First Day in Chicago

My partner and I made it to Chicago without a hitch even though CNN was reporting that National was having at least 30 minute delays. We checked our flight on the departure/arrival board and saw no delay from any airline at all.

We arrived late in the afternoon, checked in, and we had lunch at Eleven City Diner. It's a wonderful old-time diner with a "cheery Chicago attitude" (read: not New York). I immediately get the sense that there's some historical/cultural rivalry between Chicago and New York. I don't know if I'll have time to explore that on this trip, but I will tread carefully in the few days that I am here. Anyways, I ordered a patty melt and Wisconsin cheese cheddar fries. Very satisfying and huge portions!

Afterwards, we headed over to Shedd Aquarium which was very near Soldier Park. Everything was in walking distance from our hotel so there was no need to grab a cab or rent a car. The air was cold, but not frigid, no precipitation or the famous Chicago winds. At the aquarium, we were able to see Chicago's stunning skyline, and the evening twilight made the view spectacular; stars in the urban sky. It definitely reminded me of San Francisco and New York. It was just nice to be in a proper city again.

This morning we woke up to snowfall. Temperature is cold (to me it's always cold) and the winds have picked up. It's not a storm, but it's a steady downfall which might make sightseeing somewhat difficult today. Hopefully we and another friend/colleague who is also interviewing for another position will be able to check out The Field Museum and their exhibit on maps. Yeah I know it sounds weird but Foucault did talk about geography and the field is entertaining some of his concepts and theories. So at least it'll be inside.

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I'm keeping up with the latest news on Benazir Bhutto's assassination yesterday. The latest report suggests that she was not killed by shrapnel or a bullet, but from physical trauma like hitting her head (???). I watched the press conference by the secretary of the interior (?) who then showed the last known video of Bhutto. That was seriously disturbing to watch because you know what happened next. But frame-by-frame, Bhutto moved offscreen as the camera panned to the right, and a second later you can see the people in the crowd react instantly to the blast.

Bhutto was buried today and no autopsy was performed on her for cultural and religious reasons. Which means no one can confirm the actual cause of death.

At that moment, I realized that the assassination is already having some eerie similarities to JFK.

All I Want For Christmas is ... Aliens v. Predator: Requiem!!!! OMGWTHLOLOL?!?!

I bet you of all the things to do on Christmas Day, watching the premiere of Aliens v. Predator: Requiem was not one of them. But we did. It was my idea to watch the movie considering I'm a big fan of both franchises, but it was a counter-intuitive choice. Of course, thanks to my partner we rationalized the choice as an act of recalcitrance against the maniacal consumerism that Christmas generates every year. And on that note, we watched the film.

*SPOILER ALERT*

For a film that we knew beforehand would be stupid, it was worse. Not disastrous because there were a few moments that I liked, namely being scared to my wits and watching victims writhe in pain as "chestbusters" break out of their hosts.

That was cool to watch, but also shocking because the victims also included children and pregnant women. That was truly different in this film because we normally attribute feelings of protection to children and pregnant women. Horror movies are constructed in a way that gives heroes and heroines a reason to survive and fight off whoever or whatever is gouging, cannibalizing, pummeling, ingesting, or decapitating them. Obviously, the word "killing" is a foregone conclusion, but the manner in which victims die is central. Anyways, children are very useful to instill the drive to stay alive by soliciting your paternal/maternal instincts. Think of the relationship between Newt and Ripley in the second Aliens installment. But in this movie, one of the first victims was a father and son, in which we got to see the kid's chest pulse and explode, and the screech of the pre-adult alien slithering out in a pool of gushing blood. Another scene had the "predalien," the alien/predator incarnation from the first AVP, stalking a bunch of newborns in a hospital. *Shudders* And finally, a scene which still freaks me out, a hospital ward full of pregnant women who become impregnated by the "predalien." Needless to say, what came afterwards was absolutely grotesque. Oddly enough, my partner wasn't even phased ... something about alien-on-human violence that is more bearable (and entertaining to watch) than human-on-human violence. Go figure. That scene still unnerves me.

Anyways, we're off for the MLA conference in Chicago. We'll be staying for about 3 days. Mostly work related stuff and maybe a day to do the tourist stuff. I've got a deadline to submit a call for papers in a proposed anthology, and one or two job applications before the end of the month. And on top of that, another chapter to finish. Then it's off to Kansas to stay for another few days to visit my partner's parents. It'll be cold and freezing, but we'll have lots of home cooked meals. I can't wait!

This Just Gets Worse

I read and saw the testimony of Jaime Leigh Jones before the House Judiciary Committee who was gang raped by KBR employees in Iraq. I am absolutely horrified at what she endured at the hands of her co-workers, and moreover, utterly sickened by the apparent cover-up. I could be wrong but contractors are under the jurisdiction and protection of the DoJ, yet the DoJ is not responding to this crime and perhaps countless others. The DoJ didn't even bother to send someone in which Representative Conyers slammed them for their particular absence and silence.

Seriously, WTF?! When is the DoJ going to start to stand for justice?!?

Daily Musings ... Annoyances

So I received word that two universities that I applied for have hired someone else. They sent nice thank you letters stating that the applicant pool was "exceptional" and that my "qualifications" was exemplary, and while the choice was difficult under these circumstances, they believed they found the right candidate ... besides me. Of course, I'd feel better if I made it on to the short list. That's the real recognition. Out of, say for example, 200 applicants which is a conservative number, being on the short list of 2-4 finalists means a whole lot more. At this point, I'm just happy to be on anyone's short list. Two jobs down ... about 24 more to go, if they ever send a notice anyways.

IT'S OVER!!!

'nuff said.

Final grades are done for both sections.

Scantron machine was still broken.

Second section's grade results was very similar to my night class. Here's the quick comparison:

Section 1: Final = 73.2%; Midterm = 87.8%.
Difference: 14.6%

Section 2: Final = 72.4%; Midterm = 84.3%.
Difference: 11.9%

I ended up curving the results after all ... A LOT ... just to save the few who were hit pretty hard.

But it's done and over. This semester is officially at an end for me.

Collateral Damage

So going into finals, I realized that I had way too many "A" students. Part of the inflation is how easy the midterm was which I think I need to redo. So in order to really discern the "A" students from everyone else, I had to make the final exam much harder. I added more multiple choice questions, elevated the complexity of the wording of the questions, and changed the final essay section to focus on the Iraqi Constitution. Obviously, the final exam heavily emphasized the lectures and in-class discussions so students would be in good shape if they were attending. Of course, it doesn't guarantee that students in attendance knew what was going on and that discrepancy showed. For the most part, the exam was hard ...

It was *A LOT* harder.

I think it was way too hard.

Average final exam grade from one section was 73.2%.
Compared with their midterm grade it was 87.8% so a 14.6% difference.

So I accomplished my objective and found out who the "A" students were. But the dedicated and solid students were also hit hard, dropping almost a full grade which really sucks. In general, the students were weak in one of two areas: the multiple choice questions, or the essay section. That was intentional and the differences really came through as students with excellent writing skills scored very well in the essay section, and those with strong deductive skills scored high marks in the multiple choice section. The 2 or 3 that did well in both received an "A." Unfortunately, there were those that did poorly in both sections, and when that happens you've hit the bottom hard.

Like rock bottom.

Like Age of Dinosaurs bottom.

Like so far down below there would be no point in trying to dig you back up ...

Not even for your skeletons.

I'll find out what happens tomorrow in my last section and see if the pattern remains true. If it does, then I'll have to evaluate my choices.

Grading ...

One class is done and another tomorrow morning.

If there's one thing I hate more about final exams, it would be a broken scantron machine.

End of the Semester Blues

So the last class of the semester ended last Thursday with a nice round of applause from my students. I even got to hang around after their student evaluations and chatted with them as they exited the building. Little did I know that I spent over two hours talking with them about everything. Certainly not time wasted, but it was damn cold outside.

I also got a notice from the chair of my program indicating that my time is almost up. I had to send my abstract, recent conversations with my committee, and a schedule of completion before he authorized an extension of time for my degree. He approved of the extension but I was a bit unnerved at the ordeal. To waste close to ten years is not something to laugh at but to be extricated from the program is aggravating. So the clock is ticking; I have the Spring 2008 semester to finish. I am near completion but I've got some editing and revising to do.

And I've got no choice but to finish it now.

'Tis the Season

This is why I hate snow. You figure people will have the common sense NOT to drive. But they do.

LOLOL

Just in time for Christmas!

YAF Watch

I'm highlighting a new blog called YAF Watch, a blog dedicated to monitoring the activities of the YAF chapter at Michigan State University. The SPLC and many other anti-hate organizations recently categorized the MSU chapter of YAF as a hate/extremist group, one of the first and only student group to be on the list.

My Blog's Reading Level

Get a Cash Advance

College level reading, eh? Instead of reaching for greater levels of literacy, articulation, and comprehension which are noble goals of a civil society, I think I'll head the other way down to the vulgar, the profane, and the barbaric. I think that'll be a lot more fun. ^.-

Ascension!

A really great article from the NY Times about the average length of graduate students to complete their dissertation and move on with their lives.

Exploring Ways to Shorten the Ascent to a Ph.D.
by Joseph Berger

Many of us have known this scholar: The hair is well-streaked with gray, the chin has begun to sag, but still our tortured friend slaves away at a masterwork intended to change the course of civilization that everyone else just hopes will finally get a career under way.

We even have a name for this sometimes pitied species — the A.B.D. — All But Dissertation. But in academia these days, that person is less a subject of ridicule than of soul-searching about what can done to shorten the time, sometimes much of a lifetime, it takes for so many graduate students to, well, graduate. The Council of Graduate Schools, representing 480 universities in the United States and Canada, is halfway through a seven-year project to explore ways of speeding up the ordeal.

For those who attempt it, the doctoral dissertation can loom on the horizon like Everest, gleaming invitingly as a challenge but often turning into a masochistic exercise once the ascent is begun. The average student takes 8.2 years to get a Ph.D.; in education, that figure surpasses 13 years. Fifty percent of students drop out along the way, with dissertations the major stumbling block. At commencement, the typical doctoral holder is 33, an age when peers are well along in their professions, and 12 percent of graduates are saddled with more than $50,000 in debt.

These statistics, compiled by the National Science Foundation and other government agencies by studying the 43,354 doctoral recipients of 2005, were even worse a few years ago. Now, universities are setting stricter timelines and demanding that faculty advisers meet regularly with protégés. Most science programs allow students to submit three research papers rather than a single grand work. More universities find ways to ease financial burdens, providing better paid teaching assistantships as well as tuition waivers. And more universities are setting up writing groups so that students feel less alone cobbling together a thesis.

Fighting these trends, and stretching out the process, is the increased competition for jobs and research grants; in fields like English where faculty vacancies are scarce, students realize they must come up with original, significant topics. Nevertheless, education researchers like Barbara E. Lovitts, who has written a new book urging professors to clarify what they expect in dissertations; for example, to point out that professors “view the dissertation as a training exercise” and that students should stop trying for “a degree of perfection that’s unnecessary and unobtainable.”

There are probably few universities that nudge students out the door as rapidly as Princeton, where a humanities student now averages 6.4 years compared with 7.5 in 2003. That is largely because Princeton guarantees financial support for its more than 2,000 scholars for five years, including free tuition and stipends that range up to $30,000 a year. That means students need teach no more than two courses during their schooling and can focus on research.

“Princeton since the 1930s has felt that a Ph.D. should be an education, not a career, and has valued a tight program,” said William B. Russel, dean of the graduate school.

And students are grateful. “Every morning I wake up and remind myself the university is paying me to do nothing but write the dissertation,” said Kellam Conover, 26, a classicist who expects to complete his course of study in five years next May when he finishes his dissertation on bribery in Athens. “It’s a tremendous advantage compared to having to work during the day and complete the dissertation part time.”

But fewer than a dozen universities have endowments or sources of financing large enough to afford five-year packages. The rest require students to teach regularly. Compare Princetonians with Brian Gatten, 28, an English scholar at the University of Texas in Austin. He has either been teaching or assisting in two courses every semester for five years.

“Universities need us as cheap labor to teach their undergraduates, and frankly we need to be needed because there isn’t another way for us to fund our education,” he said.

That raises a question that state legislatures and trustees might ponder: Would it be more cost effective to provide financing to speed graduate students into careers rather than having them drag out their apprenticeships?

But money is not the only reason Princeton does well. It has developed a culture where professors keep after students. Students talk of frequent meetings with advisers, not a semiannual review. For example, Ning Wu, 30, a father of two, works in Dr. Russel’s chemical engineering lab and said Dr. Russel comes by every Friday to discuss Mr. Wu’s work on polymer films used in computer chips. He aims to get his Ph.D. next year, his fifth.

While Dr. Russel values “the critical thinking and independent digging students have to do, either in their mind for an original concept or in the archives,” others question the necessity of book-length works. Some universities have established what they call professional doctorates for students who plan careers more as practitioners than scholars. Since the 1970s, Yeshiva University has not only offered a Ph.D. in psychology but also a separate doctor of psychology degree, or Psy.D., for those more interested in clinical work than research; that program requires a more modest research paper.

OTHER institutions are reviving master’s degree programs for, say, aspiring scientists who plan careers in development of products rather than research.

Those who insist on dissertations are aware that they must reduce the loneliness that defeats so many scholars. Gregory Nicholson, completing his sixth and final year at Michigan State, was able to finish a 270-page dissertation on spatial environments in novels like Kerouac’s “On the Road” with relative efficiency because of a writing group where he thrashed out his work with other thesis writers.

“It’s easy, especially in our field, to feel isolated, and that tends to slow people down,” he said. “There’s no sense of belonging to an academic community.”

Some common sense would also hasten the process. The dissertation is a hurdle that must be cleared, not a magnum opus, the capstone of a career. Princeton’s Mr. Wu has made that calculation.

“You do not want to stay forever,” Mr. Wu said. “It’s a training process.”

E-mail: joeberg@nytimes.com

Correction: October 4, 2007

The On Education column yesterday, about efforts to shorten the time it takes to earn a Ph.D., misstated the number of graduate students at Princeton University. There are more than 2,000 — not 330, the number of Ph.D degrees the university awarded last year.

Perfect

"Sometimes the appropriate response to reality is to go insane."
-- Philip K. Dick

Headaches

It's been awhile since I posted anything and I guess that's a good thing. It means that I'm focusing on my dissertation, applications, and whatever else that requires my attention. It also means that my mind is a wreck as I try to wrap my head around my dissertation.

I tried to start revising my chapters. I wrote these chapters a long while ago and I just do not agree with what I wrote back then, and more importantly, my argument has changed quite dramatically. I guess that's what rewrites are all about which is to refine your argument. But right now it looks like a monumental task to do.

Another Step Closer ...

Actually there's a few more but the good news is that I'm done with my conclusion and I mailed it off to my chair today. I also sent in my "Intent to Graduate" forms for CGU which is nothing more than a post-graduate evaluation form. I also mailed off the first round of job applications and that was a mad dash that included a host of updates and revisions to my cv, job letter, and contacting my committee for updated letters of recommendations. I have another round at the end of October which includes some that I'm really hoping to get. *crosses fingers*

At any rate, my dissertation is done ... sort of. The research is done, but now I have to go back and refine my chapters and bring my argument out more. Here's the gist of my dissertation for those of you who are interested. It's a load of nonsense, but oh well. It's part of the profession ...

My dissertation is a both an application and a critique of Michel Foucault’s concept of governmentality in relation to legal studies scholarship of hate violence. The dissertation enables a radical interpretation of the relationship between state power and the construction of hate violence as a domain and rationality of governance. My argument contends that past and current hate crimes legislation functions as one of the most productive and efficient mechanisms to institutionalize state power in the regulation, management, and governance of difference. In Chapter 1, I review the existing literature on the discursive and ideological construction of “hate.” I argue that it is not only an object of knowledge to be defined, but that it also enables and rationalizes different exercises of state power other than punishment. In chapters 2 and 3, I examine two federal laws passed in response to hate violence: the Hate Crime Statistics Act (1990), and the Violence Against Women Act (1994). The chapters analyze the governmentalization of “sexual orientation” and “women,” respectively, as specific rationalities of governance. I argue, in general, that the two laws had a double function. On the one hand, both standardized a set of “risks” of hate violence that are specifically associated with the two identities. On the other hand, under the guise of protection, these same “risks” also functioned as a gateway to police these identities.

Chapters 4 and 5 form the second part of my dissertation which examines recent efforts to criminalize hate speech. Chapter 4 uses poststructuralist critiques of discourse and language to reveal limitations in the scholarship of critical race theories and feminist legal studies. Central to their intellectual and political project is the experience of pain and injury caused by hate speech that forms the basis for, and appeal of, criminalization. However, poststructuralists contend that regulating speech will not repress its injurious effects, but will instead reproduce the pain and injury as a fact of law. In order to reconcile these concerns and advance their political project, I argue that critical race theories must abandon their liberal humanist appeals to the pain and injury caused by hate speech, and aggressively adopt a paradigm and discourse of war. Only then can hate speech, as the speech of “my enemy,” be regulated.

Finally, Chapter 5 analyzes the U.S. Supreme Court case Virginia v. Black (2003). I argue that the Court’s plurality decision to strike down Virginia’s anti-cross burning law was not a total loss, but a unique development of “true threat” doctrine to define classes of hate speech. The appeal of this case is that it not only reveals the theoretical and legal implications of criminalizing hate speech, but it also demonstrates how culture is a critical site for contextualizing the power and pain of hate speech. Finally, my conclusion assesses the usefulness of governmentality in hate violence studies, and the benefits and challenges of interdisciplinary research.

American Style Democracy

By way of: http://community.livejournal.com/politicartoons/780521.html.

"The Play" - 1982 Cal-Stanford Big Game

I'm not a fan of either Cal or Stanford for obvious reasons. I never went to either one for college. But "the Play" is one of those historic sports moments that just made me love the sport of football forever. Anyways, like any great play there's always a bit of controversy. Stanford claims that the ball was down on Cal's 49 yard line. But a UC Berkeley professor (obviously from an unbiased point of view) uses the magic of digital 3-D technology to demonstrate once and for all that the ball was never downed.

Enjoy!

A Final Lecture

Professor Randy Pausch of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University gives his final lecture this past Tuesday. He was diagnosed with an incurable form of pancreatic cancer and even though he underwent a series of aggressive treatments in chemotherapy, his cancer returned leaving him with only months left to live. I read the article about him and he has such an incredible life.

I read his lecture. I saw it on video. And I am so humbled by his words and life.

Just a Thought on Foucault

So I've been avidly working on my conclusion and I realized two things about it:

1) The conclusion doesn't have to be all that complex. I was lucky enough to read two great examples from two of my friends and they were short, simple, and to the point. It was more than restating the argument, but about contextualizing the work in other ways and setting aside room for a future research agenda. However ...
2) Even when I don't need it to be complex, I keep coming across stuff that does complicate things a lot more than what I actually need.

Here's one example ...

I was rereading Foucault's lectures on race and racism in "Society Must Be Defended," and in the section on biopolitics in History of Sexuality. As a follow up, I read an interview from Foucault in Power/Knowledge. His interviews often provide some of the best details into his works. I was looking for additional tidbits of information when I came across this:

Grosrichdard: To come now to the last part of your book .... [ref. HOS]
Foucault: Yes, no one wants to talk about that last part. Even though the book is a short one, but I suspect people never got as far as this last chapter. All the same, it's the fundamental part of the book.

By the way, the last part of History of Sexuality is "Part Five: Right of Death and Power Over Life." This is the section discussing biopolitics / biopower of race deployed as a technology of power in the specific practice of preserving and disqualifying life. Obviously, our use of "race" is not used in the same way that Foucault does to denote multicultural relations, for instance. Instead, it is how "race" is deployed as a method of discerning, categorizing, and mobilizing differences in population as a question and problem of "species." This is where Foucault makes the provocative claim that "massacres are vital," leading political theorist Mitchell Dean to call this section, Foucault's "dark side." At any rate, that section about biopolitics was hugely critical in my research about hate violence. Anyways ...

I was struck by Foucault's observation about the reception of his book, especially when he considers it to be the "fundamental part of the book." So why did people did not want to talk about the last section? And who exactly are "they?"

I remember my graduate seminar in cultural studies and my first introduction to HOS. I distinctly remember that our coverage, though mainly for a lack of time, only covered the major insights around discourse, sexuality, and power. But not the last section. As a matter of fact, I don't think I touched the last section until I came across the governmentality lectures and subsequent scholarship that referenced biopolitics / biopower at the start of my dissertation. I wonder if we could measure the distribution of HOS according to discipline? I haven't really come across a work in the humanities that uses/discusses Foucault's biopolitics / biopower section except for the social sciences. And while quite a few social scientists use HOS in general, a lot more seem to be rooted in the humanities in general. So I'm wondering if there's a disciplinary boundary that governs Foucault's chapters in HOS?

*shrugs*