quad.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:35 AM

Taste and Politics

Tyler Cowan, an interesting economist at George Washington University, asked a parenthetical question the other day:

(By the way, my wish list of research projects for other people includes a serious study of how well political views predict cultural tastes. And are libertarians people with the meritocratic intuitions of the right but the cultural preferences of the left?)

It didn't take long for one of his readers to start working on an answer, based on the big social science database by correlating music preferences and attitudes towards things like income redistribution and sex.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:58 AM | Comments (0)

September 27, 2006

Misplaced Modifier; Usage

So I'm waiting at the café for my student doing an independent study on medieval clothing and jewelry* and flipping through the New York Times** science section - interesting article on hysteria! Mouse brains - yum! When I read this sentence:

The project emerged because of Mr. Allen’s desire to make a significant contribution to neuroscience.

I mentally tick a us in the margin ("usage"). We (the professorial 'we') use "make a contribution" and "science" to refer to primary researchers, not funders.

The author probably means: The project emerged because of Mr. Allen’s desire to spend his Microsoft loot on neuroscience. That's too colloquial, but he got trapped by euphemism into a usage mistake.

Can you tell I'm in full grading-mode?

*You might remember that I have an developing interest in not just the thinginess of medieval badges (a form of jewelry) but also on their public presentation on clothing (how and when people wore them). The student was on our term in Rome last semester and kept asking my colleague about the jewelry and clothing in medieval and renaissance works - my colleague pointed her in my direction for an independent study. So far, so good!

**Did you know that there's a concerted effort to get students to read daily newspapers? I don't know who funds it, but there's a newstand of FREE newspapers in the lobby of the dining hall - Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, USA Today, and New York Times. It works a little - I see students reading papers. I definitely see professors reading papers!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:11 AM

September 18, 2006

The Easier Side of College Towns

A few weeks ago I commented on one of the prices of living in a college town - unplanned access to advisees. One of the nicer things about living in a college town is that one goes to events on campus. When I lived in Atlanta I often skipped things even when I lived within a mile of the Emory campus unless they were sponsored by my own department or friends were involved.

Here in this town at these Colleges there's just enough chat - not peer pressure, just chat - to keep you going. Tonight was the first President's Forum evening. The speakers were, unusually, not from the life of politics or journalism* but two memoirists - one of our professors and an alum/faculty-brat-made-good.

So I went to hear chapters read aloud from terrifying and amusing memoirs (one of each). Deborah Tall, a professor of creative writing, grew up in a family of magazine-like suburban conformity. Her father was an orphan who remembered nothing - or so he said - about his childhood or parents. But then he was an engineer with a top secret clearance, so secrets were his business as well as his habit. I think I have to buy a copy and see how her genealogical search turns out: A Family of Strangers. Evidently she found the last living relation in the Ukraine!

Steven Kuusisto was raised on campus - his father was president of the Colleges throughout the 1970s (not an easy time!) and he himself graduated in 1978 and is now a professor of both creative writing and disability studies at Ohio State. His reading was less terrifying in most ways, but interesting enough to look up in the library:
Eavesdropping: A Memoir of Blindness and Listening

To add to the small-liberal-arts-collegeness of the evening I misremembered and got to campus in time for a 7 p.m. start only to see a sign announcing a 7.30 time -- so I got a cup of coffee in the café, sat down on one of the adirondack chairs so thoughtfully scattered around campus, sketched some gables of the postcard buildings in preparation for an Art 101 assignment, and then watched some lads playing touch football.

*Our president is - umm - a former Clinton Whitehouse staffer among other past lives. He knows a lot of folks from the political life and journalism.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:43 PM

September 13, 2006

Between Episodes of Law & Order

Well, the professoriate has certainly lost the respect of popular culture:

See how hard it is to fire tenured professors, when USA premieres The Nutty Professor II: The Klumps."

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:59 PM

August 31, 2006

Ewww! Grading!

Ewwww! It's day 4 and I'm already grading! It is a practice quiz, but still!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:49 AM

August 30, 2006

A Hard Break

The first two days of classes here at these Colleges were miserable and rainy. I was whiny at first, and then I realized how better to convey the END OF SUMMER than a little misery? And now things are clearer with sunny skies predicted for the rest of the week. That works, too.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:32 AM

August 27, 2006

The Price of living in a college town...

The price you pay for living in a charming college town? You might walk out your front door and run into a needy advisee - and have to sit down and solve a schedule problem right then and there.

Oh, well - better than putting it off to tomorrow! And there was an open section of pre-Calculus, too....

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:57 PM

August 26, 2006

Community service kick-off

It wasn't a beautiful day for working in the Park, but 13 of 'em + 2 orientation mentors got assigned to Pulteney Park for a clean up...here they're doing an evil icebreaker to learn each others' names. The Park looks neater, too -- we concentrated on grass-growning-between-bricks, edging and making neater flower beds. All in all, a morning well-spent acquainting the students with the community they've in which they've chosen to spend the next four years.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:48 AM

August 25, 2006

Newbies!

Day one of orientation down, and so far so good. I'm too tired (at the moment) even to watch the movie I just got - and I've got a serious Whit Stillman thing. They seem like a good crew, and the parents reception was the most intense of my brief career. Lots of questions.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:27 PM

August 24, 2006

Gearing up

The last week - including the unboxing day - has been devoted to gearing up for the newbies, 13 of whom are my responsibility until they declare a major; some of them might even declare art history and be 'mine' for 4 years.

My co-teacher and I are mainly ready for tomorrow's start-up.

Mainly.

It would be nice if there were a podium installed already with controllers for the smart classroom I'm supposed to be teaching in! The exigencies of summer catering in Houghton House (there was a wedding there as recently as the last weekend of July) meant that conversion into an art history classroom started in early August.

As per usual, I hvae too much to cover the first day anyway.

Here's her version of the class website. Mine will be up eventually - I'm having css trouble again. *sigh* I should just break down and ask for Dreamweaver or some such.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:19 PM

August 22, 2006

The 'After' photo - Tuesday Late Afternoon

Many, many hours later. Everything has a home. The yawning gap behind me and to the left will be filled with a two-drawer lateral file, when it arrives - I'm going to start my eighth year at these Colleges with some furniture ordered for me! Me, me ME!

Well, the provost did buy me a good desk chair when the position converted to Tenure Track. I shouldn't whine too much. And my previous office made up for any furniture short-comings with its amazing loveliness.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:32 PM

The 'Before' Photo - Tuesday Morning

The first box I opened had most of the Oxford English Dictionary in it, so I shelved those and got my colleague and neighbor Lara Blanchard to take this picture.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:27 PM

My week. Books!

We're about to open a new studio art building here at these Colleges - look for more information here later in the week! Because several of the studio faculty have moved out to new office/studio spaces some of us have moved upstairs. The movers packed my office and moved it while I was getting ready to leave for NYC. When I came back I couldn't unpack my books because the walls and woodwork (notice the built in shelves) needed to be painted. So...today I finally unpacked! Here are 3 views.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:24 PM

August 17, 2006

Hypocrisy - the most common intellectual sin.

This is a useful reflection on Gunter Grass, Paul de Man, and putting one's past under erasure. That is to say covering up. Or projecting.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:09 PM | Comments (1)

August 4, 2006

Interested in the Money in 'Higher' Education?

The College Affordability blog from the Center for College Affordability and Productivity.

Via Marginal Revolution.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:52 AM

August 1, 2006

New Building Excitement!

Yay! They're landscaping around our new Elliott Studio Arts Building!

Unfortunately there's no way to link directly to individual stories on the Colleges' Daily Update page, but you're welcome to go look. I'll post some pictures later this week.

The good and bad news is that I'll be changing offices. I love my current office -- chandelier, figured parquet floor, elegant wall paper, marble fireplace -- but I will not mind a little more privacy.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:03 AM

July 14, 2006

Why guard the gates?

Prof. Soltan explains why universities have to fire wackos, not coddle them, not entertain their notions, not let them express themselves to our students:

Much of the culture outside the university lazes about, secure in its belief in astrology, government plots, and the attainment of riches through the state lottery. These are popular views; this is popular culture. The university exists to educate people out of the stupidities of popular culture and into a considered, dispassionate, skeptical, and flexible view of the world. Given the enormous power of popular culture, the university will always be a fragile institution, distrusted and mocked and ignored for its lack of emotionality and its dedication to the pursuit of truth rather than comfort.

The entire integrity of the university rests on this serious truth-seeking, so that any incursion into it by unreasoning fanatics is a deep wound, to itself and to its reputation.

More immediately, each unreasoning fanatic in the university represents a demoralizing uselessness within it, an active, daily erosion of its students' capacity for free and rational thought. As the fanatic vehemently expounds his conspiracies in front of the classroom, some students may mistake his passionate intensity for impressive conviction, his rigid deadly dullness for fascination.

She also points to a book I knew must exist somewhere, but had never heard of, Three Christs of Ypsilanti by Milton Rokeach. Somewhere in Enthusiasm Ronald Knox mentions in passing that there were two female Jesuses in New York State in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, neither evidently aware of the other. I always hoped to read a more thorough treatment of that situation - and now I know where to find it.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:19 AM

July 13, 2006

Finally! A Reason to steal!

Now here's a university president who not only admitted (well, I think that "confessed" is the operative term) that he stole, but gave a reason: "During his most recent trial on the money laundering charges, Holderman claimed he needed money to pay for treatment of his bipolar disorder."

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:57 AM

July 11, 2006

The Plantation System Bites Back

I'm very, very happy that two adjunct professors are in the news with little notice paid to their adjunctery. The Plantation System of "Higher" Education is biting back:

Ann Althouse on Kevin Barrett, the University of Wisconsin 9/11 denialist. She is ashamed and annoyed.

Deb Frisch, frequently called a "Professor" at the University of Arizona. The link goes to the Inside Higher Ed story which does a good job of covering for the University of Arizona's hiring decision by making it clear she wasn't a full-timer. Or at least not tenured; who knows, she may have been teaching a full load?

Hey, Professoriate - the general public, however, makes no distinction between people with tenure, on the tenure track, and doing the day labor in the groves of academe.

Of course, as I pointed out not long ago, wackiness is not restricted to the short-term contract folks: Emory has a tenured -- ummm -- alternative thinker. He's stalled out at Associate Professor, but psychic communication with aliens doesn't constitute moral turpitude.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:15 AM

Summer and Planning

Yesterday I picked up thirteen folders and my summer ended. Kind of.

I'm teaching what we at these Colleges call a First Year Seminar*. The 13 folders are those of my 13 charges - not just for the fall course but until they declare a major. At least 3 of them show signs of interest in becoming art history majors, so there's some possibility they may be my advisees for all four years (barring leaves and terms abroad).

So there I was reading high school transcripts and puzzling out the abbreviations the College Board uses for test names (UH seems to be the U.S. History achievement test - but I'm not entirely certain). My next task is to contact each of them and include in my email not only cheerful greetings but also the suggestion that they may consult me about their courses - are they happy with their preliminary schedules? At least 3 or 4 of them shouldn't be, based on the limited information I have. So now the work of the semester begins!

*From the description: First-year students are housed by seminars, and the instructor of your seminar will be your advisor. In that sense, all of our First-Year Seminars are communities of learners. Some of our seminars have a distinctive structure that emphasizes intentional connections between different learning experiences. These seminars form “Learning Communities.” To be part of a learning community is a great way to start your college career. You will find our learning communities below.

I'm engaged in the most over-determined type, of course - a learning community (all my students are automatically enrolled in European Studies 101 as well) and a paired seminar (a colleague is teaching a seminar in parallel, and her students are automatically enrolled in Asian Studies 101). If these students don't get a vivid experience of learning across disciplines it won't be for our lack of trying. Here's the little intro the students saw.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:05 AM

July 7, 2006

Reprieve! Summer lasts 3 more days!

I had understood that we who are teaching first year seminars (general link here, my section here) in the Fall could pick up advisement folders for our students today - and that the summer was now more or less over.

Hurrah! They're not ready yet! I have to wait until Monday!

(But, I have to admit, alas! The mysteries I noticed yesterday when I looked at the tiny bit of information available to me online (so far) will have to remain mysteries until Monday.)

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:24 AM

July 3, 2006

Cookouts and celebrations

Last year's edition of the cookout I went to yesterday was held Memorial Day weekend and was in celebration of tenure for the host; this year we (well, the members of his department who were there) were celebrating his elevation to department chairman. Yay, Nick! Or, maybe, Sorry, Nick!

He seems pretty sanguine about his future as a catherd.

I've lived up here long enough to figure out that despite their desire to be known as adventurous and daring people who eat all sorts of exotic cuisines, the humble black eyed pea is not a big seller among the rootless intellectual class. So I suppressed my own preference and made a black bean and brown rice salad. I had misplaced the recipe and ended up calling my Aunt Sarah to confirm; it turned out splendidly, and there's even a little bit left for today:

INGREDIENTS:
2 cups cooked black beans
3 cups cooked rice
1 tomato - diced
1 avocado - diced
1 red pepper - diced
2 teasp cumin
1/2 cup chopped scallions
2 tbsp chooped cilantro
1/4 cup lime juice
1/3 cup olive oil
salt
pepper

METHOD:
...In a mixing bowl, combine the drained beans with the rice, celery, tomato, avocado, and red pepper.
...In a small bowl, whisk together all of the dressing ingredients.
...Pour the dressing over the beans and rice mixture and stir thoroughly.
...Chill.
...Garnish with extra cilantro or parsley.

Easy and tasty.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:51 AM

June 26, 2006

It's all in the stars

I find the astrology exposé about Jerome Anderson at MyDD amusing - and am reminded about the Emory aftermath of the Heaven's Gate Cult. A professor of political science, Courtney Brown, gave a press conference alleging that the Heaven's Gate group were a fraud. He knew this because he was in psychic contact with the aliens in the Hale-Bopp comet.

Emory reeled. He had tenure. He's there at Emory - but I note that he's still an associate professor. The website linked above not only has scholarly matters, but I'm interested to see a link under his publications to speculative nonfiction.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:48 PM

June 21, 2006

More and more about less and less

I'm excited! Nicholas Everett's Literacy in Lombard Italy, c 568-774 just came for me through Interlibrary loan! I know what I'm doing all afternoon!*

Why do I care?

1. I think about inscriptions on buildings - public writing.
2. If no one much could read, medieval inscriptions were mere decoration, a superficial revival of antique models.
3. If people could read,** inscriptions conveyed information and therefore my project has much implications for a much broader audience.

*oooooh - and in my cool new prescription (progressive bifocal) Maui Jims.
**don't get me started on reading silently vs. reading aloud unless you have a while to listen.

further Argh! I just deleted a real comment on this post in the midst of a pile of spam and now I discover that the BACK button won't recover it. I juat caught a bit of text about language as I hit "despam."

Language - what language did people speak, what language people did people read? Most of my dissertation is about Francia (the Frankish Kingdom, but in Italy that's no problem at all. In the 6th and 7th centuries the vast majority of the population (all the non-Lombards other than some Greek speakers in Naples and South Italy) would be speaking Late Latin -- it's not even Proto-Romance at this point. If there were someone to read Latin out loud to them, they'd understand it, at least in the simplest sense of "understand," and I agree that there are a lot of senses there! Here's a way of thinking about chronology and linguistic register: How well do people really understand the King James Version or Shakespeare or the 1928 Prayer Book read aloud and at regular speed? That might have been what the Aeneid sounded like by 568. Remember, though, that Jerome's translation/version, the Vulgate, was in a much more everyday and modern Latin - barely 150 years old. More like hearing the Good News Version, I'd guess.

In Germanic speaking areas, things would have been different. The number of Lombards in Italy, though, was always relatively less in proportion to the population than Franks north of the Loire, we think. Visigoths in Spain? Also probably a fairly neglibigle proportion -- there may have been more people in Spain still speaking various Celtic languages than there were Visigoths.

The linguistic research of the last 30 years has pushed the dividing line between Proto-Romance and Late Latin (the point at which two people would no longer have understood each other) forward into the 9th century. The historical research (like the book I just got) has revealed a larger (though in absolute numbers still quite small) number of literate persons. The combination means that reading aloud would have reached an audience. That's the new consensus of the early 21st century.

Whoever it was, come back and re-comment! Sorry! I'll address anything else! --MCT

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:04 PM

June 19, 2006

Signs of Hope for Education?

Well, this story isn't really much of a sign of hope for higher education, because the kind of math they're mainly discussing belongs at a much lower level. I think that people should master algebra before they get to 'higher' education - but that's just old fashioned me.

via King Banaian at SCSUScholars.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:00 AM | Comments (2)

Why we blog...

Professor Soltan:

I’ve read and listened to a lot of arguments, but I’ve never seen a person get to consequently quite this fast. This sort of polemical high-handedness, founded upon a conviction of other people's stupidity, is what you'd expect from a clueless, self-preening organization like President Legon's. He should stick to party planning.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:54 AM

Sorry for slow posting - summer strikes!

It's been hot and sticky and not much fun here in Upstate New York. Another thing that cuts into my blogging, productivity tends to make me grumpy. I'm being productive. Yay. Kalamazoo sort of accepted the session proposal (they accepted one of the two sessions on humor we proposed, and I had to cut down the descriptions and titles from a pair of sessions into a single session. Good news, bad news). I've had a paper accepted for the Binghamton medieval conference and really might want to think of writing it now, given how early the conference is and my schedule in the fall.

The only interesting news has been the blessed event. Welcome, Mary Elizabeth! None of the plants died while I was gone, the airedale is fine, and Geneva is still here.

I do have something to say (with pictures) about the new Renzo Piano wing at the High Museum in Atlanta, but I'm still thinking.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:24 AM

June 5, 2006

Complexity

Last night I watched Hero on the recommendation of a colleague (and reader - stop procrastinating!). We're considering using it for a course next year - and gosh it's certainly beautiful. I was not in the best mood for it, though - by 11:30 p.m. I was ready for everyone to die once and for all and to stop shilly-shallying about their story lines. In retrospect, though, I see it's a great example (and such pictures!) of some of the things we're looking for - especially narrative complexity.

I'd recommend it, but next time I'll start the DVD earlier.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:19 AM | Comments (2)

June 4, 2006

Bloggers one would like to meet...

I have met very few fellow bloggers. I mean, I knew Another Damned Medievalist, Jodi Dean and Bibliochef before they started blogging (and they, me).

I want to meet Professor Soltan. You can't autograph a blog, but I want to shake her hand. She's the most interesting acablogger of them all.

But honor’s another one of those words. When a marine sings “keep our honor clean” -- an awkward bit of language in itself, I admit -- I actually know what’s meant. There’s a history and a literature there. When an unimaginative dean, brimming with the accumulated irritations with everyone -- professors, students, parents, other administrators -- that deans are obviously going to have, portrays himself as an honorable man in a sea of dishonorables, a man who can renew a college’s honor, I need a good deal more substance and clarity about all that than this book is willing or able to give me.

Here's her review of the latest Harvard book.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:55 PM | Comments (0)

May 27, 2006

Lake Trout Capital of the World

Yes, I live in Geneva, NY, Lake Trout Capital of the World and home of the annual Lake Trout Derby.

Seneca Lake is very misty this morning, but I could still see boats scattered all over the northern end at about 8 a.m. Very scenic! Here's an interesting story, a couple of years old, about the things biologists and limnologists and ecologists in general (like the folks at our Colleges' Finger Lakes Institute) learn from the annual fish take - and from the historical record.

With the arrival of the zebra mussel, the ecology of the lake has been changed. Smelt, for example, which only a few years ago were a major part of the forage base and a significant spring sport fishery for anglers who dip netted the tasty critters in the local streams, are all but extinct.

The competition for plankton was too great from the exotic mussel for the smelt to survive.

There has been a steady decline in the average size of the trout and salmon as the forage base was stressed.

There has also been an increase in the natural reproduction of lake trout in Seneca Lake.

The deep-water colonies of zebra mussels have made ideal spawning grounds for lake trout.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:35 AM | Comments (1)

University Building

Here are two very interesting, very different articles from the New York Times Magazine about universities and construction projects - Columbia and the University of Virginia.

Columbia is dealing (rather poorly, the article suggests) with its neighborhood and a very difficult past as it tries to expand. Columbia ends up sounding much more like a real estate developer flacked by prominent architects promising urban renewal through Modern Architecture (my capitals) than like a university with space problems. I'm not convinced, and the neighborhood isn't, either.

The University of Virginia is facing an impossible question - imitate Jefferson, or the Spirit of Jefferson. That is to say, classcism or innovation? It doesn't help that the University is stuck in a marketing problem, too - but not with its neighborhood so much as with the alumni who have to agree to pay for the building. The article quotes the Dean of the School of Architecture: "We all love the Lawn here," she said. "We just love it in different ways." That sums up the balancing act pretty well.

On Columbia's expansion project into West Harlem.

On UVa's ongoing attempt to decide what style to build new campus buildings.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:52 AM | Comments (0)

May 23, 2006

What Faculty Retreats SHOULD Look Like

This is what a faculty retreat should always look like - believe me, we got lots of things settled for the European Studies Program for the next two years, and left the Canandaigua Inn on the Lake happy! This was May 10th when the weather was glorious. Yours truly, in his role as Coordinator of European Studies, is taking notes.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:07 PM | Comments (3)

May 18, 2006

Ah, Summer

This is the first day I don't have a meeting, an appointment to give a make-up exam, grading, a funeral to attend, or some other term-like task. So do I sleep late? No - the twittering birds wake me at 6.18. Oh, well, that's summer, too - sleeping with the windows open.

To work!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:27 AM

May 16, 2006

Oh my!

Sorry to have left my garden uncultivated! I've been busy beyond even my usual busyness for early May - 4 days at Kalamazoo isn't exactly a mistake, but it does make it difficult to finish strongly!

Oh, well, I'm back on track. This was the first weekday of summer and I did work! Yay!

Graduation was dry! Yay! Not beautiful, but not what was predicted.

I'm headed upstairs to the balcony grill a little steak and local asparagus (it's turned out to be too nice an evening to stay inside) and read William Diebold's Word and Image again. I'm going to try to use it in my Art 270 next spring (early medieval, more or less) and I really ought to reread it. Pricey for such a slim volume, but it is good. He deals clearly with lots of the issues that I wish most for students to learn. He strudctures the book around Gregory the Great's defense of images and its partial success in the West - and its failures. He ends with a really well-done exploration of a single object - the reliquary-statue of Ste. Foy of Conques. Here's the later church dedicated to her.

You know, the pretorn, prewashed salad may be one of the great innovations of recent years. I am eating much more salad because of it.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:17 PM | Comments (1)

May 7, 2006

Kalamazoo Aftermath

Well, I met a lot of damn medievalists, and got to see a particular damned medievalist for the first time in a decade! The blogging-medievalists-on-blogging panel went well - I'll dig up the list and link everyone in a minute when I'm less tired!

Here we go - Weblogs and the Academy: Internet Presence and Professional Discourse among Medievalists (A Roundtable)

Elisabeth Carnell, Western Michigan University, Elisabeth Carnell
Michael Drout, Wheaton College, Wormtalk and Slugspeak
Scott Nokes, Troy University, Unlocked Wordhoard
Lisa Spangenberg, UCLA, Digital Medievalist
Alison Tara Walker, UCLA, Moderator of the Live Journal Medieval Studies community
and yours truly, the Cranky Professor

Our interrogator was Shana Worthen, University of Toronto, who maintains a list of medievalists with weblogs

Most of the folks in the room already blog - a few wouldn't tell us who they were, a few would, and I got to meet Prof. Anne Brannen of Creating Text(iles)! Such fun!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:46 PM

May 5, 2006

Kalamazoo 41

It's springtime - medievalists' minds must turn to Western Michigan University . . . .

Let me tell you up front that I dislike conferences in general. This one is so professionally run, so smooth, so winsomely simple (despite it's professional backstage activity) that it's hard to find anything bad to say (even the weather has cooperated, which isn't always the case -- medivalists love to tell about years with snow or torrential rain).

In part my kind of sociability doesn't turn to people I see only once a year or decade in moments when we eagerly exchange professional gossip (and personal gossip about those who've left the profession abruptly). Conference going is better now that I have a job and am not constantly viewing everyone else as an immediate competitor for my bread and butter.

I'm horrible with names. I saw someone last night who commented on a paper of mine two years ago (at a different conference) and could only remember his first name. Luckily he's a jeans-and-cowboy-boots kind of professor, so that didn't bother him. He of course remembered me and asked after someone else on the panel. I couldn't remember his name, let alone everone who was on the panel and what their papers were - at least not without sitting down and thinking about it for a moment. Of course, since then I've even recalled his middle name, which he uses professionally. Staircase thoughts, staircase thoughts.

I'm always tempted to do a Fashion-Police review, but I fear that someone will recognize my targets - and I've already met someone who knows me and reads the Crankyprofessor and had never said so, so no persons. I am practicing self-restraint in pixels, though I did point out my entry for the Child, Goth has Nothing to do with Gothic contest to the aforementioned acquaintance last night.

But then there are the papers - the good, the bad, and the ugly. I've heard a couple of goods, more bads, and no uglies yet. That's not a disappointing outcome.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:20 AM

May 2, 2006

Fun in the Sun, version 2

As I walked home across campus and down a street with a good many student rentals today I learned 2 things - I'm old enough that jam bands are playing my music and that horseshoes are back.

One of the student bands - the one who played the student art opening last weekend - was - um - 'rendering' the Talking Heads' Crosseyed and Painless. I did enjoy it, in a melancholy way. I'm wondering if there's a causation/correlation relationship to the return of patch madras shorts?

Yesterday I saw lads playing horseshoes on the Quad, but today I saw TWO more horseshoe games going on - one on the Quad and one in a backyard on Pulteney Street.

Everything old is new again.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:24 PM | Comments (2)

Fun in the sun

Sorry I don't have any pictures, but when I grabbed my camera this morning I didn't realize the battery was dead. I hadn't charged it since BEFORE the trip to Argentina (3/10-3/18), and I've taken a fair number since then, so that should say something for the Nikon D70 battery.

Oh, well - you missed a Gothic stake-out on the Quad! We staked out the plan of the crossing at Amiens Cathedral (go here and click on plans, then choose plan of the cathedral). We watched part 2 of Stephen Murray's brilliant Amiens trilogy again (the part that's all computer animation based) and then went outside with lollipop sticks (I know, I know, but Wegman's doesn't carry tongue depressors and they were out of popsicle sticks) and string and worked it out with no measuring devices.

What this meant is that we practiced with a small square - I put in one corner and they worked out the rest (about 2 feet by 2 feet). Then, since we had a small square squared a student paced off a 50 pace side following a guideline. Then we swung some lines various ways and stuck in lollipop sticks to establish points, checked with diagonals, and called that the central crossing. Then we halved the sides by folding the string in half (I saw lots of "Ahah! THAT'S HOW THEY DID IT!" looks at that point), took the diagonal of the remaining rectangle, swung that out to establish the width of the side aisles, poked in more lollipop sticks (by now I was beginning to leave designated student/columns on point, too) and ended up with the crossing with the four major piers amplified by the side aisles on 4 sides. Opus ad quadratum, made in the measure of heaven, all without any absolute measurements. All it takes is string, sticks, a flat surface, and a memory of plane geometry.

As Murray tells us, you can then rotate the square upright and know how HIGH the church is. I think my Art 101 crew has a sense of the scale of Gothic now, and will be able to square up rectilinear projects with diagonals.

Here's the Amiens Cathedral Project website. This is the best use of computer technology in education that I know of.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:22 PM

May 1, 2006

GOSH I hate the end of semesters

It's best to make no decisions from 4/15-5/15 and avoid the stress. This hasn't been a good year for that. The honors thesis took another 2.5 hours last night, but now ALL is submitted. I'm trying to decide what to do about the exam for Art 101 (I let way too many seniors in - my mistake!). And I have things to grade still! Argh!

The only consolation right now is the amazing beauty of Upstate New York in the spring. That does help.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:42 PM

April 28, 2006

The Semester Starts to Stop

La, la, la - my honors student passed her oral examination this afternoon and received honors! Yay! Matron, Virgin, Fallen Woman: Female Sexuality as Commodity in Ancient Rome is an accepted these Colleges.

Huge sigh of relief. I am one giant step closer to summer.

Congratulations to Sarah Kirchoff, an excellent honors student.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:42 PM

April 27, 2006

Where to go to college?

Tyler Cowen shows us how an economist makes the choice about where to go to college.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:43 AM

April 23, 2006

Paging Professor Soltan!

Professor Soltan might not approve even of this - the annual St. John's College / Naval Academy croquet match. It sounds like corruption incarnate, though on an intimate scale. $120 mallets? Please!

I will say that the only person listed with a sound mind and a sound body is the "designated temptress" -- if she goes to St. John's she' no stereotypical cocktail waitress. Not that I haven't known waitresses smart enough to go to a great books school!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:53 PM | Comments (2)

April 18, 2006

Yay! Ph.d. completion rates at 50%

Here you can read one of the first articles I remember in a newspaper about the dismal rates of completion for Ph.d. programs.

Educators said they used to believe that so many dropped out because they weren't tough or smart enough to complete the rigorous research and dissertation course required to get a PhD, which, on average, takes six years.

The truth is more complicated, they say.

"If we knew which 50 percent wouldn't complete their program, we'd be better off, but we don't," said Adam F. Falk, dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins University.

Some students, for example, have family, financial or health issues that make it impossible to stay in a full-time program; some students have doctoral advisers with whom it is difficult -- or impossible -- to work. Some aren't a good fit for their program; others decide a master's degree is enough to get a great job.

It's not much, but it's a start.

I'm glad that educators aren't as condescending as they used to be. Not smart enough? That was never the problem; plenty of not-as-smart-as-everyone-else people finish, but it's easy for people with a Ph.d. and a tenured or tenure track job to believe in merit - especially their own. After all, the system chose them as the best candidate for a position, right? Right?

I'm only in year 7 and I've seen enough job searches from this side of the table now to know that my outsider impression as a job seeker was pretty accurate - the academic job search process is deeply flawed from the get go. Maybe academics aren't always culpable (or indictable?), but they're very little room to argue that the process from the start, from the point when a department makes an argument about what field is to be hired for, is equitable or will generate the "best" candidate except by magic.

And how on earth can anyone say that programs take on average of 6 years, you ask? Oh, it's the scientists. NONE of them get jobs with a fresh degree. American academe (which is far too disorganized to be a conspiracy, but what else can you call it?) can keep the time-to-completion down a little bit by graduating them quickly and then demanding several (or many, if that's what it takes) years of post-docs.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:12 PM

April 10, 2006

Expanding Museums

Oh my - go look at the pictures of the expansion of the Morgan Library by Renzo Piano. It reopens late this month. I'm planning to go with a friend this summer (whether we get a little grant for it or not!).

Piano is one of the architects who makes Modern work, especially (I suppose, because I've never been inside anything else he's done) museums.

While they were closed the Morgan folks got their online research tools into great shape -- Corsair has to be one of the best portals to a fixed collection I've ever used. Admittedly, Corsair focuses on a field I know reasonably well and a collection I know a little bit about, but the design is clean and effective. Medievalists should give it a try!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:58 AM

The first SAT lawsuit

One of the high school seniors whose SAT was misscored is suing.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:25 AM

April 7, 2006

Yay! Honors Paper submitted!

Sorry for the light blogging lately - my honors student just submitted her paper! I've been reading and rereading her work all year, and it feels good to get it handed in.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:19 PM | Comments (0)

April 5, 2006

Academic Gifts

The offer of a major -- $200 million -- gift to NYU for the study of the ancient Mediterranean (more or less) has brought out lots of the usual snarls between the those who dwell in the empyrean realm of academe and the collectors. The usual accusations of "you just want to rip everything out of the ground and put it on display" and "you just want everything left in the ground until YOU get to dig it up and study it" come forth. Been there, heard that, but it's always instructive. Though easy to mock, these are real issues.

The best unconsciously funny line is this one:

The history surrounding the Levy-White collection and White’s collection practices make NYU’s decision to accept the funds and create an academic institute that might share or promulgate her views troubling, said Randall White.

Let's all start by admitting that donors' intentions have very little to do with what goes on at funded institutions, even in the initial generation of funding. As soon as the first directorship turns over it all falls apart. Stories like that of the Menils in Houston don't come along often (give lots of gifts to the University of St. Thomas, fall out of love with UST, BUY the art library back from UST and transfer it and a number of faculty members to Rice...wacky!). According to the story at Inside Higher Ed several universities have decided to remain in the realm of ideas and not taint themselves with the money. NYU is willing to take it.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:09 AM

April 4, 2006

Hovering Parents and Denial

Another story from the Washington Post college feature -- a University of Virginia admissions officer talks about fielding calls from the parents of the rejected. Not the students who didn't get in, but parents. Legacies play a big part of her anecdotes -- I can only imagine how unpleasant those conversations must be. The story about the mother who seems more concerned with the timing (the summer before that critical junior year of high school) of her way-over-the-top-Too-Much-Information recounting of her husband's affair than the fact that he did it at all may be the best.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:10 AM

SAT Optional

It looks like we're dropping the SAT as a requirement for admission, though students will be able to submit the score. Indeed, the head of admissions said that schools like us (see this list of colleges -- there are plenty of schools like us on it) who don't require the SAT still get between 60 and 70% submission rates. The Provost admitted under questioning that our average SAT score would probably rise, since those who elect to submit will probably be at the higher end of the spectrum. So our USNews and World Report ranking may rise.

The admissions folks assured the assembled Faculty that there won't be any trouble making good admissions decisions without those numbers -- that our admissions are individual enough for them to see what's going on. They hope that dropping the requirement will raise the number of applications overall (USNews data point? Umm, yeah, under "acceptance rate." See the pattern? By the way, how we convinced them to say on our At a Glance page that our setting is URBAN I'll never know -- Geneva (pop., c. 13,000) is more urban than, say, Clinton where Hamilton is, but not much!).

I'm reasonably agnostic about the ability of the SAT Verbal score to predict anything (plenty of people learn how to write after getting to college). The SAT Math score, though -- that is an amazingly strong predictor of my difficulty in persuading an advisee to take a real course in math or science. Under our system students can get away with just one course satisfying the requirement -- oh, pardon me! "adressing," not "satisfying," is what we say. I'd like to ask the Registrar to tell us what the SAT Math score is below which no student takes a mathematics-centered course AND a lab science. Some of my students -- and I am not exaggerating at all -- have trouble understanding how I figure their grades.

Bates College did it first. Here's some of what they have to say about it. Something I don't understand is the difference between requiring submission of a particular piece of information from a student and submitting one's admission decision to that piece of information, especially at a place our size (or Bates's size). The anecdote Bates provides -- the Vietnamese immigrant -- fails to persuade me. Surely a recent immigrant who makes a 400 on the Verbal is doing fine and could be admitted -- unless you're afraid that her score will pull down your USNews numbers. Perhaps they would say that she would have been scared away by a requirement? Perhaps. Perhaps. I'm not entirely convinced of the ordering of motives behind the decision-making.

Motive isn't everything, but it's certainly illuminating. A brave line was taken at our faculty meeting about the evils of the culturally-biased SAT, but everyone likes the idea of raising our rankings without doing something like raising more money for the endowment or hiring more tenure-track faculty members or improving our retention rate of students once we admit them.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:35 AM

April 3, 2006

Are we worth it?

Are we worth it? Should parents help pay my salary? Read and consider, from the Washington Post Education Review.

I often have doubts.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:47 AM

March 31, 2006

For all your Duke Scandal needs...

For all your Duke Lax Scandal needs you should be going to Professor Soltan's University Diaries.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:44 PM

March 30, 2006

It's not that I'm in favor of binge drinking...

It's not that I'm in favor of binge drinking by college students on spring break, but this story about the American Medical Association and advocacy polling doesn't help. It's long and well worth reading ALL of, including the part after the jump. American Association for Public Opinion Research president Cliff Zukin comments:

I'm not naive or simplistic. I don't say this about research that is either done by partisans or about research that is never entered into the public arena. But the case here is a non-profit organization entering data into the public debate. As I said to them in one of my emails, AAPOR can no more condone bad science than the AMA would knowingly condone bad medicine. It's really that simple

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:57 AM

March 21, 2006

More edublogging.

Here's a new edublog, The Quick and the Ed - interesting close reading of public statements from universities and journalists covering universities (which often seems to mean reprinting someone's press release) to tease out what's behind the numbers.

There's an interesting post on Oberlin's shifting recruiting patterns that reminds me of various talk here about reducing the discount rate, which is more or less the financial aid rate. There are, however, two ways of doing that thing - one is the way Oberlin bluntly suggests, "recruiting more students from high-income families" (and therefore recruiting fewer students from lower income families, though we're not talking low-income here, really). The other is to reduce the amount of merit scholarship money given away as bait to people who can afford the tuition. I hope we at these Colleges do more of the latter than the former, but we'll see.

The same author, Kevin Carey, has an analysis piece on TQ&TE's parent site on the latter trend - giving away more merit money than need money:

There's a ruthless bottom-line logic driving this trend: poor students bring in far less net revenue than rich ones, and do nothing to burnish an institution's status in the higher education marketplace. Using sophisticated pricing models originally developed by the airline industry and sold by for-profit “enrollment management” consultants, a growing number of institutions have figured out how to shore up their balance sheet and raise their status in the influential U.S. News rankings by using aid dollars to entice wealthy students who ultimately pay more to attend. More recent data suggest that the trend isn't letting up—the amount of so-called “merit” aid awarded to students increased five-fold from 1994 to 2004, more than four times the rate of increase for need-based aid.

It's hard to oppose merit, unless you realize that merit doesn't always ignore lack of need.

I found The Quick and the Ed via Eduwonk.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:19 AM

March 9, 2006

Legislating Textbook Costs

"I know how to reduce textbook costs! Let's pass a law!"

Does anyone think this will do any good at all? I can't wait to see the unintended consequences play out!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:38 AM

March 8, 2006

This Generation, the Things I Thought Were General Knowledge edition

Two students have asked me what gluttony means in question II.A. This is in a course on medieval humor* - we've been over the 7 deadly sins. Even if little Ermintrude was absent the day(s) we went over that silly me thought it was an SAT kinda word.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:53 AM

Team Teaching - Making Exams

I like working with someone in the classroom very much, but the process of making an exam becomes much more involved when two people have to approve of every question!

This semester my medievalist colleague in the English department and I share the teaching of one of our Art & Literature thematic courses - this term on medieval laughter. We work well together - we taught the Anglo-Saxons last year - but when we need to make an assignment! Oh! My! We go back and forth with emails, over and over, tinkering, adjusting, fiddling, thinking of worst-case-scenarios.

Today's midterm exam (I'm typing while I watch them write!) may represent a new record - we finished with it by 8:30 p.m. last night -- not bad, for us!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:23 AM

Tuition and Fees -- FEES?

Yow! The language used at the University of California for pricing graduate school certainly had me fooled - and the increase was terrifying!

First paragraph and a sentence a little further on:

A San Francisco judge has ordered the University of California to pay more than $33.8 million to about 40,000 students who claimed their fees had been improperly raised, despite promises they would remain steady. . . . In 2003, the university boosted fees for professional school students by more than 50 percent.

So I'm thinking "fees, like the activity fee and the athletic fee . . . ." When I was in college and grad school the fees were never more than a few hundred dollars. Tuition was the big bite. A 50% hike would have annoyed me a lot, but I'm still not seeing why they're suing. But then:

In the 2002-03 school year, professional school fees were about $6,000 for UC law school and business students, who also pay the general education and campus fees that other students pay.

The next year, the university increased the fees for law and business students to about $9,500 -- and made similar increases at the other professional schools -- despite what students called a contractual promise not to raise professional fees during their enrollment.

By fall 2005, the professional school fees had reached $15,258, for a total cost of more than $24,000 a year to attend UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law.

I was reading incorrectly because I did not understand that the University of California uses tuition for some other category (maybe there's no tuition for California residents?) and fees for the big price. A 50% jump from $150 to $225 would have made me scream, but a jump from $6,000 to $9,500 would have made me drop out.

It's nice to see that the graduate students won the lawsuit, but it hasn't stopped the increases. They're up to $15,000 for this academic year. Here's the article.

Via Prof. Soltan.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:58 AM

February 28, 2006

How to GET to College Graduation

One of the best regular things to read on education in America is the Washington Post "Class Struggle" columnn by Jay Mathews; this week he has an especially interesting one about a government report on success in college -- how to graduate.

Lots of the advice is particularly aimed at the less-likely-to-succeed, but some of it explains things that have been bothering me here at these Colleges, a place where really all our student could do the work pretty easily. Here are some excerpts:

But many of our assumptions about how they managed that feat are wrong, Adelman says. For instance, despite our national obsession over picking the right school, Adelman shows is it not where you go to college but how you use that time in college that most closely correlates with getting a college degree. If you earn at least 20 credits your first year, don't take more than one break from college of more than a semester (not counting summers) and keep your grades up, your chances of getting a bachelor's degree are very good.

Also, Adelman says, it is not true that freshman year is the make or break time for undergraduates. Ninety percent of them show up for sophomore year, although those with bad first-year grades are unlikely to survive much longer.

Here in the highly selective liberal arts zone we believe in the where a lot -- part of what we sell is admissions anxiety -- but he makes a great point. Here's one that I wish we would take to heart:

He says colleges that allow students to drop courses with no penalty long after an initial sampling period, or allow students to repeat no-credit remedial courses, are creating conditions that raise the likelihood that those students will not graduate. They are also are depriving other students of a chance to fill those seats.

We have an especially late drop deadline and a horrific policy of an "honorable withdrawal" that does both of those things. I have had a number of advisees who "walk but don't graduate" -- who are allowed to walk across the stage and get an empty diploma holder; if they complete the 1 or 2 courses within a set time and transfer the credit back they can get a diploma for their original class year. The usual patter is that these students have used their honorable withdrawals and dropped below the minimum number of courses in more than one semester. I'd never heard anyone point out that those students are keeping others out of the seats -- which now seems incredibly obvious I'll try to use that argument the next time we discuss the policy. And it's not that I don't appreciate a marginally smaller class than I had intended when the drop deadline comes close and a few seats empty out, but I do think about those who I turned away earlier in the term.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:54 AM

February 27, 2006

Business Education Credentials / Law Education Credentials

This is an interesting article at CNN.com about the shortage of people with doctorates in business. Here's the problem:

A 24-year-old with an MBA can look at spending at least four or five years on a graduate assistant's stipend or go into business with a starting salary of perhaps $60,000 or more, said Ashland University management professor Richard Symons, president-elect of the Association of Collegiate Business Schools and Programs, a business education accreditation organization in Overland Park, Kan.

I've always been interested in the model that lets law schools hire people with nothing more than a jumped-up bachelors degree (yeah, yeah, J.D. - remember that the real specialist degree some people in the field actually get is still a Master of Laws in Tax) teach graduate school while the business schools seem to have tried, at least, to hire people with doctorates in relevant fields.

I understand that lots of law schools hire people with the Ph.D. in some field, but they're still very much a minority.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:26 AM

February 24, 2006

It couldn't happen to a nicer person...

Another Damned Medievalist gets a job offer! Yay!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:58 AM

February 22, 2006

Harvard President Gives Up

Another failed attempt to change academic culture -- not that anything I read about President Summers made me think he had any great new ideas or a chance of succeeding, but he was a high-powered academic himself, once, so he wasn't an outsider.

Here's a beautiful bit of disingenuity in the New York Times coverage:

Though Harvard negotiated a university professorship for Dr. Summers — the highest faculty position, with rights to teach in any department — his friends said they did not know if he would take it.

His sabbatical year next year, they said, may be a moment for him to survey his opportunities, including Wall Street or the possibility of advising a Democratic presidential campaign. Several of these people declined to speak on the record because they did not want to be seen as divulging Dr. Summers's thoughts.

I love the "sabbatical" for departing administrators -- it's our way of wanting to spend more time with our families.

Here's Robert KC Johnson on the situation.
Here's Tim Burke (his point 2 is especially useful on the reactionary temperament of faculties).
Here's Alan Dershowitz, who has a horse in the race. The rest of us (me, the other links) care about the implications for education but have no particular ties to Harvard.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:19 AM

February 20, 2006

Washington's Birthday - How President's Day Used to Be Celebrated

I'm going to post again on the 19th century celebration of Washington's Birthday in Upstate New York (here's a link to what I posated last year's President's Day):

This is an entry from the journal of Abner Jackson, president of Hobart College from 1858 to 1867:

February 22nd.
Washington’s birthday. A holiday in College. Morning Prayer at 8:30. College celebration in Linden Hall at 7:30 P.M. Washington’s Farewell Address was read by George Boswell. There was an oration by B. F. Lee and also a poem by Henry H. VanDeusen. Very frequent applause. I presided as President of the College. Music from a brass band. All went off well and felicitously.
I wrote a prayer to-day for this festal occasion.

Some notes: Linden Hall was an opera house in downtown Geneva which the College rented for special events. The holiday in College seems to have been annual (from 1858 until 1861, at least, which is how far I've read), though of course it didn't always conflict with the Church Year; there was always a reading of the Farewell Address and an oration. Hobart is an Episcopal college and in those days had daily prayer. William Smith College, by the way, is not church related. William Smith was himself a Spiritualist and in the Charter for William Smith College it is specified that the young women will not be required to attend any religious services. Hobart men were required until 1967 to attend at least a certain number of chapel services each week. Jackson mentions writing a litany or prayer for the occasion three or four times in the years he was at Hobart.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:24 AM

February 19, 2006

Papers. Piles and piles of papers.

I try - really I do - but there's something about team teaching and syllabus building that ALWAYS leaves me grading papers from more than one class at the same time; in a semester with a grand total of 88 students that can be a little time-consuming.

Gosh some people are bad readers, too. Right now I'm taking a break from papers about sculptures on campus (Elizabeth Blackwell and the scissors) to grade papers comparing 3 versions of the medieval "cradle tale." -- the most familiar to most folks is probably Chaucer's version, the Reeve's Tale. It's tiresome how many of them (and I've only marked about 10 so far) miss the simple difference that Boccaccio's version (the Sixth Story from the Ninth Day) is about an innkeeper rather than a miller.

It's hard to write a good paper if you haven't read closely.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:20 PM

February 16, 2006

Course Blog for Class Discussion

I'm trying yet another little experiment.

I'm teaching Art 101 - Cave Painting Through Gothic - as a big lecture course this term. I have 46 students. Today we were looking at the transition from Black Figure to Red Figure in Greek art as part of studying style - "what do we mean by style in art?" kind of stuff; fun, fun, fun, if you're me, but it's hard to do discussion.

I finished with the Death of Sarpedon krater by Euphronios currently in the Met and got to open a new can of worms -- the "who owns art?" kind of stuff. Because there's so little room for discussion (or so hard to get 46 people to talk evenly) I've used the class web page to post a bunch of links about the Met, stolen art, and the Italian government and asked them to read and comment there.

I'll tell you if it works!

Oh my! It looks like I haven't ever commented on this! I find it hard to believe. Here's some background:

Here's an article from Newsday (the NYTimes takes its stories away for subscribers only behind a firewall too soon!) about the settlement.

Here are two notes from David Nishimura at Cronaca.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:30 PM

February 14, 2006

Generation Parental-Involvement

Read it and weep. Here are the first two paragraphs as a temptation:

Beverly Hills psychiatrist's office is an unlikely triage center for the mash-up of generations in the workforce. But Dr. Charles Sophy is seeing the casualties firsthand. Last year, when a 24-year-old salesman at a car dealership didn't get his yearly bonus because of poor performance, both of his parents showed up at the company's regional headquarters and sat outside the CEO's office, refusing to leave until they got a meeting. "Security had to come and escort them out," Sophy says.

A 22-year-old pharmaceutical employee learned that he was not getting the promotion he had been eyeing. His boss told him he needed to work on his weaknesses first. The Harvard grad had excelled at everything he had ever done, so he was crushed by the news. He told his parents about the performance review, and they were convinced there was some misunderstanding, some way they could fix it, as they'd been able to fix everything before. His mother called the human-resources department the next day. Seventeen times. She left increasingly frustrated messages: "You're purposely ignoring us"; "you fudged the evaluation"; "you have it in for my son." She demanded a mediation session with her, her son, his boss, and HR--and got it. At one point, the 22-year-old reprimanded the HR rep for being "rude to my mom."

via Joanne Jacobs

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:39 AM

February 9, 2006

Publishers. Yeesh!

I love getting email from publishers suggesting that they're offering some kind of great price for a book -- I always check Amazon.

Harvard UP - $29.95, special for our Canadian and US customers only.
Amazon - $19.77, no need to have your email on file for solicitations at HUP.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:56 PM

February 8, 2006

Tales from the Trenches

Hey professor,

I actually read the reading you suggested in the paper assignment and it really helped, I actually know what to be writing about. I finished the essay today and I think it is of better work so I am going to see what happens. My TA also helped me with some of my homeworks

Thanks

Xxxx Xxxxx

Sweet. I like the repeated use of "actually."

(Further: 'homeworks' is accurate - I have assigned more than one.)

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:16 AM

February 6, 2006

Leave it to an American Studies Professor...

Leave it to an American Studies professor at an Ivy League school never to have heard of the great books colleges. Nothing narrower than modernism.

The term "liberal arts" first came up during the Middle Ages, American studies professor Matthew Jacobson said. Although the original liberal arts included only seven subjects -- grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy -- Jacobson said he thinks "it's been ages" since anyone in this country has actually studied exactly those subjects as part of a liberal arts education.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:19 PM

February 3, 2006

The Manola as Viz Cult critic

You know, it's side-by-side comparisons like this that make me think the Manolo could work in art history should he choose . . . fashion dawgs.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:49 PM

Visser and St. Agnes

Howdy extra folks from Amy Welborn's blog! (I get plenty of hits from her blogroll link anyway, but this will be a little surge).

Margaret Visser's The Anatomy of Love is the best book I know of about a single church. The only thing that rivals it might be Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame (which I didn't read until I was 38! What a good book!). Please remember that I have read lots and lots of monographs on single buildings (most recently a book on St. Maclou, a totally wacky-facaded late Gothic church in Normandy - 1st link is the book, second is pictures of the building) and I'm sure there's something to be said for lots of them. None has ever managed to combine a thorough reading of the scholarship with a passion for the building, its history, and its users like Visser's book. It's a book that causes envy -- I really, really wish I'd written it.

In fact, I wrote about St Agnes outside the walls on my doctoral exams. Visser's book is nothing revolutionary -- but it's a solid explanation of most of what we know about the building.

I recommend a trip up the Via Nomentana to visit St. Agnes's tomb to anyone who really wants to see Rome. There's great bus service! Go look! Sit! Love!

I'll be preordering the documentary.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:03 PM

February 1, 2006

Substitute 'Israeli Civilian' for 'Oxford students' and feel the chill breeze

And Oxford students have been named as a legitimate target for violence by the Animal Liberation Front (ALF).

And the response? Predictable. "Meanwhile, a leading art college became this week the latest organisation to distance itself from Oxford University under pressure from animal welfare activists." Boycott Israeli academics, boycott Oxford.

via Joanne Jacobs (whose book Our School you should buy!)

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:23 AM

Tis the Season

The shortlist season, that is. I had lunch yesterday with a job candidate, listened to two job talks, and firmed up my scheduled times to meet two of the three candidates in a third search for a "chat" -- and I'm not on any of the search committees! At least the talks yesterday were good; often the best visiting lectures on campus in terms of content (though not style, sadly), are the job talks -- they tend to be fresh material. Far too many of the people we pay an honorarium to hear feed us stuff we could have read in the latest paperback -- and half of the students who show up have read it, since they're in classes covering the material. One can seldom say that about dissertation chapters. The pros may be more polished, but that's the tradeoff.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:48 AM

January 30, 2006

My Life

I haven't commented on my semester so far - mainly because I spend so much of my time trying not to get behind. I'm teaching two courses, Art 101 (cave painting through Gothic) and Medieval Art & Literature: Laughter in the Middle Ages. The second is team taught with the professor of English I worked with last fall for the Anglo-Saxons; we make a good team! We have 42 students in that course and I have 46 in Art 101 (currently -- I'm grading the 2nd assignment now and someone has probably dropped since I reviewed the roll last).

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:02 PM

January 22, 2006

What I want . . .

What I want is a 5-10 minute piece of video showing a nice monastic practice of the Office. The music is decidedly secondary for me! I would like best a bit of procession in, chant, standing, bowing, and sitting -- I want to show students the business end of medieval monastic prayer. I'm going to use a chunk of The Name of the Rose tomorrow, but I've never really been satisfied with that depiction. What I'd like best is a little bit of video from a restrained Cistercian house -- there was a PBS thing on Cistercians a few years ago that I can't find anywhere online to order.

Any ideas?

further: The more I think of it the more I seem to remember it being out of the monastery at Mepkin, SC. Hmm.

still further: Here it is. It was adequate, I think. I'll order one. I had no idea it was made for ABC!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:27 PM

December 29, 2005

Tenure at Yale? Hah!

Professor Soltan has a useful review of the Graeber 'tenure' problem (or should that be "tenure 'problem'"?) at Yale. I'm scheduled for a long talk about graduate school with a young friend this afternoon -- I'm hoping to get through to him the lotto-nautre of higher education employment; people like this silly Graeber man don't help. Wish me luck.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:45 AM

Professor stabbed.

When I read this story about a stabbing over a grade I'm suddenly grateful my student who is unhappy with her grade used email.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:48 AM

December 28, 2005

The Hunt!

Is there anything better than the hunt? In my case I scooted in and ordered 3 volumes from Loome's December email catalog -- all from the Sources Chrétiennes series. Now I know that no one in America wanted those 14 sermons by an unknown 9th century author, but damn it! I did! And I got 'em!

Someday I'll visit Stillwater, MN . . . .

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:34 PM

Lying for the Cause, Sacco and Vanetti version

Oh, my. Were Sacco and Vanzetti really guilty all along? G as in good . . . pointed me to Betsy's page from which I then went to an LA Times story about a rediscovered Upton Sinclair letter.

I gave my father In Denial: Historians, Communism, & Espionage, a short book about historians willing to lie for their cause for Christmas - so this revelation seems well-timed. I'll have to tell mother to print the LA times story for him.

If Sacco and Vanzetti were guilty as charged there are a lot of people who ought to remove one of their key examples of what they perceive as the injustice of the American judicial system. Would they? Let me predict that this evidence won't make the slightest difference for a very long time. I think it'll take a generation for the Venona decrypts to break down resistance to Soviet espionage.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:45 AM

December 24, 2005

New Year's Resolution

Don't be like this poor soul - back up my hard drive!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:32 PM

December 20, 2005

Ah, Grade Protests in an age of Electronic Grade Submission

We at these Colleges finally implemented electronic grade submission last year (I pass over in silence the very annoying temporary failure of the pdf forms for D, F, and Incomplete grades this semester); I served on the ad hoc implementation committee -- ah, community service I actually care about!

So, I submit my grades yesterday morning -- nineish? Then I carry the physical I/D/F forms in (not just mine, a packet for a colleague of mine who, after hours of trying to get -- oh - I was going to pass over that in silence. Right.).

The first grade protest showed up at 4:17 p.m. (by email, so it has that handy timestamp). This protest has all the best elements my "higher" education readers will recognize from their own experiences! Before I go into details, let me say that he/she* earned an 84% and I gave her a B. She wants a B+.

You see, he/she* made a 60 on the first paper -- but that was because he/she mistakenly turned in the rough draft and I cruelly (going on the appearance of a cleanly printed paper with a title page) assumed that he/she meant to submit it and graded it. Then I had had the effrontery to tell him/her that the no-rewrite policy included "mistakes" like hers. But he/she's really protesting because he/she understands how the spreadsheet would indeed produce the 84 which gave him/her a B (of course, he/she said "I understand how you got my grade." My first impulse is always to respond, "No, you got the grade. I'm just the person explaining it to you.") and I told him/her that I take improvement into consideration. So I open the spreadsheet (available to him/her, by the way, via Blackboard) and see that he/she earned a 60, an 81, and an 86 on the three papers. Improvement, yes -- but he/she never reached the empyrean zone of a B+, which starts at 87 for my students.

But wait, there's more! You see, he/she insists that's it unfair that his/her (unnamed, but clearly from the email female) friend made a higher grade for the semester though she had poor attendance and never participated. My (never to be stated - you can't go that far) questions - how does he/she know her obviously untrustworthy (because so lazy) friend's grade -- by his/her friend's self-report? Is his/her friend a better writer (which the reader may imagine is not difficult)?

Don't stop there! You see, he/she really, reeeeeeealllly neeeeeds a B+. Not for law school or medical school (sadly, because I have been known to glare at people with the "If it's my third of a letter grade keeping you away from sick people, thank goodness!" glare) but for a term abroad program.

Cry me a river.

I restrained all my wicked, unseasonal impulses (after all, Santa hasn't been to visit yet) and waited. I'll send him/her a temperate response today. Somehow these things were better when they had to wait for their grades until after Christmas -- at least they didn't intrude themselves on my mood until they could help me kick the New Year off right.

*Use of slashed pronouns is to preserve the anonymity of the student, even though I can't imagine any way any reader would be able to figure out which of the many, many similar protests zinging around the country this week mine is.

Update, 2nd week of the next semester: In the true fashion of people who complain only in an attempt to get something they know they don't deserve, I have yet to hear from her again. Stonewalling can work.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:47 AM

December 19, 2005

Higher Education and Commerce

I tend not to get very exercised by the things sold in the Colleges Store (we, at least, don't pretend it's a bookstore anymore), but this morning I was doing some of that late shopping for imprinted items for the nephews and niece and noticed that we sell ball caps with pre-frayed brims. Imagine the little sweatshop workers taking your baseball cap to a belt sander the next time you see someone with one of those.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:09 AM

December 18, 2005

Upstate Greek Revival, Or, Blogging Pedagogy and Me

My Art 208, Greek Art & Architecture class, participated in a blogging assignment between Thanksgiving and the end of the semester. Here's the blog. There are lots of good pictures and interesting comments -- interesting enough that I gave credit for them, at least. Go look!

I had several objectives in this. I wanted to get my students off campus to look at some of the interesting 19th and earlier 20th century architecture all around them. I wanted them to draw specifric comparisons between what we had studied and a revival style. I wanted them to practice in a new medium -- taking and uploading pictures, writing short entires, commenting. I wanted to see if blogging would work with a class as a mixed group and individual assignment (they were to take pictures and post in groups and write comments as individuals).

I'm particularly happy with the categories - the few readers who know Geneva (four or five of you, I think) will know where the streets are. If not, don't worry. In a better incarnation these would all have clickable map graphics.

All in all I'm quite happy - look for a medieval revival version next semester!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:58 PM

Tis the Season

I HATE grading.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:36 PM | Comments (1)

December 14, 2005

Class blogging, 2

The class blog is going well - with a day or two left to run I have 55 entries (almost all of them separate buildings) and 134 comments. That's pretty good for 32 students.

I am spending a lot of time editing and recategorizing -- the next iteration will definitely have student EDITORS.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:09 PM | Comments (2)

December 12, 2005

Class blogging

Sorry to have been blogging lightly lately, but I've been cracking the whip over a reasonably successful class blog. I had students in my Greek Art and Architecture class take pictures of local buildings that were either Greek Revival or used classical architecture vocabulary, post them with a brief text entry, and then comment on each others' postings.

The blog looks great, but I told them that I wouldn't show it to anyone outside the department (some of them were concerned). It's no great loss to the larger world, but it has been interesting. Maybe when the semester is well and truly over I'll close comments and make it more public. It's also one of the pilot blogs for Movabletype on our campus server, so the IT people (who told me last year that this blog is in the top twenty or so referrers to the Colleges' website) asked that we keep it private for this go-round.

One way I helped them find buildings (you have to realize that the young are kind of obtuse and needed guidance) was setting up as categories categories the useful streets of Geneva. Now those categories are clickable links in the side column and generate nice photo sets. Fun!

I've learned a few things that I will do the next time I try this.

1. Use the more experienced to help the less experienced. Sit down with the 30% or so of the class who have already kept a blog (Livejournal and Myspace were both popular venues) or were regular uploaders to photo sites and run them through a tutorial. Then use them as 'consultants' for the 70% who haven't. Unfamililarity with the medium made this HARD for some people.

2. Write clearer directions. Again, the 30% who'd done something similar found them crystalline. Then some more folks had no problem because they like fiddling with new things. I'd say 30% of the class didn't like it at all because they don't particularly enjoy fiddling with new things.

3. Comment more myself. I think that every time I offered a comment I got 2 or 3 direct responses. The grade for this project is pure participation -- so anything that stimulates participation is good.

4. Try a different time-scale. This time I kept it very concentrated -- only the last 3 weeks of the semester. That period was partly dictated by getting MT up and running, but mainly I was thinking that if I ran it as a true COURSE blog lasting all term they wouldn't pay attention. I'm still of that opinion, but I may start the project at midterm next time. My students had a definite pattern of getting to work, taking some pictures (in their little groups), posting them, commenting on everyone else's posts, then never reappearing. It's too task oriented! How could one overcome that tendency?

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:45 AM

December 11, 2005

Same old tale, useful new setting

Nothing new here, but I like seeing it from the AP: An Army of Adjuncts.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:39 AM

November 30, 2005

How Much Education? Well, a Ph.D. might be too much.

Here's the posting at Angry Bear that set off Winterspeak yesterday that encoruage me to say "interesting!". Megan's commented on it now, quoting the sad old joke:

Q: What did the English major say to the Engineering major after they graduated?

A: You want fries with that?

I guess this is the most important part of Angry Bear's post:

This reward to education has grown over time. For example, a Census Bureau summary of major economic trends in the US over the past half century reported that the median income of workers with at least a Bachelor’s degree was only 35% higher than those with only a HS diploma in 1963. By 1997 that premium had risen to 88%. And in 2003 the earnings gain from having at least 4 years of college was over 100% of a HS graduate’s earnings, according to the data cited above.

Perhaps most strikingly, this massive increase in the relative wages that firms pay for a college education has happened at the same time that the supply of college-educated workers has exploded. In the mid-1960s less than 10% of individuals in the US had a college degree, compared to about 20% in the mid-1980s and about 30% today. We can only conclude that the demand by firms for relatively well-educated workers has grown even more dramatically than the supply of such workers, which is to say, by a lot. (Kash's emphasis)

That's what folks are talking about. I'm very much interested in this final paragraph:

Regardless, it seems beyond dispute that the way to succeed in the US economy today is to get more education. And with each passing year, this is only becoming increasingly the case.

Is more always better? Is there a good place to stop? I had one of those conversations about graduate school with my senior seminar yesterday (you might remember that I went to listen to a presentation about Jan van Eyck rather than reading Kash's post immediately). My refrain is "I loved it, I've been lucky, I think I'd do it again, don't you go, there are no jobs!"

I don't worry too much about our students who go on to museum studies sorts of degrees (though I wonder if they'd be better off with an MA in art history and an MBA) but I find it very difficult to recommend folks to Ph.D. programs in good conscience. That's not the question the econobloggers are concerned with, but it's the question that I begin thinking about every time.

The credential creep upward is matched by credential devaluation at the bottom -- and I'm sure readers can guess my opinion about what came first, a dismissal of high school diplomas as meaningful or the actual meaninglessness of most high school preparation in America. When is my line of work, BA preparation, going to be dismissed as preparatory? Not long, I fear.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:27 AM

Jay Mathews Reviews the College Guide Genre

Jay Mathews had an interesting article last month that I missed in the Washington Post reviewing the college guidebook as a genre.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:44 AM

November 29, 2005

College Costs vs. Expected Earnings

I don't have time to read the posting that set Megan Winterspeak off (seminar starts in minutes - Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Whatever The Hell It Really Is attracts me more than arguments about college graduation and earnings - imagine that!), but over at Asymmetrical Information I read this:

I would also add that the falling expected wages of a high school diploma have also greatly reduced the cost of a college education. While college tuition has outpaced inflation for several decades, the gap between what a HS diploma holder and college degree holder can hope to earn has widened dramatically. The opportunity cost of going to college is now much lower than it used to be, both in foregone wages while in school and in the wages you would have earned had you not gone to school at all.

The question is whether or not the reduced opportunity cost of getting a college degree makes up for the increase in the cost of the degree itself, making college more of a bargain today than it was in the past. I'm too lazy to calculate it all out, but if anyone wants to take a swing at things in the comments, they are welcome

Interesting!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:02 PM

November 27, 2005

Curses! Foiled Again!

I swear that at some point this semseter I looked at the library catalog and confirmed that we had a copy of Prospero's Books on VCR or DVD. I swear. Oh, well. Wrong answer. I've put out an email plea to the faculty listserve to see if anyone has a copy I can borrow. I'll have to teach The Tempest without it.

The Tempest is a great work to end European Studies 101 on. Just to remind you, here's the reading list:
Gilgamesh, tr. Herbert Mason
Genesis
Hesiod, Theogony
xeroxes of Greek lyric poetry
Plato, Syposium
the Gospel according to Matthew
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Rutebeuf, the Play of Theophilus
Machiavelli, The Prince
Shakespeare, The Tempest

All kinds of themes get revisted, reworked, tied up, untied, and generally exposed here at the end. Yesterday and today I've been playing with questions for my students about the love-relationship between Ferdinand and Miranda, which will recall The Symposium and Genesis. They're already doing a homework assignment that asks them to think about Prospero as a ruler, which had better bring back Gilgamesh, Abraham, and Machiavelli. Prospero's relationship with spirits (and with his predecessor Sycorax) can remind them of the scholar making a pact with the devil in the Play of Theophilus (a pre-Faust). All in all I can hardly devise a better way to finish things off - but I still want the Greenaway version!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:26 PM

November 22, 2005

The difficulty of difference

One of those things teachers have to overcome constantly is the urge to normalize everything on the part of our students. Is that clear? Probably not.

Every time I teach Greek architecture (which means every year, since it comes up in 101) I have to find ways to convince them that the Greeks weren't so very interested in symmetry as commonplace wisdom holds, that the Greeks didn't have any such thing as a perfect Doric temple, that the Greeks accepted irregularity.

The Erectheum on the Acropolis is the best example for this. Here is a link to some good photos, opens in a new window. Here's a plan. Here's a reconstruction.

The building is horribly confusing -- it has 3 porches (East, North, and the Caryatid porch to the South). It has a row of attached columns (most students seem to think those are a Roman invention -- don't blame me for that opinion). It has courtyards and rooms that don't open into one another. However, in the midst of all this mess it is richly decorated. Obviously it wasn't in any way thought to be unimportant. What are they to make of it?

The simple answer is this -- Greek temples weren't about architecture. That's our idea. They were canopies for statues of the gods. This building is so confusing because it is an attempt (remarkably successful at that) to roof over a welter of very significant cult sites that are very close together and on rising ground. My students have to let go of the modern idea that people build buildings as an art form and accept that the function was more important than purity of style -- even in the Athens of Pericles.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:40 AM

November 21, 2005

Still Autumn in New York!

Autumn is hanging on - I blogged about this at the first of the month and it's still true. No one in shorts today, but very few people in gloves and hats. We'll take it. [Update: I just saw someone in shorts, nine minutes after posting.]

On the other hand, I'm in that annual state of annoyance brought on by students who leave a week early for Thanksgiving. We give them Wednesday off, so they only have to miss one iteration of classes by skipping the whole week. IF we had classes on Wednesday skipping the week would mean missing a Monday AND a Wednesday class, and perhaps the calculation would be different. I'm willing to be that we'd have an additional 20% in attendence on Monday and Tuesday. My class today was at about 60% strength, so I worked hard to set up the final exam themes.

When I was teaching discussion sections in grad school it used to drive the Renaissance specialist NUTS that the Wednesday before Thanksgiving seemed to fall every year on (1) one of his lectures and (2) the Northern Renaissance day (Emory did the departmental-parade of lecturing faculty for a room of 250 students followed by weekly discussion sections approach to Art 101 and 102, so each faculty member got about 6 lectures more or less in period or area of interest). He ALWAYS insisted that we had to have something covered in that lecture for a major section on the final exam, like the key slide in a 20 point essay question. I understand the way he felt now.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:43 AM | Comments (0)

And in a world where SOME college presidents make a million dollars . . .

And in a world where SOME college presidents make a million dollars I suppose there had to be lawyers (2 are quoted in the story) who specialize in university president contracts. Is that a branch of entertainment law?

And in the D.C. law office where Raymond D. Cotton specializes in university presidents' contracts, calls have been coming in from across the country, from school presidents and boards of trustees seeking advice. Their message, Cotton said: "Review our situation. Tell us what we have to do so we don't become another AU."

Read the article here, from the Washington Post. They're doing such a good job with this kind of thing because of the American University debacle (including a $3.7 million parting gift, if you haven't been keeping up).

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:56 AM | Comments (0)

November 18, 2005

College President Salaries

What's more surprising, that 5 college presidents are making over a million dollars a year or that the president with the highest salary runs a school I've never heard of? Or that the 2nd school is also on a list of "wheres?" for me? Here's the list of highest salaries, public and private. Here's an article.

Here are the top 5 private:
1. Donald E. Ross Lynn University (Fla.) $5,042,315
2. Audrey K. Doberstein Wilmington College (Del.) $1,370,973
3. E. Gordon Gee Vanderbilt University $1,326,786
4. John R. Silber Boston University $1,253,352
5. John M. McCardell Middlebury College $1,213,141

Some throwaway comments -- the note on the link points out that Doberstein, Silber, and McCardell have all retired or taken other jobs. We know that in John Silber's case this salary is a golden kick in the pants. I wonder how Middlebury alums will react to this come capital campaign time.

Here's a link to the history of Lynn University. It really is remarkable to be founded as a 2-year women's college in 1961 and be a Ph.D. granting university with the highest paid president in America in 2004 - and he's been president since 1971.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:05 AM

November 16, 2005

Another Professor with no sense of history

"It will change . . . the way children everywhere think about themselves in relation to the world," said Seymour Papert, a professor emeritus of education and media technology at MIT, believing that the result may be less violence and dissension as kids plug into education and international culture.

Well, evidence of the 20th century aside. Germany was the most literate country in the world . Education doesn't make people better - it makes them more efficient. That doesn't reduce violence and dissension -- it just makes it more murdereous.

This is all in praise of a promised $100 laptop to revolutionize education in developing countries. I always read articles like this and think that if computers are so great why don't we do something about making them cheaper here, first?

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:59 AM

October 31, 2005

A Moment of unwonted candor

Presidents of Colleges Cite Finances as Main Issue

College presidents are more preoccupied with financial issues than educational ones, according to a new survey by The Chronicle of Higher Education.

The presidents said they believed they were judged slightly more on whether they had a balanced budget than for the quality of educational programs. Five of the six top concerns they cited related to money: rising health care costs, rising tuition, financial aid, technology costs and inadequate faculty salaries. The sixth was retaining students.

This article (my link is to the New York Times - the Chronicle of Higher Education is a trade journal and only available to subscribers. I don't subscribe.) doesn't sound heavy on the usual pieties. Sounds right to me, other than the health care costs. Maybe we're just too small a place to really worry much about that. I might also wonder if #6 is higher at some schools than others.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:57 PM

October 29, 2005

Chinese is the new Russian

“Chinese is the new Russian,” says Rosemary G. Feal, executive director of the Modern Language Association, referring to the Cold War period when colleges couldn’t increase programs in Russia fast enough.

Damning with faint praise there, as anyone who deals with Russian programs knows. Read this paragraph and weep:

To appreciate the significance of having 2,400 high schools teaching AP Chinese, consider how low enrollments in the language have been historically. In 2002, the last year of a national study on foreign language enrollments, just over 34,000 college students were enrolled, according to the MLA. That represented a 20 percent increase from 1998, but a fraction of the nearly 750,000 studying Spanish.

Remember how great high school language instruction was? I'll all in favor of the study of Chinese (as literatures go it's as "classical" as what we call the Classics), but let's be realistic. If we can't do a decent job of teaching Spanish what's the likelihood that this will be an improvement?

I wrote a post long ago, lost in the archives crash, about Arabic language instruction at Berkeley. It had, I think, doubled since 9/11 - to something like 300 students enrolled in the entire language. They were having trouble finding people qualified to teach. Pitiful.*

*you can find that post if you click here and search for "Arabic." Interestingly, I titled that post "Pitiful". Maybe if I get pneumonia this winter I'll un-jam the archives.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:03 PM

October 26, 2005

Dodging bullets

This has been a stressful semseter - can you tell by my slow blogging? I sat down in the café to keep office hours and opened up my email. I had received 3 emails from students in Greek Art yesterday evening and expected that all three were rough drafts -- and decided to answer them today.

Praise Jesus! All of them were procedural questions rather than rough drafts!

Still, this is one of those weeks.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:40 AM

October 19, 2005

Resisting a God King?

Oh my! Neuroscientists protest a theocrat? Can it be so?

I was beginning to think that the Dalai Lama's claims were the last to go unchallenged; I find the bizarre intersection between self-styled American progressives and pro-theocrats inexplicable by criteria involving argument or evidence (our local Progressive Student Union sponsored a Free Tibet week recently, complete with Dalai Lama adherents).

I first bothered to look into the actual claims-on-paper the Dalai Lama makes when he spoke at my graduation from Emory; I was bemused when some friends of mine who were otherwise remarkably antireligious swooned over the being offered the opportunity to meditate in his presence and decided I should go to some reference works and look him up. I recommend the exercise. It's not at all as though the Pope were being offered the chance to talk as though the living incarnation of Jesus was doing so -- and as though there were another living incarnation of Jesus (as so often there is!) was operating in the next county over.

I'm also interested by the academic programs in Buddhism offered by Antioch College. Does any Christian educational institution in America offer credit-bearing programs for non-believers that include required practice of Christian prayer? Read the curriculum for Buddhist studies in India and for Buddhist studies in Japan and wonder what a Catholic version would be. I could design one - and it would produce students far more capable of understanding western art and architecture from 300-1800, but I can't imagine what college or university would offer credit for students chanting the daily liturgy of the hours.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:22 AM

October 18, 2005

Beer Pong Product Placement -- No, really!

The recent tournament in Philadelphia was sponsored by Bing Bong, a company that sells portable beer pong tables for $150. In the past year, Bing Bong has sold more than 2,000.

"It was something a lot of people needed," said Tom Schmidt, the 27-year-old chief executive. He added that he wanted to turn the game into a socially acceptable barroom sport, like darts.

Those are specialized beer pong tables "a lot of people needed." Gosh, the younger generation believe in the right tools for the right job! We just played with any ol' pub table that came to hand!

The article is from the New York Times, which puts it in the context of neo-prohibitionism and binge drinking.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:34 AM

October 11, 2005

Papers and Rewrites

All in all I'm having a good semester as a professor -- 3.5 classes and working with an honors project keep me busy, but that's what I like to do. However, one of my cranky moments is striking. I'm finishing up marking rewrites of a paper for one of my classes; out of the 12 folks who chose to submit a rewrite only 2 significantly rewrote their papers. The rest corrected marked errors (sometimes introducing new errors!). One tires of explicitness. A rewrite involves a new writing of the paper, not responding to proofreading remarks.

I go through semesters and phases in which I don't allow rewrites at all. For instance, for the intermediate art history class I'm teaching I am not allowing rewrites specifically because I offered to read rough drafts; the sad fact that only 2 or 3 of the 32 students took me up on the offer doesn't change the situation that they all had the opportunity to hear from me before I put a grade on the paper. I may get a few more rough drafts for paper 2, which is due in about 2 weeks -- we'll see. For first year classes I generally do permit rewrites.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:48 PM

September 28, 2005

College President Compensation Follies

The American University board is in a mess over their president -- here's the latest from the Washington Post. The defenses offered by those in favor of President Ladner are particualrly instructive -- "everyone was doing it" is high on the list.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:14 PM

September 26, 2005

So, can you meet at . . . ?

I'm sure someone out there could tell us (perhaps even break it down by occupation) how much time we spend trying to schedule meetings in the modern world. The simplest answer is "a lot of time." I'm on a subcommittee that hasn't met yet this year for failure to find a time when 3 of us can meet (I keep offering coffee at 7 a.m. at my place - one of the two folks lives across the street and the other is a notorious early riser).

My alma mater Rice had a simple method for this -- there were NO CLASSES AT NOON. None. No classes, no labs. This helped faculty find time to eat lunch with students in the residential colleges and helped them find time to have meetings over lunch in the faculty club.

The longer I survive in academe the more sensible the policy looks.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:20 AM

September 23, 2005

On teaching Dante

As though 3 courses weren't enough for me this term, I'm doing what is called here at these Colleges a Readers College in Dante. Here's a description of how the process is supposed to work:

Join a group and meet new friends over great readings! Requirements are simple: read books, join the discussions and do some writing. Students who satisfy the leader's requirements receive 1/2 course credit. To sign up for one of the reading groups below simply contact the leader. Welcome back and happy reading!

So far it's doing that pretty well - the 4 students didn't know each other well before the course began but are beginning to do so. So far we've spent more time talking about the structure of the Ptolemaic cosmos than we have doing line-by-line readings, but those are happening, too.

The course is answering a felt need of mine, too -- I wanted to read my way through the whole Commedia again before I tackle teaching Dante in a regular class. It's certainly working for that.

We're using the Mandelbaum translation (though one person is using Mark Musa, so we have 2 texts for immediate comparison). I'm also reading my way through the California Lectura Dantis commentary on the Inferno. It seems they haven't gotten a 2nd or 3rd volume out. I'm also reading the Singleton notes, which are copious. Coooooopppppious. Oh, well - fun will be had by all.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:18 PM

September 14, 2005

The wicked flee when no man pursueth . . . .

Is there anything more worrisome that finding an envelope from the college president's office stamped CONFIDENTIAL in one's mailbox? Thankfully it was the ballot for the Grievance Committee, but I had a moment of guilt-stricken horror.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:52 PM | Comments (1)

September 7, 2005

Score One for Experimentation

[I thought that I'd mentioned the following academic experiment somewhere, but a quick blog search proves me wrong. Isn't technology amazing?]

My European Studies 101 class is paired with one of our First Year (can't say Freshmen) Seminars taught by a friend and colleague with whom I team-taught a course on Anglo-Saxon Art and Literature last fall. That means that 14 of the 31 people in my class are also in her class; we can watch them a little more closely for academic problems, they can bond a little better as people and members of the Colleges, we can consolidate some writing and library tutorials. We're sharing several books and consulting each other about themes and approaches (it helps that we've worked together before and know what we're getting into).

I had the first payoff today. One of our intellectual goals is to help students understand that they should make connections across courses -- or to put it negatively that they should not compartmentalize. There's little more irritating that knowing for a dead certainty that quite a few students in class C are currently enrolled in class B taught by Friend-and-Colleague-Professor and had class A from oneself as First Year Students but can't remember a damn thing from those other classes. Makes you weep. Makes me weep, at least.

Today! Today! We read Genesis 1 & 2 and someone not in the first year seminar piped up about the weird pronoun usage (you know, "male and female created he them," etc.) and asked about hermaphrodeity. More than one of the students from the First Year Seminar piped up about Plato's Symposium and the idea that the original creation was of hermap hroditic people* (man/man, woman/woman, man/woman) and that since the split up we are all really looking for our other half. I was so pleased! I told all sorts of people about it today (including the associate provost whose pet program this is).

*On the other hand, none of them seemed to understand how it changes everything to realize that Plato puts the speech into the mouth of Aristophanes. I made a note to talk about that in considerable detail when we get to the Symposium. It's all too easy to take those dialogues as statements rather than conversations between folks with positions.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:16 PM

September 6, 2005

Mmmmmm, Minoans

I got to teach the Hagia Triada Sarcophagus today -- and the students did quite well with it. We looked at heaps of other objects (see the link below to see quite a few of them) and worked by comparison to other objects to figure out what's going on -- which figures are human and which are statues (look at the figure on the right)? What might the double axes (left end) mean? What are the so-called "horns of consecration" (they're on the back, sorry) likely to tell us about a building? Great fun and good for them -- I think they understand me when I say "you know, sometimes we art historians just make it all up" better now.

You want to list museums I'd like to visit? Put the Archaeological Museum of Herakleion, Crete down for me. What a collection of neat stuff!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:31 AM

September 2, 2005

My own Alma Mater steps up

Rice offers Houston-area Tulane students classes. I think the provision of academic work being offered by many colleges and universities (see the comments on the previous post) is a fine thing.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:59 AM | Comments (0)

September 1, 2005

What to do for Katrina refugees?

The University of Texas takes in academic refugees from Katrina -- this is really substantive academic rescue work.

• Undergraduate students who are Texas residents or graduates from Texas high schools will be eligible to take available undergraduate courses at the University for the fall 2005 semester.

• Graduate and professional students who are Texas residents or graduates of Texas colleges and universities will be eligible take available graduate courses at the University for the fall 2005 semester.

• Graduate students who have no need for coursework but who need to use libraries and research facilities will be eligible to use appropriate University facilities.

• Foreign exchange students will be eligible to take available courses at the University for the fall 2005 semester if the University has a formal exchange agreement with the students’ home institutions.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:05 AM

August 30, 2005

And today . . .

This is the 2nd day of classes. Today I get to teach Greek Art & Architecture -- I'm passing out the list of Olympians for Thursday quiz purposes and telling them to memorize the orders for next week. Historiography meets for the first time this afternoon - what a fun seminar! Today they get to try to define Art, History, and Art History.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:40 AM

August 29, 2005

"Cheating" or Technological Generation Gap? I vote for the latter.

Department officials said that some problem sets from textbooks used in introductory graduate economics courses have answer keys online. At least one student found answers for a course taken by all first-year students, and apparently shared the information with classmates. Though the solutions were apparently available, David Mills, chair of the economics department, said students should have “known it was off-limits,” but that they instead “used it without the professor being aware.”

Read the story. I disagree with the university's actions. The students should not have "known it was off-limits" AND the professor should have been aware it was available for their use. That's where the problem comes -- someone gave a test or homework without writing any original material and didn't bother to check the online resources pushed by the publisher. Bozo.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:14 PM

Back to class . . .

. . . for the new year. Let's see - I'm teaching Greek Art & Architecture, Art Historiography, and the shattered first-semester remnant of Western Civ. (which passes under the name of European Studies, lately). Shoring up fragments, etc.

I'm starting off my year by narrating Machiavelli's letter to Vettori* and the Great Conversation model of what-it-is-we-do-here. And I get to wear seersucker.

*the top google result when I was looking for a free text to post online for my students is an amusing blogospheric small world. Click and read for content and setting.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:06 AM

August 27, 2005

What I did this next-to-last morning of summer vacation . . .

I supervised 20 or so students in a Pulteney Park cleanup -- the photo doesn't show the brush piles. Everything is much neater now -- and I hope the students have a feeling of belonging to Geneva now. I got to narrate the foundation story -- Sir William Pulteney, the Pulteney Land Tract, Capt. Williamson, the Land Office, the Geneva Hotel (now the Pulteney Apartments and my own place of residence), and Pulteney Park. Just the way to start off the school year!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:51 PM

August 24, 2005

How to blog, 2

Here's my leader.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:19 PM

August 23, 2005

This Wireless Campus thing has gone quite far enough, thank you . . .

This whole Come-pay-tuition-here-we're-a-wireless-campus has gone quite far enough, thank you. They've wired the Bristol Field House with stations everywhere. I guess I could buy a pda with wireless and check my email from the elliptical thingamajig, but I'd rather not. Maybe surf the web while waiting for a squash court to open up?

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:41 AM

July 19, 2005

On Calendars

One way in which I am out of step with the contemporary academic management styles of outcomes and assessments is in making the calendar for my courses. Here I would like to be a free-to-be-you-and-me type of professor, walking in every day and dealing with what we've gotten to and reminding them to start reading the next book because we'll be there by next Wednesday.

I never have the slightest idea how long it will take to "cover" or "do" or "read" a book. How long does it take a group of 18 year olds (who I haven't even met yet!) to work through Gilgamesh? The Symposium? Argh! And I'm paired in a "learning community" for one of my three courses (I know, I know - I agreed to it. I must've been feverish.).

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:30 AM | Comments (3)

July 14, 2005

Citations =/= Reads, but it's still uncomfortable

Prof. Tom Smith at The Right Coast has this to report about legal scholarship, but the same thing can be said about most of our fields.

This data covers about 385,000 law review articles, notes, comments, etc. etc. that appear in 726 law reviews and journals, and looks at how often they are cited. Cited by other law reviews, or cases.

First of all, 43 percent of the articles are not cited . . . at all. Zero, nada, zilch. Almost 80 percent (i.e. 79 percent) of law review articles get ten or fewer citations. So where are all the citations going? Well, let's look at articles that get more than 100 citations. These are the elite. They make up less than 1 percent of all articles, .898 percent to be precise. They get, is anybody listening out there? 96 percent of all citations to law review articles. That's all. Only 96 percent. Talk about concentration of wealth.

Umm - he points out that the numbers include self-citation.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:18 AM

June 22, 2005

"Why is my report card lying?"

Go read this. The college remediation industry is the biggest waste of money and time in America; everything it does was supposed to have been done earlier. My father always referred to these classes as "high school" when he taught them, and that's what they are. 8 out of 10 of the entering students at the "University" in question need remediation in English, 7 out of 10 in math. 80% are unprepared.

The students have been defrauded. They have been required to attend institutions (lets stop calling them "schools") which have wasted their time and taught them much less than they need.

via Joanne Jacobs and Eduwonk.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:43 AM

June 20, 2005

Illegal Immigrants and Financial Aid

Another example of how the the tuition/financial aid cycle is insane (though I have another question).

This is a tear-jerker college admissions story from the New York Times which I fear will not resonate entirely with its readership. Whatever their politics, they're probably delighted to find out that at least their children aren't competing with bright, atheltically talented, illegal immigrants for Princeton admission. Nevertheless, this is an interesting problem -- what should be done about it? Should illegal immigrants be allowed to receive financial aid from the federal government (which is where most of the loans come from)? If so, what does citizenship mean? Should universities be able to give scholarships out to these students without endangering their position on the federal teat?

My further question is this -- if Princeton wants a student can't they afford him? With $9.6 billion in the endowment as of March 31, 2004? Are they telling us that they can't find a group of alumni willing to fund a "but it's not Princeton money" scholarship so that they can present a happy face to federal regulators? Please. Let's not be as disingenuous as that. "[A]ccording to several people with knowledge of his situation" colleges didn't process his application? What, did he write at the top of the first page "Warning! I am an illegal immigrant!!" I thought the NYT was trying to get away from anonymous sources.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:58 AM

June 19, 2005

Typos as lasting as bronze. Corrections.

That's DeLancey House -- you really can't see it in the summer for the trees. Geneva's Main Street is a pleasant, shady place. And below is the corrected bronze plaque -- sorry I didn't get a picture of the incorrect one (you can read my complaint about the mistake). For the alumna reader DeLancey House is the Temporary Admissions Office because an anonymous donor ponied up something like $850,000 to build an expansion (in the most tastefully imitative architecture possible) onto what used to be called William Smith Admissions. So the Admissions folk are partially displaced for the next few months.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:44 AM

June 16, 2005

Rainy Days and Web Pages.

It's a rainy, chilly summer afternoon and I'm link-checking.

The problem of having a reasonably link-rich set of web pages for students is that if you're the least bit responsible you'll check the links periodically (and post the date of said link-checkery). I checked the links last fall but quite a few of them have fallen by the wayside since and there are other similar out-datednesses. Still, it's a good way to spend a day inside.

We have been encouraged to use Blackboard for the last few years, but both the people most responsible for that have left for other pastures this summer so we may be back to HTML. I noted that Prof. Burke was struggling with CSS. I have decided that it is an exclusionary tool invented by a clerisy to keep the peasants incapable of distributing information for themselves. I learned to write simple HTML in 15 minutes (how much is there to a tag?) and my pages worked fine. The improvements driven by all this much more elaborate back-stage code are, I think, overrated. I'm even taking off the backgrounds as I go this time. Stark. Simple. Content-driven. That's my rationalization and I'm sticking to it, for now.

Of course, if I could figure out how to get Tinderbox to do what I want it to do I'd probably try that, but given my time constraints I'm better off with HTML and as few colors as possible.

Further: O.K., o.k., I'm reading the webmonkey tutorials on CSS. Ugh. I'm also emailing the folks at Tinderbox; I can't get things to export very usefully.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:22 PM

June 8, 2005

Liberals and I.Q.; professors and grades

Steve Sailer has the best of the Kerry Transcript coverage, because he understands, as he likes to point out frequently:

First, that IQ is a meaningless, utterly discredited concept.

Second, that liberals are better than conservatives because they have much higher IQs.

That's why the Kerry transcripts matter. Because Howell Rains said: "Does anyone in America doubt that Kerry has a higher IQ than Bush? I'm sure the candidates' SATs and college transcripts would put Kerry far ahead." Well, yes, Mr. Rains, some of us did doubt it then and now we know.

Now as a college professor who just attended a college reunion weekend I can tell you that grades are not a particularly useful predictor of life performance -- something that irritates academics to NO end. That's part of why lots of academics were eager to believe that John Kerry had higher grades and a higher I.Q., because we not particularly secretly resent our C students who do well. Colleagues and other professors regularly allege that poor student who do well must have used family connections, family money, or well-planned marriages for advancement.

Good grades tell us something about raw ability, but they tell us a good bit about hard work and more about study skills (the last being why senior science majors with nary a humanities course often do so well in humanities electives if they get interested). What bothers me isn't that our C students (or, nowadays, our low B average students) do so much better than we might think they should, but that we have so failed to interest them.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:29 AM

June 7, 2005

Campus Bookstores

We're having some unrest about our 'College Store,' as we assiduous call it (to avoid 'Book Store,' I suppose). There is talk about moves to move all the books to the basement and cease to carry so many trade books. Insinuations of vile commerce in enlogoed sweatshirts intrude. Since I do all my book shopping on Amazon or at used bookstores in Ithaca, Rochester, or Syracuse, this doesn't cause me much pause.

A group of Faculty see our college bookstore's trade and children's sections as providing the closest thing to a commercial bookstore in Geneva -- and I suppose they're right. That's a kind of service to our local community, like the radio station.

I fear, though, that this is one part of online shopping that has utterly changed my life. If I want a book and it's not here I'm not willing to wait the weeks it takes local bookshops to get it for me. I never liked waiting and now I don't have to. Between Amazon and Abebooks I really don't have to put up with the lamentable ignorance of clerks; I haven't been in a serious new books bookstore where I met clerks who knew a lot more than me about a lot of subjects since Oxford closed in Atlanta. I've been in used bookstores with excellent staff, but given how few of the retail experiences in America that describes, I'll stick to online shopping. I don't know how much good the service has to do to make it necessary for our institution to provide it (an no one so far has made any claims about the amount of use the community makes of our bookstore).

Now what to do about textbooks? I would say close down the book section, sell more sweatshirts, and let students order THOSE online, too, but I haven't experimented with the online textbook suppliers.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:49 AM

June 6, 2005

Assessment - ugh. More!

The Art History plan is turned in, I suppose (no further drafts have crossed my email desktop for about a week) so now I'm working on the assessment plan for European Studies. "Departments," however, are much clearer than what we (locally) call "programs." Everything is much murkier -- including what body of persons would actually approve such a plan. There's a steering committee (and that's my vote - let them see it)) and then there are the associated faculty, which includes more or less anyone who teaches about something vaguely European. I think. Ugh. Pray for me.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:13 PM

June 4, 2005

Reunion Fundraising - a Kodak moment

I'm just back from the Reunion weekend picnic on the Quad. Two days of hearing from alumnae/i about how wonderful these Colleges are has been just the kind of boost I need to get over some recent disenchantment with what we do in the American "higher" education.* They love us - they really, really love us! Two of the 10 reunion classes (the 30th and the 50th) raised over $700,000 apiece for their class gift; the 5th year classes (the only one I taught -- Hobart and William Smith classes of 2000) got more than 25% participation and raised something like $5,000; that's pretty good for 26 year olds. When I thought about the fact that the 30th reunion folks - the classes of 1975 - are busy paying tuition or helpting to pay off loans that $700,000 made me very grateful

Disclaimer: yes, I tear up at Kodak commericals and the ends of Julia Roberts movies. I won't watch The Yearling again, despite the fact that since I watched it the first time I found out that Claude Jarman was in my parents' class at Vanderbilt.

*and I've never had strict grading policies so positively reinforced! One and all the table I ate supper with last night praised the hard-grading-with-clearly-stated-standards approach as having taught them something lastingly valuable.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:34 PM

June 3, 2005

What do you call a typo cast into bronze?

I should know the answer to my own question -- hell, I own books on epigraphy -- but in a new signage campaign on campus someone not only ordered but PUT UP a plaque that was off by a century. DeLancey House had 1926 instead of 1826 on it. Luckily, they ripped the plaque off the door jamb yesterday, just in time for alumnae/i to walk past undisturbed.

Well, the simple answer is "expensive," since it seems (according to an elevated administrator) to have been our error, not the foundry's.

Sorry there's no picture available -- DeLancey House is a lovely example of early 19th century plain architecture; it was built by William Heathcote DeLancey, the first Episcopal bishop of Western New York, who never had a cathedral or a see (his successor set up in Rochester). He lived in Geneva just down the street (as it was in those days) from Hobart College and was instrumental in the survival of the college. I'm glad we have something on campus named after him.

Note of the correction with photo here

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:55 AM

June 2, 2005

Reunion Weekend - Someone ELSE'S

Oh, my - I've been at these Colleges for a while, haven't I? The first graduating classes I taught, 2000, has their 5th Reunion this weekend! I taught a senior seminar that year and two of those students have already registered. This is a vivid demonstration for me of how we go from remembering people to being parts of their memories.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:59 AM

May 31, 2005

Tuition up 27%

No, you didn't read the headline wrong. The University of Richmond is raising tuition by 27% for future students (current students will only go up 5%, which is high enough in a single year to provoke howls, but compared to 27% who'll complain? Just think of the money they're saving!). Inside higher Ed has the story. The most beautiful thing is the president of the U of Richmond comparing college education to a cappuccino machine. Really. It makes me happy to be involved in the education industry, it does. I'm sure his faculty love and respect him, too. Here's his about page. It doesn't make him look like the director of marketing for Crate & Barrel.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:54 AM

May 25, 2005

It's all a matter of opinion, isn't it?

Students have always deluded themselves, of course, and hope has always sprung eternal, or at least until final grades appear. And at least some in my classes really do eventually master the material. But confident placidity in the face of error seems to be on the rise.

Maybe it's all that self-esteem this generation of students was inculcated with as youngsters, or maybe it's the emphasis on respecting everyone else's opinion, to the point where no answer, even a mathematical one, can be truly wrong because that might offend the one who gave it. Maybe they think they should never let me see them sweat.

All anecdotal, yes, but I know far too many people who tell the same sort of story for my comfort.

via Joanne Jacobs.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:58 PM

May 24, 2005

Ah, Fabliaux - Dirty Stories in Foreign Tongues

One of the only consolations in this April-of-a-late-May has been reading fabliaux. I just finished powering through Gallic Salt, a great side-by-side English and Old French book. That way I can read the bawdy tale in English and check the French whenever it gets interesting.

I've blogged on this already, but the material is delightful -- full of grotesque bodies and philandering bourgeoises and clueless knights. Great stuff. On to Guillaume du Machaut! Le jugement dou roy de Behaingne is a great example of a querelle -- this one a question of "who is more miserable" between the Lady whose lover died and the Knight whose unfaithful lover deserted him. Don't tell me how it turns out! (Actually, I already know that it ends with a particularly luscious description of gifts given to the two quarrellers by the King of Bohemia after he renders his decision. I, of course, shallowly only really care about the jewels.).

Ah, the middle ages.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:20 PM

May 19, 2005

The Green Grass on the Other Side

I have a few months left of leave, so I should probably stop feeling so guilty about spending so much time reading Old French literature (mainly in translation and with the original at hand to check the word choice - my OF is slow nowadays). One of the great joys is that the plays are so short! Lots of the material is lost (yay, Medieval Scholarship of Loss!) and much of it goes quickly. So last night I reread Rutebeuf's Le miracle de Théophile* and Adam de la Halle's Le jeu de Robin et de Marion and found a brooch! A badge! A buckle?** Yay! And said brooch/badge/buckle is part of a lover's gift exchange -- double yay! I'm spending some time looking at all sorts of evidence (mainly literary at this point) for how people wore the little cast metal bits. Fun, fun, fun!

*which I'm teaching in the Fall anyway in European Studies. Don't know it? Ah! It's a pre-Faust! Theophilus is a recently-fired cathedral chapter official who makes a pact with the devil to get his job back (note that the Devil offers not a woman, but preferment -- you can tell it's medieval rather than "early modern" because sex was too easy to make a pact with the Devil over). 7 years later he prays to the Virgin and gets out of the deal. A useful tale of intercessors and the politics of patronage -- and the story turns up on the tympanum over the door to Notre-Dame, Paris, closest to the Canon's residences. Literature, art -- natural choice for Eust 101. And they'll read some version of Faust in Eust 102 and won't think it's an utterly new trope. I've talked about this recently and found one illustration on line.

** Vous averés ma çainturete,/M'aumosniere et mon fremalet,/Bergeronnete, Robin sings to Marions (in the Pléiade edition, Jeux et Sapience du Moyen Age, ed. Albert Pauphilet. Paris: Gallimard, 1951. p. 170. The translation I was looking at puts it between lines 170 and 183 in the Paris B.N. fr.25.566 ms). Unfortunately, "fremalet" may mean "belt-buckle," since Robin is giving Marions his belt and the pouch that hangs from it. Still, it's still a small, metal love gift. It's what we call "a start."

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:45 AM

Worse, not Better -- MORE Adjunctery

Inside Higher Ed shows us some numbers reflecting the Fall 2003 hires:

Between 2001 and 2003, the number of full-time faculty jobs at degree-granting institutions rose to 630,419, from 617,868 — a gain of 12,551 jobs. But the number of part-time jobs rose to 543,137, up from 495,315 — a gain of 47,822 jobs. And as a percentage of faculty jobs at degree granting institutions, part-time positions increased to 46 percent, from 44 percent, over those two years. Anecdotal reports suggest that the increase has continued since then. (my emphasis)

The system is broken. Change is coming, and I don't think that faculty governance will have much to do with it, except at little places like these Colleges. And note this bullet-pointed factoid if you think things are better at private schools: Full-time faculty members are most likely to be tenured at public institutions (48 percent), followed by private nonprofit institutions (40 percent) and for-profit colleges (3 percent).

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:35 AM

May 18, 2005

Quick Guide to DC Graduations . . .

Want a quick guide to all the most exciting speeches in DC, Maryland, and Virginia? Go here to the chart prepared annually by the Washington Post of graduations and their speakers. Plan accordingly!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:41 PM

May 17, 2005

All initiatives lead to new titles, don't they?

Dr. Summers said the money would be spent on a range of initiatives, including the creation of a new senior vice provost post to focus on diversity issues, improved recruitment, subsidies for salaries, mentoring of junior faculty members and extending the clock on tenure for professors who go on maternity or parental leave. (my emphasis)

Here's an interesting moment -- Several professors also said $50 million was not a particularly large sum for an institution as wealthy as Harvard. In recent years, its operating budget has been about $2.5 billion. Yes, but also: Last year, only 4 of 32 professors offered tenure in the faculty of arts and science were women. So we're talking about a $50 million "initial committment" spread across a small population of actual tenure-track faculty (though to have any idea how small we need to know how many people were denied tenure, too). I wonder if they currently don't have a clock-stopping provision; that'll be expensive, but an obvious help.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:20 AM

May 16, 2005

A New University of California campus from scratch

I hadn't read anything about this before -- the UC system is starting a new research university and have already spent some $400 million at it. The article is an interesting read -- they're trying to work with divisions instead of departments:

Most radical, perhaps, is UC-Merced's decision to abolish the normal structure of academic departments. "If I had a department of psychology, I would have one that ranked tenth out of 10, and it would be that way for some time," Tomlinson-Keasey said. "That's not good for an institution that's trying to make its mark."

By keeping faculty grouped more loosely in larger categories such as engineering, humanities and natural sciences, the chancellor hopes to encourage cross-discipline collaboration and reduce the usual pattern of academic turf wars.

I'm skeptical about the good results of that effort -- turf wars are endemic to the species, I fear; it just moves them around to not have a structure called "departments." Prof. Burke has an interesting suggestion about non-departmental hiring that gets at a very different way to understand a non-departmental structure than transcending turf wars (that's sort of what it's about - go read it). Dissolving "departments" or "disciplines" is a reform well-worth considering, but it's also worth remembering that disagreement and factions and turf wars will soon enough crystalize around some other center.

Prof. Burke's suggestion revolves not around dissolving disciplines but around hiring people who cross disciplines -- I guess we can hope UC Merced has done that in its hiring, too.

I've experienced a little of the difficulty of advertising for discipline-crossers first hand. My graduate degree is from Emory's Institute of Liberal Arts. We (the students) always wondered how they (the faculty) would ever actually replace someone; everyone in the ILA was so -- umm -- different. You had the professor who had an M.Div., a Ph.D., and wrote mainly about postmodern short fiction. There was the professor who wrote comparatively about 18th and 19th century French travellers -- Custine in Russia and de Tocqueville in America, for instance. Then there's the anthropologist whose initial work was on Tibet but who became a psychoanalyst. I was never particularly privy to the conversations about how they advertised, other than that they still seem to be hiring interesting folks who cross lots of lines cheefully. Some of them are more integrated into disciplinary discussions in other departments on campus than others. Some Emory departments spun off the ILA -- Comp Lit, for instance, was a concentration inside the ILA when I got there and is now a freestanding program.

Now at a university the ILA provided an institutional structure for those who weren't in a department, per se. At a liberal arts college it's more difficult to encourage, review (for tenure and promotion), protect, and eventually replace people who don't have a specific departmental identification. I agree with Prof. Burke that this is the way small liberal arts colleges should go -- not to become bad little universities or be blown by ever whim of student enrollment but to try to find ways to understand their strengths and make them stronger by connecting them. I agree -- but I'm not sure how best to do it.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 2:40 PM

May 15, 2005

The Sun! The Sun!

It's 8:03 in Geneva and the weather is warmer -- the thermometer says 58. And, finally, the sun has broken through. Knock on formica we'll have a lovely graduation -- Hobart's 180th and William Smith's 94th. I'm the Faculty Marshall and get to carry a mace. This may or may not be a good idea (medievalists sometimes go all funny when handed maces and have the urge to begin layin' 'em out like Archbishop Turpin -- bloodlessly, but well).

Yesterday's Baccalaureate speaker was Mary Gerhart, professor of religious studies, retiring after this year. This is an optional celebrations, but I agree with our Chaplain that ritual is important (see note of profession above) and almost always attend. I always attend any function at which Mary is going to speak. And then there's the chance to wear academicals and walk in line -- it's a threefer!

The weather was perfect for the little procession (faculty, trustees, the Chorale, officiants and officials only) and then all the milling around afterwards. Then it started to rain about 5 and rained at least until I went to sleep. I woke up to grey skies, but now the sun is out! Yay!

later the same day . . . the sun held up! I avoided hitting anyone (though I did get to bang the mace once in the library lobby to call the trustees back into their places)! Speeches were good and sweet and funny -- especially Dee Dee Myers (now Doctor honoris causa Myers.)! Now for the after-picnics! I've got 2 today and one I've had to decline for tomorrow (though maybe it's worth skipping yet another meeting on assessment to attend?).

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:03 AM

May 13, 2005

No new email - Proceed with Agenda!

Nothing new in my school email box this morning but some listserve matter and the Chronicle jobs alert -- good! The final Faculty meeting of the year comes off this morning and I am delighted to see that no one is trying to get in touch with me at this stage with earthshattering business which MUST be considered. We can decorously vote on a few pieces of pending business, hear the Faculty Awards distributed, clap loudly at the news that the art department will have a new studio building (yay, us!), and adjourn to the President's house for brunch and speeches in honor of the four faculty members who are retiring this year. At least that's the agenda.

Oh - it's 40 again, but sunny, which makes all the difference in the world.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:15 AM

May 12, 2005

And what is it about this week and meetings? Assessment woes.

Every single committee is rushing to get another meeting in this week - and I'm one of the lucky ones; I'm only a member of one department and on the coordinating committee for one program, so I only have 2 sets of meetings going on about Assessment.

Our Middle States 10-year review was positive but . . . they want to see us undertake the assessment thing. So we're breaking out all those mission statements (of which we have a pile) and making 5 column charts about how each aspect of the mission statement lines up with specific outcomes which then can be assessed. And no, grading assignments and assessment aren't really the same thing at all, so put that thought out of your head.

Here's a lovely example of the process - note who's driving it. Yes, Middle States. This movement in higher education is not self-generated. Here it is in a seminary setting. The University of Denver has an Office of Assessment

Lots of this will actually be useful and may even improve what we're trying to do. Lots and lots of it, though, is busywork. As a former member of my department said in a cover letter enclosed with copies of his current departemnt's assessment materials "the filing cabinets are filling up."

from the comments - here's a very thoughtful piece on assessment and grade inflation by Jonathan Dresner.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:04 AM

May 11, 2005

Oh, the Stories we COULD Tell!

This story about the SMU adjunct-blogger explains in part why I never write about the good stuff. Bad stuff? Whichever. I'm not really anonymous, after all (though I don't throw my name around a lot), so I don't tell the stories I sometimes want to tell. I realized once I was about 3 months into blogging that I wasn't nearly anonymous enough to say anything about my colleagues, much though you might be amused by our antics. Nor do I go into negative detail about specific students; all of my whining is fairly generalized. You might have figured out that I link to horrific stories from other schools to get the urge out of my system.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:25 PM

'Tis the Season

Yesterday was the best day of my semester off. Why? Senior grades were due and I didn't have any to turn in. And later in the week - no non-graduator grades. Hah, hah! I just called one of my colleagues who needed to vent a little; I managed to restrain my "hah, hah!" until the end of the conversation when she asked me what I was up to.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:34 PM

May 9, 2005

Odd Blog Brushes

Mr. Reese has died -- oh, he was Dr. Reese or Chancellor Reese to other folks, but he shared an office with my father from the time I was born until I was 5 (I guess), and they remained friends. Somewhere in some cedar-scented drawer is a sweater Mrs. Reese knitted for me when I was a very small tyke, and I use the stocking she knit for me every Christmas. Their children and I played together a lot -- so much so that they are 2 of the only 3 names of other children I remember from Knoxville (the other being known in our house as "John B."). I've called my parents already, so I can type about it now.

Prof. Reynolds has risen in my estimation because he counted Mr. Reese as his mentor. I counted him as a great big funny man with a good family.

Further: If you google "Jack Reese" the 4th hit (today) is a speech given to the Knoxville Writers' Guild in his honor. My father is the man of Falstaffian proportions mentioned in third paragraph.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:29 PM

May 8, 2005

Early Modernists Hijack My Entry

Not that I mind -- there's no such thing as a bad link -- in fact, I'm flattered. But I hasten to point out that the carnivalesque isn't an Early Modern phenomenon, and my interest in it is entirely medieval. Still, Nathanael picked up my Natalie Zemon Davis post for Carnivalesque #7. Click and read for lots of historical interest, even if most of it is lamentably contemporary.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:53 AM

May 7, 2005

Jesuit Education -- Educate the Educators.

I'm very happy to see my neighbor-school sued on this one -- LeMoyne, a Jesuit University, expelled a man from their graduate education program for expressing an opinion. NOT for striking a student, but expressing the opinion that stirking a student MIGHT be an option. Now they're being sued for $20 million, which the Jesuits can ill-afford.

Don't they understand "teachable moments"? Scott McConnell's professor or department chair could have explained to him why they were troubled. Instead, someone gave him an A- on the assignment and reported him to a superior.

Here's the local paper's coverage.

She cited "grave concerns regarding the mismatch between (McConnell's) personal beliefs regarding teaching and learning and the Le Moyne College program goals."

Beliefs. If a Jesuit school is going to police "beliefs," they ought to do it before students enroll. I wonder if Christian belief is anywhere in their program goals. There's a Christian case to be made against corporal punishment (and Jesuits have been making it for 400 years, though they haven't always lived up to it), but does Le Moyne put it in those terms?

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:13 PM

May 6, 2005

The Long Goodbye

Last night was the first social gathering to say "goodbye!" to departing colleagues; we're losing several tenure track and recently tenured folks to other institutions. I refer to it as the "long good bye" because none of the folks who were there last night are leaving before late July - so we were also celebrating the end of the semester. And the defeat of Imperialism; I drank Coronas.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:57 AM

May 4, 2005

Ending Mandatory Rape Reporting

This proposed Tennessee law strikes me as a bad thing.

Tennessee's colleges and universities would no longer have to notify police when a student reports being raped, under a proposed state law.

Some victims' rights advocates say the change will encourage more women to come forward by removing the intimidating influence of the criminal justice system and instead requiring campus officials to tell victims about nearby rape crisis centers.

The 2nd paragraph might be true, but I can promise you that some campuses will take advantage of this to be sure the incidents never get to the police and never get reported to the general public (including students and parents).

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:43 AM

May 1, 2005

The Dyslexic Aspiring Doctor

Remember the question last year of giving students more time on the MCAT? Drexel has a 2nd year medical student who wants a fourth (4th) try to pass a test to let her into the next year of study. There's a name this time, which I find comforting. Should Ms. Baer ever finish medical school I could avoid allowing her to treat me. Erin O'Connor has the story.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:10 AM

April 29, 2005

That Time of Year

Honors defenses, the student art show, full library -- and I go around cackling at everyone because I'm still on leave and I don't have any grading to do!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:51 PM

April 28, 2005

What's the WORST Library Food?

Popcorn.

Food in the library is bad. NOISY food in the library is evil. Why am I not surprised when I stand up and walk over to glare to see exceptionally tan, exceptionally blonde people consuming said evil food product?

Oh, well - such is the library in the last full week of classes, full of people who otherwise never trouble the studious.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:27 PM

April 27, 2005

Educationeer Gossip

Oh, my! Jay Mathews in an article that sounds more like the kind of thing I imagine is in Variety -- Chester Finn won't lecture at George Mason if Gerald Bracey is in the room! Nasty statements! Fireing! Oh, my!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:10 AM

April 25, 2005

Wendy Doniger - Yay!

It's nice when someone is invited to speak at These Colleges whose field of interest is something in the seriously past past. It doesn't happen very often, I hate to say. Our president was a Clinton White House employee who because Peace Corps Director, so all the participants in his sponsored lecture series are inside-the-Beltway folk. I mean, Dee Dee Myers is giving the talk at graduation. Dee Dee Myers? Then there's the almost-annually awarded Elizabeth Blackwell award. So far no winners are interested in anyone dead. There was an historian named Hanna Holborn Gray who was awarded the prize in 1984, but she got it for being the first woman president of a major American university (the University of Chicago) rather than for being a Ren-Ref specialist (I'll put it this way -- we gave her the award, but our library owns none of her books; Cornell's library owns 2, both of which are about contemporary American education, and JSTOR doesn't turn up much more; like many educational administrators she seems to be better known as an administrator than an educator). The best-advertised ongoing lecture series is all about the modern world. Our Genocide series gets further into the past than almost anything else, though there still hasn't been a speaker who talked about a genocide as early as the Armenians; given the local depopulation story I'm a little surprised not to see a speaker on Native American things in the list. It's not that there's never a lecture on the world before 1800, but that it's seldom in a forum widely advertised and particularly well-attended.

Well, this afternoon we had someone relevant AND talking about Sanskrit! What more could I ask? She was splendid, funny, and in the thick of para-academic controversy.

Prof. Wendy Doniger, Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions at the University of Chicago, wheeled across 3000 years of literature and movies -- from Sanskrit tales to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and dropped lines like "well of course I read French, I'm an adult." I hope our students were impressed; I certainly was.

She also has had an egg thrown at her during a lecture at the University of London for having written about Hinduism from the outside. She's a bête noire for certain folks who want only Hindus to talk about Hinduism, which was the point of discussion in the afternoon seminar.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:10 PM

April 24, 2005

Big University Retention

Here's a long New York Times piece on big state universities and their retention rates, which are horrible. Of course, small liberal arts colleges don't have perfect ones, either. Keeping students on track to first degree is a problem which, if studying produced results, we'd have solved by now.

It could, of course, be that 20% or more of people who start college shouldn't have started college, but that view won't do.

The former president of These Colleges and this other college says this:

Richard H. Hersh, former president of Trinity College and Hobart and William Smith Colleges, refers to this situation as a "mutual nonaggression pact." Professors see teaching as a requirement they have to fulfill to do the research they prefer, he says, "so the professor goes into class and doesn't ask much of students, who in return don't ask much of the professor. The professor gives out reasonably high grades as a way of camouflaging that this bargain has been struck, his evaluations will be satisfactory, and students don't complain about grades or about whether they've learned much."

In the view of Dr. Hersh, a proponent of accountability in higher education, students have to be held responsible for their own initiative, but low standards allow them to coast through their college years with minimal involvement. "That's the real disgrace," he says.

That finesses the question of whether the 'engagement' Hersh seeks is something that all students are (1) interested in making or (2) capable of making.

Then there's this person:

Mr. Kuh, who in addition to directing the student engagement survey is a professor of higher education at Indiana University, Bloomington, describes students like Mr. Bhalla as "maze smart" - they have figured out what they have to do to get through: buy the book, find out what's going to be on the exam and stay invisible. "They'll pick large classes," he says. "They'll go through the distribution of grades in different majors and pick the easiest one. Then they tend to hang together." He says these students miss the point of college: "These are people with enormous potential and talent. We just need to identify them." That colleges can't get such students more involved in their education is "inexcusable," he says.

This begs the questions about the point of college. Mr. Bhalla has a very clear purpose:

"You go so you can get a job and make money when you're older. But at the same time you get life experiences that are priceless, like networking." He expects that to pay off: "I've made so many connections I never would have been able to make without it, and these are all my friends and people that I know from the bars and from classes and, you know, people that I've hung out with that later in life I'm going to be able to call on and be like: 'I know you have a job with this company. Do you know if they're hiring, or can you get me an application? Can I use you as a reference?' "

Sounds like it's working - he drinks a lot, makes friends and enemies, and made the dean's list despite seldom working more than an hour outside of class a day. I'd agree with Pres. Hersh that no one has challenged him, but I'm not at all sure he's interested in one. He might well have been up to it, but maybe we'd all have been better off if Mr. Bhalla had gotten a job out of high school and gone for any further education later.

At the end of a three-hour interview, Mr. Bhalla is asked if he regrets anything he has done at Arizona. "These are the years that I'm not going to have back," he says. "And I don't want to be 30, 50, looking back and wishing I'd partied then because I can't do it now."

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:11 AM

April 22, 2005

European Studies readings

My book selection window for European Studies 101 in the Fall is closing (well, if I want to maintain my perfect record of ordering before the utterly unenforced deadline and, hence, add to my collection of bookstore novelty items provided to the virtuous). I had a talk today with the professor who will be teaching the 102 next year; he intends to read some version of the Faustus (he's a Germanist, so it makes sense). I propose to read the Play of Theophilus (the Jeu de Théophile by Rutebeuf and to look at one or more of the art versions -- the north transept portal of Notre-Dame, Paris, for instance.* Here's a manuscript painting version.

Yay, thematic continuities! Pacts with the devil! Sin! Intercessors! Repentence! Should be fun.

Prof. Brannen should approve.

*My favorite place to find pictures for public linkery doesn't have anything up for Paris! I had forgotten that.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:27 PM

To Educate the Poor

Maybe private university scholarships are making a difference:

. . . several lawmakers say they were stunned to learn that 16 percent of New York students at private colleges came from families that earned $20,000 or less in 2002, compared with 13 percent at the four-year colleges of the State University of New York. On the upper end of the income scale, 46 percent of those attending private colleges came from homes that earned $80,000 or more, while the rate at SUNY was higher, at 52 percent. These statistics are based on state data analyzed by the Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities, a trade and lobbying group for private colleges.

This was embedded in an article about state funding to private institutions in New York. Hope we get some of it!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:44 AM

April 21, 2005

Don't Steal the Professor's Laptop - Prison Rape Version

Here's a piece of advice -- don't steal the professor's laptop. Click, choose your viewing format, forward to 48:50 and watch the scariest threat ever made in front of a classroom. If you don't want the video version, here's a transcript. The video version is better, though!

via Engadget.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:58 AM

False Consciousness

Tales of the Weird from Prof. Soltan.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:44 AM

April 18, 2005

Other Conference Benefits

AND I got to meet Dottoressa Cronaca!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:52 PM

April 7, 2005

Please don't use critical thinking.

I am very, very, very tired of people who "use critical thinking." I prefer students who "think."

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:05 PM

Duke iPod Experiment Fails. Well. Sorta.

Via Engadget I read that Duke will not hand out "free"8 iPods to all first year students next year. Now people will have to register for a class that actually intends to USE recorded material. The story claims that sixteen classes fit that criterion for the spring semester. I take it that number excludes music and foreign language classes (course which, after all, have been using recorded materials for as long as those have been available).

"Some faculty are enthused about using iPods in courses, and others don't see any real purpose for them," O'Brien said in a statement. "But without the iPods experiment, we wouldn't be having such active discussions about what value new technologies have in teaching."

Welcome to technology adoption on campus, though $500,000 seems like a kind of expensive ice-breaker exercise. We still don't have 100% penetration for email, after all.

So were they free? Well, the distribution of 1,600 iPods doesn't appear to have been grant supported, though it was an initiative in concert with Apple. Sooooo . . . the money came out of someone's budget. Duke's in the $40,000 per year bracket. Even if it was grant supported, the time and effort spent on getting THAT grant could have been spent on getting ANOTHER grant (this is something cranky faculty members often say in response to an administrator saying "but the [whatever] is grant-funded and we wouldn't have gotten money from them for a different kind of project!").

further: In answer to a comment below I started wondering about the fallout on campus -- then I wondered what the phone lines at the Duke admissions office might be like today: how many cranky members of the next Duke entering class will be calling the to shout "damn it! my parents told me that since I was applying to Duke early admission that they weren't going to buy me an iPod for Christmas because I'd get a free one in August anyway!"

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:45 AM

April 6, 2005

Still More Anti-Cheating Devices!

My friend at Mirabilis.ca points out yet another anti-cheating device -- this explained at Teresa Nielsen Hayden'sMaking Light. Free term paper!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:10 AM

April 5, 2005

Going on the Offense Against Plagiarism

Anne at Creating Text(iles) has taken the anti-plagiarism step I pointed to on A Week of Kindness a lot further. A lot. Oh, my.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:17 AM

March 29, 2005

Cheaters Sometimes Lose

Oh, this is funny. Go read it all . . . . Mr. Nate Kushner is approached by a stranger over the internet who wants to pay him to write a paper about Hinduism.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:31 PM

March 28, 2005

New Jersey Tales - Departmental Refugees

This is dramatic - Seton Hall decides to close down its doctoral program in audiology. The audiology program and its students cast around and offer themselves, lock, stock, barrel, and departmental records, to Montclair State. Other than a suggested lawsuit, everyone seems happy enough. I'd like to read some other versions of this story!

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:59 AM

March 23, 2005

'Tis the Season to be Effusive

Yes, it's recommendation time for jobs. I've already gone through a few rounds of recommendations for graduate schools, and now we have the recommendation requests coming in for folks who've been out a year or two. Luckily I am kind of cranky, and the students who ask for recommendations in the first place are pretty good. Then, of course, I explain that I keep them on disk and all they have to do until they can ask several former employers for letters and don't need me any more (*sob*sob*) all they need to do is email me and I can revise a paragraph or two and drop the new and improved letter in the mail. The fun part is that I demand an updated resume, so it's an illuminating way to keep up with them.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 3:36 PM

Spelling Woes

This is an absolutely fascinating article about spelling and brain science from the Washington Post; it's the kind of article that makes me marginally more sympathetic about my students -- though why they can't seek out proofreaders I don't know. Steve Hendrix, a career journalist, can't spell to save his life. A lifelong friend of mine - one of the best-educated people I know - is in exactly this position, too. Of course, he's left-handed, to boot, and we all know about those people.

Hendrix does seem to think that spelling education as practiced in his daughter's school is better than it was in his day, but is afraid that it's too late for him.

I came across this via Chris Nolan, who says she can't spell either.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:25 AM

March 18, 2005

Shoddy Work

Stories like this one about the K-State English professor who killed his wife suggest to me that we need to stress more exacting research skills.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 12:35 AM

March 15, 2005

Lord, How the Money Won't Roll In

The good news is that if Summers is forced out fundraising should be better for everyone else - no one's going to give money to the Harvard faculty of Arts & Sciences for a while. The better news is that if Summers stays we may see tenure reform in our time.

Further: Attempting to address reporters after the meeting, Summers was shouted down by a few dozen students waving a large sign that proclaimed "End Sexism" and chanting "Hey, hey, ho, ho, Larry Summers has got to go!" Even better. For every "hey, hey" chant they lose a million dollars. Shouting down your own president (especially a moderate Dem like Summers) is a great way to alienate alums.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:19 PM

March 1, 2005

On De-rediscovering Lost Authors

Here's a fascinating article from Inside Higher Ed on the re-relegation of an author to the junk heap of unread novels. The odd part is that for a brief, shining moment people thought she might have been African-American. Did that make the novels worth reading? And does finding out she wasn't make them not worth reading? Henry Louis Gates is involved -- this isn't a grad student rediscovering someone for dissertation purposes. Read and think.

Prof. Burke has an interesting essay on the subject.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 9:38 PM

Wacky College Scholarships - any ZOLPS among my readership?

Some scholarships are open to all, such as one sponsored by Henkel Consumer Adhesives Inc. The company awards $5,000 to the couple who attend their school prom wearing the best outfit or accessories fashioned out of Duck brand duct tape.

Others are more restrictive: Loyola University in Chicago provides full-tuition four-year scholarships to Catholics with the last name of "Zolp" on their birth and confirmation certificates.

Though some of these scholarships sound peculiar, the fact is that "they are not unusual," said Ann Wright, vice president for enrollment at Rice University in Houston. There are so many, she said, because many donors have specific ideas, relating to their own personal stories, of how they want their money spent.

"This is how we get into a bind, with very narrow geographic scholarships or with people who have specific religious backgrounds -- left-handed Lithuanians," Wright said. "That's why we do our very best to encourage people to say what they want but create some flexibility in the award."

This from a Washington Post article. I went to Rice. I benefitted from a diversity bait scholarship - I was an out of state (Rice was overwhelmingly Texan) humanities (Rice=engineering, right? Well, no, but that's one of their problems) smart (which didn't do me that much good at Rice) person. If I'd been female maybe it would have been multiyear. As is they threw out a few one-year-only-tuition scholarships as bait; my major advisor, who was a long-time faculty member of the admissions committee, told me that's how this particular scholarship worked.

Well, it worked for me. I had 4 happy years. Hanszen, '84.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:17 AM

February 23, 2005

Interested in NEW Catholic Colleges?

If you have a strong feeling that people should go to NEW Catholic colleges because they're more likely to be orthodox than old ones, try this one - Southern Catholic College. I'm not at all sure that I agree with the put-your-college-in-an-isolated-location model*, but Dawsonville isn't far from Atlanta.

Read this article about the high level administrators at Southern Catholic. These are people with appropriate professional experience to do their jobs and with good local connections. They look well-financed, and without all the money coming from a single donor.

Their reason for starting the college isn't some quirky view of education or some idea that they will provide the salvation for Catholic education -- they wanted a Catholic college in the Atlanta area and they have the money. The archdiocese of Atlanta has seen an explosion of Catholic schools - both diocesan and independent - and this is the fruit of that growth. There are now at least 6 Catholic high schools in the archdiocese (4 diocesan, 1 Marist, 1 Legionaries of Christ**, 1 independent [though with an interesting relationship to the chancery]). THEN there are all those other Catholics across the South who are severely underserved by Catholic colleges without snow on campus.

*I know, I know - I teach in centrally isolated Geneva, NY. - but I chose to go to college in Houston, myself.
**Pinecrest is up to 10th grade this year, so in 2 years they'll be k-12. They already have 700 or so students. Demography in Atlanta is kinda scary.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:33 PM

February 20, 2005

On Professional Conferences

Here're a few preliminary notes on the College Art Association.

Why do so many of my colleagues wear black? Are they trying to look like the artists? Please note, Art Historians, that the Studio Folks no longer wear all black. One of my immediate colleagues was bold and wore a lavendar suede jacket over her otherwise all-black ensemble; there have not yet been repercussions, but I wouldn't be surprised if her eventual tenure committee heard about it.

Why do so many of my older colleagues strive for youthful hair?

Why do people feel comfortable making programmatic statements about the paper they would have written on a particular topic when, in fact, they did NOT write a paper for the session? Do you suppose said "questioners" wrote an abstract which, sadly, was not accepted? I wonder.

Why do people let their children dress like tiny sluts and run around hotels screaming? Oh, I 'm sorry, that's a question about the people involved in the cheerfleading competition who are also staying at the hotel. Still, it was amusing watching the intersection between two large bodies of people professionally trained in using words like "Spectacle" with such different meanings.

As I said earlier I wasn't presenting or interviewing -- I attended sessions and chatted with folks. I missed meeting the one person I really NEEDED to see, but I saw a bunch of other folks I hadn't seen in forever. I even learned some things at some papers; all in all, a good conference.

Further - is it a sad sign of my life that one of the high points was the possibility of wearing a pair of new dress shoes out? After all, there's no snow in Atlanta....

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 4:48 PM

February 17, 2005

Off to College Art . . .

. . . if you see me there, say hey. I'm not presenting, not appearing on either side of the interview equation -- just attending for the love of learning. Or that's what I'll tell the Provost when I ask for reimbursement.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 6:01 AM

February 11, 2005

Constructing Curricula

Professor Burke writes about the problems with core curricula - impulses, desires, and realities. I can't face the Atlantic article he talks about yet - it's Friday and I'm reading a book about sacred languages* and waiting for a neighbor to come downstairs for a drink.

*By the way, I recommend this for anyone who tends to idolize Latin in the liturgy.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:29 PM

February 9, 2005

College Art

Anyone else going to C.A.A. next week? (Well, other than YOU, Ms. Procrastination. I know about you.) Now that I'm tenure track the provost will pay part even for travel when I'm not presenting. Call me a sell-out, but I'm taking The Woman's* cash. Well, the partial reimbursement of expenses.

*Our last 4 (real and acting) provosts have been female. I don't think of provosts as The Man.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:49 AM

February 8, 2005

Churchill's Academic Background

Tenure protects freedom of speech. It shouldn't protect fraud. That's the accusation here -- and it's academic fraud, not fraudulent claims of ethnic background, as alleged by the American Indian Movement. Prof. Reynolds asks about peer review -- and not of the articles, but the reviews before hiring and before tenure. The University of Colorado may have some investigating to do.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 11:17 AM

February 7, 2005

Women and Science, Men and . . . ?

Poor President Summers.

Let's talk about a different discrepancy, one with a hundred explanations which no one finds satisfying; everyone involved in study abroad programs agrees that more women go that men -- at lots of schools the imbalance approaches 70/30 (my 2003 program in Rome was 12:8 female to male and everyone on campus thought that was quite good). I sat on a board last year during which the professionals offered a number of possible explanations. I have no idea if anyone has done any serious research about this, but I'll offer some as an anecdotal report:

1. Male students have a stronger committment to sports, and that committment often precludes a term away from school (that would be true of anyone who wants to start at, say, lacrosse at these Colleges. Lacrosse is a Division 1 sport here.)

2. Male students have a stronger tendency to major in sciences (yeah, yeah, yeah) which all have far more tracked curricula than the humanities or social sciences. There are small programs for Math majors (intercollegiate, not our own) and we have a program for biology majors in Australia. Want to major in Chemistry? Can't study abroad and graduate in 4 years.

3. The parents of male students are perceived (please! this isn't me! this is a statement from a woman who has been working with study abroad programs for more than 15 years!) to think that study abroad is "girl stuff." In families with both male and female children the female children are more likely to study abroad than the males (though the male children in those families are more likely to study abroad than males from other families).

4. Administrators and professors involved in study abroad programs perceive female students as more intellectually adventurous than male students. I disagreed with that one - certainly in the tiny sample of MY Rome program they weren't.

By the way, at these Colleges it isn't just a matter of those chosen to participate -- the applications come in greater numbers from women.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:57 AM

February 5, 2005

Academic Freedom =/= Paid Speaking Engagements

I've read some suggestions that the University of Colorado may be preparing the ground for firing Ward Churchill. I'm opposed. Academic freedom means the freedom for the tenured to make fools of themselves.

I got into a rather -- umm -- warm discussion of the Churchill situation last night at a dinner party in Aurora, NY, home of Wells College. Thankfully the professor defending Churchill's opinion -- indeed, he agreed that those killed in the WTC were morally complicit in all of America's evils (his throwaway line - there was a CIA office in the building; of course, there was also a museum dedicated to the first African graveyard in New York, but I guess they were little Eichmans, too) -- is not a professor at these Colleges. I wouldn't have wanted to insult a tenured professor at my own institution by implying that his employment by an institution founded by one of the name partners in the Wells Fargo company might make him complicit in 19th century American genocide. I use the verb "imply" because I didn't use the G word but I did mention Wells Fargo.

However, back to the topic of this post, academic freedom is not a promise of paid speaking engagements. It is no abridgement of Churchill's freedom of speech OR academic freedom to cancel the show in Clinton (by the way, Hamilton is in Clinton and Colgate is in Hamilton. And William Smith is our women's college and Hobart is our men's college. Upstate New York is confusing.)

By the way, in much of the bloggage people seem not to mention that Churchill was not going to be talking about 9/11, but about prisons and Native American rights, something about which he might have something useful to say based on his academic specialty (unless, of course, you believe that his ethnic identification problems invalidates his work). The Kirkland Center failed to exercise care in finding out about their invited guest. They should've known and dealt with the issues on campus in advance.

Here's an example of care exercised with invited speakers -- we are hosting Prof. Wendy Doniger this spring. She comes with built-in hecklers. We know this. What's more, there will be a concerted effort to explain to Hindu students what the controversy is about and why they might be interested in hearing about Doniger's approach. That said, we still hope that no one runs protest busses.

There's lots of commentary at Cliopatria, mainly academic, and now featuring the word "McCarthyism."

There's lots of commentary at The Volokh Conspiracy, some of which is legal and much of which is academic.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 10:12 AM

January 30, 2005

Brrrrrr.

Admittedly today is the warmest day here in Geneva since sometime in mid-December, but I just spoke sharply to a student who I saw walking out of his residence wearing flip flops. Warmest = 33 degrees at 5:05 p.m. EST. I was just acting in loco parentis iracundi. He laughed. When he gets sick and dies, then he'll be sorry.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 5:06 PM

January 27, 2005

I Miss "Film" Sometimes

It's all the VCR's fault. When I was in college long ago and far away we went to the River Oaks at least once a week (often twice, sometimes 4 times). Those once-a-weekers were usually a time when the Rice Film Whatever It Was Called was showing something irresistable (they had the worst seats in the world, or I would've gone more often). We divided movies into "film," "movie," and "celluloid," with a marked preference for the first and 3rd categories (did you see Ator in the theater? I did. And then again and again on Channel 17 when I lived in Atlanta.)

Film is harder to find on college campuses nowadays than it used to be. I think of this because I'm going to Fritz Lang's Siegrieds Tod on Monday. The colleague with whom I taught "The Anglo-Saxons" last term is teaching "Male Heroism" this term and is showing the film in the last large-scale sponsored film series on campus. Yes, the language people show a more than occasional film, but no one seems to go other than their students who are checking off boxes.

Of course, they'll all have Netflix in 20 years and they'll discover all this amazing stuff and wonder why we never showed it to them, the same way that people I meet tell me "I hated history in school, but now it's all I read...." Oh, well. The youthful ability to stay up late is wasted on the young.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 1:29 PM

January 21, 2005

Frank Vandiver, r.i.p.

The New York Times obituary does a nice job with his administrative life* -- I'll be interested to read the Rice coverage. Vandiver had just left Rice for North Texas and then A & M (which transfer caused a certain amount of good-tempered mockery in the halls of the history department) and was still a great presence. My gosh - I wrote a term paper in high school using Ploughshares Into Swords: Josiah Gorgas and Confederate Ordnance. I hadn't thought about that in years.

*The Times even mentioned his mastership of Brown, which for some of us is more important than having been Grand High Poobah of Aggiedom.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 8:00 AM

January 20, 2005

What I'm Reading . . .

I get to teach European Studies 101 in the Fall, which is one of the shattered remnants of the Western Civ curriculum taught here at these Colleges from the 1940s through the 1970s. I like "great books" courses, though I tend to find them unworkably ambitious about how much reading 21st century students can do. I mean that -- not just will but can; the longer I teach the less use I find in assigning big chunks we don't cover and the more happy I am assigning small chunks and covering them thoroughly. That way some people who hadn't learned or hadn't figured it out for themselves learn how to read closely.

So . . . I'm rereading Thucydides, remembering how awful I thought he was the first time, and trying to decide what excerpts to read. I'm also picking bits of Plato and Aristotle. Fun, fun, fun!

While procrastinating-by-wandering-through-the-stacks (an activity I discovered sometime in elemenary school) I came across a book of articles translated from Annales, which promised to be the inaugural issue of a series of annual volumes.* I found two articles on marriage, birth control, and contraception in the early middle ages (one Byzantine, one western), that were very useful for trying to figure out things about virgins and virginity in early medieval Rome. I'd read something else by the author of the Byzantine piece, but I'd never heard of Jean-Louis Flandrin, the author of the western piece -- and he had some useful things mentioned in the notes. He seems to have moved from Annales-style interest in nutrition and demography to writing about food per se. His last book seems to have been Food: a Culinary History. It looks really useful!

*Isn't it a sad implication that already by 1975 historians at Johns Hopkins understood that no one could be trusted to go read things in French? Academic French is really pretty clear, too. These selected articles are things one could possibly xerox and give to an advanced undergraduate class (and one hasn't been able to expect them to read in foreign languages for a long time), but I find it hard to believe, given the selection, that they're not aiming the book at graduate students.

Posted by CrankyProfessor at 7:50 AM