OE in NY Forecast: Spring 2008

Once each semester, I like to take stock of what it is I will need to have accomplished by its close. This coming term will see the completion (I hope) of the first chapter of my dissertation, but that's by no means all I will be working on as the weather warms and summer comes again. I sat down this evening to make my forecast for Spring 2008, as it were -- updating my electronic calendar (so useful), figuring out my commitments, and settling in to make the most of the second half of my fourth year of graduate school. Top of my list of things I'm thankful for: NO MORE CLASSES. I do plan to sit in on a class one of my advisers is teaching on Epic, but that's more for my own edification -- I should really know Homer better than I do, and there are far less enjoyable ways to spend a few hours a week than reading epic poetry.

[Re-reading post after the fact:] It occurs to me that there's no way I'll manage all of that by the end of the semester. But so long as I put a rather easy February to exceedingly good use, I should be able to avoid the worst of the academic March Madness, though it's a safe bet I won't be watching any basketball this season.



(picture is a very random building I found this past October on the Blue Ridge Parkway between Virginia and North Carolina. Because it's a safe bet through any semester that I'd rather be in the mountains)


Teaching

1. One Section University Writing.
• Goal 1: Streamline use of Blog as model for academic conversation. Introduce earlier in semester (perhaps).
• Goal 2: Choose new secondary readings for Conversation essay. (current choices -- Susan Stewart, Julia Kristeva -- are too obscure.)
  
2. Functioning as a Peer Consultant/Mentor
   

Dissertation Work:

1. Reading everything Bruno Latour ever wrote.
2. Reading for my first Chapter (on Alfredian Translations and the Orosius. Mostly.)
   
3. Writing Chapter One.

Pesky PhD Requirements:

1. Testing proficiency in Old Norse as second PhD language.
   

Conferences:

1. February 16: ASSC conference at Yale.
1. Attending
2. Functioning as a Respondent
   
2. March 13/14: CELCE Conference on Borders, at NYU.
1. Paper title: The Space Between: Mapping Monsters in the Old English Wonders
2. Paper Status: Currently 21 pages (seminar length) -- to be cut.
3. March 29-31: Columbia Center For Literary Translation hosts the biannual Graduate Student Literary Translation Conference
1. I'm on the organizing committee.
   
2. I'm chairing the roundtable session on Academic Translation.
   
4. May 8-11: Kalamazoo 2008
1. Paper title: Can't remember at present.
   
2. Paper Status: Will revise CELCE paper. Possibly add more theory.

Other Academic Commitments

1. Graduate Student Council
• Recruiting Events for New Students
• Co-Ordinating Colloquia
  
2. Article for Heroic Age
3. Co-authored inter-disciplinary article