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Last week was basically poetry week: we had the poet Gili Haimovich, from Israel, on campus. She did a few workshops with our students and gave them interviews, and everyone loved her. We also went to a poetry festival to listen to her, on a panel with Singapore-based poet Alvin Pang and Berlin-based poet Ulrike Almut Sandig. Alvin Pang stole everyone's hearts; we couldn't even buy copies of his books because they were all sold out, but he chatted with us after the panel and gave us the link to a website where we can order his books. Here he is reading 'Candles', a poem in 'Singlish' (Singapore English), a conversation between a man and his son who steals candles from a church so he can study.

We also had a three-day book exhibition on campus. Thanks to the funding for my research project, I could go wild buying books. I also ordered tonnes for our library, and one of the stalls was so thrilled with my orders that they gave me a free book. *hearteyes*

Today I visited another campus of the university for various things: primarily for the proposal presentation of my PhD student, which went very well. She's a joy to work with, and her area of research, food and gender, is pretty aligned to my own interests.

Another good thing that happened is that I met the director of the Centre for Research to ask permission to appoint a research assistant for my post-doctoral project. The girl who applied for the position is another delightful person, and I've known her as a student for three years; she recently graduated from our BA English Honours programme. We hit a snag along the way when a nasty colleague, who is unfortunately pretty high up on the academic food chain, told the student that she wouldn't be hired for my project because she doesn't have an MA. I was pretty pissed off (although I managed not to show it; I've learnt my lesson about being transparent about my thoughts), because... how dare you? How dare you crush a girl's hopes about doing research work, when you aren't even the one in charge of the project? I knew the Centre for Research is really happy with my work so far and was unlikely to deny my request, and yay, it came through. So much glee. It's childish, I know, but I can't wait to see the look on Nasty Colleague's face when I tell her I'm hiring the kid.

Thirdly, I had a very enjoyable meeting with a group of students from the other campus. They found out that I was offering Fandom Studies and wanted to meet me since they're doing a research project on K-pop. My fandom heart is still with LJ and you guys, but it's so gratifying to be able to share the fandom love with students and encourage them to work on stuff that they love.

Speaking of fandom things, I've got two lovely gift fics to rec. My Everywoman gift fic is a quietly lovely character study of Scully from Karen Kosseff's point of view, including awesome backstory for Karen. My

spn_summergen gift fic is equally lovely, based on one of my favourite fic possibilities: Sam at the beginning of S8. Saving Him From Hell also does justice to Amelia, and I love that; I love seeing her and Sam drawn to each other because he's lost Dean and she's lost Don, and I don't need to tell you guys how much I love that parallel between them.

Re books: I recently finished Lauren Graham's Someday, Someday, Maybe, which was pretty nice, and have just started on Felicia Day's You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost). It's awesome so far: I can absolutely relate to her anecdotes about growing up in an internet-less world (the horror).

Drowning in work and personal stuff as usual. I managed to finish my Summergen and Everywoman fics, and I don't think they're terrible, so there's that.

I just finished grading the first round of student submissions for the semester. One of my students wrote a gorgeous paper on the Vicks ad in support of trans rights, and her writing moved me so much. This is why I teach. Video below.

P.S.: OH, and my Fandom Studies class is going so so well! <3

As anticipated, my students arrived for the new semester and promptly ate my brain, leaving me with little to no mindspace for anything else. In addition to my usual duties, I'm now the head of the English Honours BA programme (not at all as good as it sounds) and in charge of not one but five student clubs (theatre, poetry, writing, research, and gender studies). Good times. No, really. Having so much to do means I have much less time to dwell on other things.

Anyway, so one of my writing club students gave me a book of Terribly Tiny Tales to read, so I decided to cheat on the book meme a bit and post about it for question #2 on the list, "best bargain", because hey, a book I paid no money for counts as a bargain, right? Right. I haven't finished it yet, but here's one of my favourites:

( a terribly tiny tale )

Took me a moment to 'get' it, but when I did, I loved it.

Also, I'm offering an optional course in Fandom Studies this semester. More on that next time, I hope.

<3

Yet another deathly dull presentation to sit through. I just don't get how these speakers of illustrious repute can make things such as bloody colonial battles sound like the most boring tales ever.

Anyway. Taking the opportunity to occupy myself with other activities as usual. (If we had faculty 'development' programmes every day, I'd never leave LJ.) Today's topic: annoyance with a colleague who said, over lunch, that students who have anxiety attacks are "pampered": basically, that they're faking it for attention or whatever.

I can't begin to describe how terrible it is for people, especially professors who should know better, to be dismissive of conditions such as depression and anxiety. The worst that can happen has happened on our campus. We have proof that these are very serious and real issues that we need to know how to confront. I'm especially disappointed in this particular colleague, because we've just introduced two courses in Disability Studies (one for the BA students and one for the MAs), and he was put in charge of the syllabus since he apparently has a background in the subject. If someone with experience in the discipline has such a biased attitude toward psychological conditions that can be truly crippling to those who experience them, it really is unsurprising that so many laypeople display the same biases. (And, yes, I am thinking of people in the SPN fandom who choose to dismiss Jared's anxiety and related issues as 'attention-seeking'.)

Okay, mini-rant over. Back to pretending to listen to the speaker. (How have you been in academia for decades and not learnt that no one will listen to you if you speak in a monotone throughout your session? Seriously.)

Forced to sit through an unbelievably dull faculty development session. Amusing myself by taking pics of my keychain. You may have been paid to sound pretentious and monopolise an hour and a half of my time, Dr Patriarchal, but YOU CAN’T TAKE THE SKY FROM ME.

Serenity

Me: What can you tell me about plagiarism?
Student: You mean in the sexual sense?

Scully facepalm

And she was doing so well until then, too. I've scoured my brains for which word she could possibly have been thinking of, but nothing's coming to my (admittedly overworked and zombified by this point) mind.

Probably the most fiendish thing this university does to us is make us interview student applicants on Sundays.

Typical interview:

Student: *has studied commerce/business/math/science for the last two years and decided on a whim to apply for admission into the BA English Honours programme*
Me: Can you recall an author or text that may have caught your attention in English class?
Student: Can I have some time to think?
Me: Sure.
Student: *several moments later* Yeah, sorry, I got nothing.
Me: That's all right.

Also me:

Mulder headdesk

Working on the syllabus for my fantasy course! I have some questions that I'm hoping my flist will be able to help with.

1. Suggestions for critical essays or articles. So far I have Tolkien's "On Fairy Stories", Ursula Le Guin's "The Critics, the Monsters, and the Fantasists", extracts from Rosemary Jackson's 'Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion', and an article on Harry Potter by Richard Bernstein.

2. Films to watch. So so many, so little time! I'm thinking Fellowship of the Ring, Prisoner of Azkaban, and The Neverending Story. Good/not good? Better options? Maybe The Hunger Games? PotC: Curse of the Black Pearl?

3. BOOKS. The Hobbit, Goblet of Fire (not sure about this one -- Philosopher's Stone may be better?), H G Wells' short story "The Inexperienced Ghost". Should I include Earthsea? Will 18-19 year olds be able to relate? Any suggestions for works/extracts from Gaiman? I want to include Philip Pullman, but His Dark Materials is too long to read/discuss as part of the course, and the film version of 'The Golden Compass' does very little justice to the book. Maybe just the first chapter of the book?

4. TV shows:

- I'm thinking maybe one episode each from Buffy and Merlin. Would the pilot episodes work? Or maybe there are better options among later episodes?
- Possibly SPN? Although all the good episodes I can think of need context to understand. "Roadkill" is a good one, right? Something people who don't know the show will still be able to appreciate (given the awesome twist at the end)? Possibly "Dead in the Water", since it's creepy and atmospheric enough for the genre, and has some wonderful characters as well as great writing? Any other suggestions?
- I know Doctor Who is sci-fi rather than fantasy, but I can think of a couple of episodes, such as 'Blink' and 'A Christmas Carol' (the flying fish are completely awesome!), that might be fitting? Good idea?
- Game of Thrones. Definitely unsuitable to screen on campus, but I'm thinking maybe I can focus on one character (possibly Daenerys and her dragons) and show some clips that could be discussed? I really want to include GoT somehow.

I just saw an interesting call for papers on queer readings of vegan texts. Would anyone have recs for vegan texts -- books, films, anything, really, that could be analysed as a text? I've started looking around but am getting stalled by all the results for recipe books.

ETA: There's an awesome issue of Critical Animal Studies for download here, with an entire article on the topic of queer theory and veganism. Abstract below the cut.

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