Canadian policy update: ugh

This afternoon I am sitting in my office on a dark, gloomy day, rereading A Room of One’s Own for the millionth time so that I can teach it tomorrow. This text never fails to amaze and inspire me – I find new gems in it every time, and am always astounded by the sensitivity of Woolf’s wit…

Rereading this text today has inspired me to finally get down to the important business of addressing the grave danger that women – and poor people – are facing where I live (in Canada, I mean). I’ve been wanting to follow up on the important post by Medieval Woman, who is newly resident in Canada. The press release she posted detailed the way that the Conservative minority government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper had just introduced a measure that prohibits women’s groups from any lobbying activities using federal funds.

What the press release only mentions in passing is that the Tories also cut 38.5% of the budget for Status of Women Canada. 38.5%!? Is that not a staggering figure?

The theory behind this is that the government wants to see “results-oriented” work; they want “less talk, more action”. Give me a fucking break – talk about co-opting and sickly twisting activist language to smash activists.

So the government announced that they would no longer be providing money for general research. The anti-intellectual bent of this move – the separation of research from an ill-defined action – is terrifying. And, to anyone with a brain, it presents itself as an impossibility. How do we define targets for action without researching the issues, understanding the contexts in which they arise??

And wait, there’s more where that came from:

- The government also changed the mandate for Status of Women Canada, removing the word “equality” from its list of goals.* Instead of achieving equality, the goal of the department is now to “facilitate women’s participation” in social life. Christ! Women’s participation is compromised because of gendered inequality!! The denial of context in all of these moves is mind-numbing. And part of that context is that other federal bodies – chiefly Statistics Canada – routinely confirm the existence of basic inequalities in men’s and women’s lives.

- The Court Challenges program was also entirely cut. As in, bye-bye. This program existed so that ordinary Canadians could finance legal challenges based on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, that human rights document that apparently makes Canada the envy of so many around the world. A freaking basic, basic understanding of social inequality, of course, tells us that people whose Charter rights are threatened are generally marginalized people. People who can’t afford to mount million-dollar legal challenges. Now we find ourselves in the absurd situation where the only people who can afford Charter challenges are people who don’t need to make them.

So that’s what’s been going on up here. This is a scary, scary place these days.

And what is even more upsetting to me is that the opposition has just let all of this slide by – and so has the media, for the most part. It made a small splash, and then disappeared.

Now, it seems to me that this kind of thing is enough to bring down this minority government. The last minority government was brought down over a corruption scandal – this is just as important (much more, in fact, I think). And yet the other parties aren’t even talking about it. I don’t expect the Liberals to tackle it, necessarily (they’re too wrapped up with their leadership race), but where the hell are the NDP, the social democrats? Why are they staying silent on this issue? I know we’re suffering from election fatigue (and worse, cynicism), but what’s going on here is a systemic dismantling of foundations of Canadian democracy. Yes, this is about women. But the implications are much, much wider, as the court challenges program makes clear.

What this really suggests to me is the fundamental Liberalism (and by this I mean capital-L Liberal Party) of this country. There is a strong lack of imagination in Canada, I think. It’s as if everyone says to themselves, “Boy, electing those Conservatives was a bad move. But the Liberals are all tied up in a leadership race, so we better just sit around until that’s sorted out and a new leader emerges to carry us through on our boring, gutless, middle-of-the-road way.” As if there’s no alternative. It pisses me off. In fact, I’m going to write a letter to the leader of the NDP (the party to which I, with a great deal of ambivalence, belong). You want to be an alternative?? Act like one!!


*And this is not because Harper and his friends are up on poststructuralist feminist theory…they’re not sitting around reading Joan Scott et al. on equality-vs.-difference to inspire their policy decisions…

End of conference "adventure"

(Sorry, this is long...those of you with short attention spans might want to tune out...)

I left that conference on Saturday, early in the morning. My panel was on Friday morning. It wasn’t great. I became surprisingly nervous, something I hadn’t expected – and I think that showed. I’m not sure what this was about. I do know that something needs to be fixed, structurally, when I expand it. I just don’t know how to do that…(post about my lack of self-editing skills coming soon!)

But the good thing that came out of this is that the chair of the panel wants to publish my paper in an edited collection. So that’s a positive. I guess I’ll think of it as an early version of something that will end up in “my book”.

Anyway. The real story of Friday took place after that. While I was standing outside the conference lunch banquet waiting for my panel chair, who’d arranged to have lunch with me, a friendly, youngish man came up to me – shall we call him Pink Tie (PT?) We chatted about what we did, workwise - he seemed very interested in what I do, and I was interested in what to me is the novelty of what he works on - and said goodbye and that maybe we’d run into each other again. That was that.

Late in the afternoon, I walked into the hotel bar for a drink and PT was there, chatting with a few other people. We nodded hello. A moment after they’d gotten up to leave, he came back and asked me, in a very light, friendly way, “Would you like to come out to dinner with us?” He said they were going to a restaurant and then to some sort of club for drinks, and assured me that it wouldn’t be a late night. Having been mostly confined to the hotel and the nearby running track for two days, I said sure. I anticipated a nice, geeky academic dinner with a bunch of other conference folks – he’d said one of his department colleagues was there, for instance.

But, oh no. Said evening out, it turned out, was to be with his dear, non-academic friend (shall we call him Insane Driver, ID?) who lived in town, and a bunch of ID’s friends, whom PT had never met. When I learned this as we were leaving the hotel, my heart sank. (Funny how that happens – I was prepared to go out with a bunch of people I’d never met as long as they were academics, but totally freaked that this was going to be just some random people!) I didn’t know how to extricate myself, though. I was also starting to feel a little oogly about how touchy PT was being – lots of ruffling of my hair and squeezing of my shoulder…I don’t know about you, but I don’t generally ruffle and squeeze unless I’ve known someone for more than five minutes. I put on my friendly-but-emotionally-distant mask, made some joke suggesting that the ruffling and squeezing wasn’t cool, and tried to remind myself that life is an adventure.

So there was insane driving to ID’s place so he could get changed (me thinking, Christ, what have I gotten myself into?!), and then insane driving to some faraway restaurant, where a group of eight or so friends, almost all of them women, were having drinks. It was a Sex in the City-type crowd…thirtysomething professionals all dolled up for partaying in a kind of on-the-make way. So not my thing. And they weren’t very warm to me from the moment I got there. It felt like that way that straight women sometimes get jealous and competitive about other women…again, foreign to me and not pleasant. I wasn’t exactly feelin’ the love…except, of course, from PT.

We then went to another bar (I didn’t beg off because I could sense that taking a cab back to the hotel was going to cost me a fucking fortune, so far away were we. And I didn’t feel threatened at all. It was the kind of place that gives me the shivers just to think about. A packed, faux-glamorous meat market, all about seeing and being seen – and picking up. It was revolting. It was the kind of place I usually avoid like the plague – there is a whole district of clubs like this in Home City, and I never go near there at night.

I thought I was home free, at this point, having given nothing but cold shoulder to PT. I thought I’d just have to wait out the grim scene. But no, this is where PT laid it on thick, although I’d made clear since about two minutes into our outing that I had a partner, and that she was a She. He told me that he’d been attracted to me from the first time he saw me – he liked my “unconventionality”, he said. (Since I wasn’t exactly looking unconventional that day, I like to imagine that whatever he detected was my sexual orientation – small consolation to me, who never gets read as a lesbian…although in this case, of course, he read it wrong…But at least something was read…Sigh. Too bad it was by him.)

I told him categorically that I wasn’t going to do a damn thing with him. And we just sat there and had a long, tedious and oh-so-predictable conversation about sex and attraction. In fact, PT monologued, and I ridiculed. Some gems?

- His theory that it was unfair to feminine beauty to limit himself to one person, in a monogamous relationship. “It would be like me going into a museum and choosing only to look at one painting…that wouldn’t be appreciating all the rest of the beauty it housed, and that’s not fair.” Sigh. Whatever, buddy. I’m up for critiques of monogamy, but spinning them in such terms - sexism disguished as gynophilia - is pathetic.

- His boasts about what a good lover he is because he really understands women deeply, spiritually.

- His stealing a white rose from some flower arrangement to present to me. I overheard him telling the waiter, “I’m stealing a rose for a kiss.” Yeah, I’m a big old lesbian, but I can be bought by some self-styled Casanova with a flower. How fucking insulting. (I told him so.)

At the end of the night, ID and PT dropped me off at the hotel, not without a final attempt by PT to seduce me. I was frowningly displeased, by this point. Buh-bye.

*

So the thing is, this is not the first time this has happened at a conference. In the last case, it wasn’t until I got together for dinner with this person I thought was my new “friend”, when I happened to be doing research in his city months later, that I realized what his intentions were – again, even though he knew about my sexuality and my status from the beginning. (Oh, he was a charmer, he was – took to insulting butch lesbians at that dinner. Um, guys? That’s emphatically NOT the way to get a lesbian into bed.)

I wonder if it’s because I’m not a part of any heterosexual scene that I don’t pick up on cues. Cues that should be telling me what’s really going on in the seemingly innocent and friendly attempts of guys to chat with me at these things. Which tend to feel exactly the same as random chats I have with women at conferences. If I think about it, there really are no cues – and I’m really not a social dolt. I mean, I can generally tell if someone is flirting with me. Does this just mean, then, that I should assume that when I’m approached by a man at one of these things, those are his intentions? I can’t stand that implication…it’s along the same lines of “men and women can’t be friends,” which I’ve always railed against. But I wonder if I’m starting to realize it’s true.

GF sometimes gets frustrated with me because she says I’m so open to people. She thinks it should cultivate more suspicion. (This is one of the big differences between us. She’s an admitted misanthrope, which I, in turn, find hard.) I’ve never really understood that frustration - frankly, I don't think the world needs more suspicion. But I guess I’m starting to see it. I guess I shouldn't respond in such a friendly manner, which is what I tend to do. I guess I shouldn’t have gone for dinner – should have assumed that there was an ulterior motive in the invitation.

And I guess I think that’s really too bad.

On "misinterpretation"

I went to a couple of linked conference sessions today that relate to my work in fairly general terms. At one of them, there was a paper whose ideological foundation I disagreed with fairly profoundly, though I listened with some interest. But I do acknowledge that perhaps the fact of my disagreement with the author is the cause of my irritation at the way she used the term “misinterpretation”, which I’d like to talk about here.

This paper was about a particular thinker (Often Overlooked but Brilliant – OOBB). The author said, in passing, that another theorist (Seriously Major Bigwig – SMB) has misinterpreted OOBB. And, what’s more, SMB’s stature and influence have resulted in an entire generation of new theorists carrying on that misinterpretation. The scandal!

I was bugged, and it has stuck with me. The reason this bothered me so much was the very passing, off-the-cuff nature of the author’s claim that SMB had misinterpreted OOBB. I don’t think it’s fair – or very good scholarship – to simply assert that a scholar has misinterpreted another’s work without explaining in some detail why one is making such a claim. And perhaps it is misguided or snotty of me to say so, but I also think that when the scholar to whom one is attributing misinterpretation is such a Seriously Major Bigwig, the impetus to explain one’s reasoning becomes that much more important. If only to avoid making one look like an ass. Obviously, claiming misinterpretation is fine – more than fine, it’s a big part of what we do as academics – but not to give teeth to that claim seems to me to be bad form on so many levels.

A progressive Christian friend of mine, who works on the history of religion, has mentioned several times that it bothers her when religious progressives battling religious conservatism say “oh, those fundamentalists – they’re just misinterpreting the Bible/Koran/etc.” Her beef is that interpretation of these texts is not fixed. With faith, she has said to me, we’re not dealing with the kinds of rights and wrongs that such a claim implies; the claims entirely miss the point. They also elide the life of the sacred texts in history - their changing contexts.

I have been thinking of that refrain of hers in relation to today’s claim of SMB as a foul misinterpreter. When we do theory, we are negotiating a multiplicity of possible, contextual interpretations (which doesn't, at least to me, negate the possibility of more correct ones). If we make such accusations as lightly as was done today, I think we impoverish the project of theory-making (which today’s author was trying to venerate in its OOBB form). And that means theoretical monoculture. And that’s no fun, and can do nothing for us.

Random whining

So here are my post Happy Hour thoughts on my day:

- Air travel reeeeaaally sucks these days, does it not? I got to the airport in very good time, after double-checking Air Canada’s check-in time for US departures. After much stress – being whisked out of crushingly long lineups as my departure approached (once to check in – to use the freaking automated check-in thingy, which isn’t supposed to create hundred-person lineups – and once in Customs), I arrived at my gate when they were almost finished boarding. Crazed with that peculiar airport stress – this time created by Air Canada’s absolutely outrageous inefficiency. Not having had time to buy myself something to eat for breakfast, nor even a freaking bottle of water, which I couldn’t bring with me because of these ridiculous restrictions on all liquids. Then I had to buy myself a horrid thing on the plane for breakfast, when I was so hungry my stomach was gnawing at itself. It cost an arm and a leg.

- By the time I got to the connecting airport, very late indeed because of unexplained delays on the runway on the previous flight, I had my first-ever dehydration and/or caffeine headache (due to lack of water and caffeinated tea in the pre-flight craziness). I bought a tea and it turned out the lid was defective or broken or whatever, because every time I tried to drink, it dripped scalding water down my shirt. Nice.

- That flight was also delayed, by an hour. While we sat on the runway.

- When I finally arrived in conference city, I tried to walk downtown from my hotel. Ha. Fat chance. This is sprawl hell, where every block is ¾ of a mile long and every pedestrian conspicuous, an utter novelty. I gave up after about 45 minutes of trudging in hot sun, getting nowhere…I went to Target and bought much-needed new workout clothes instead. And then came back for happy-hour margaritas. And nachos.

- I really can’t stand urban sprawl, having grown up in the heart of cities. My one experience of sort of living it was with my ex-girlfriend, the usurper of my field…the city she grew up in (where I am applying for this good job) is one of those. We would visit her parents for a week, and we would be getting in and out of the car four times a day. There was nothing that could be done without a car. It always drove me crazy after two days. Someone needs to legislate sprawl out of existence altogether, for its soul-crushingness, among other qualities.

- I got a slightly new hairstyle yesterday…some soft bangs-type things added. Usually I respond very badly to new hair things for a week or so – even when I request them. Not this time…I’m all about the bangs…

- Now I remember why I didn’t wear makeup…’cause it’s all so complicated. You see, I have been interested in eyeliner lately…this as a person who hasn’t worn any makeup except lipstick since I was in junior high. So I consulted with my hair person (he who is GF's oldest, dearest friend, and a rockstar, and a makeup knower) and bought some eyeliner yesterday. Besides the fact that I don’t really know how the hell to put it on (and was too embarrassed to say to the MAC salesperson, “you need to show me how to do this”), there is the fact of its needing to come off. So I had to buy yet another product today. This bugs me. This is why I don’t go in for makeup (well, one of a couple reasons), and why I am loath to put any product in my hair, or any colour…all too much labour…

- And now I’m going to get in to bed in my pyjamas, even though it’s 7pm, and watch a movie. With my York peppermint patties. I was very virtuous today altogether – graded many papers in my awful travels – and now I’m going to watch some kind of cable thing…what decadence.

- But: why do baseball stars’ lives and tragedies matter more than other people’s?

Conferencing

I'm off to a conference tomorrow morning. It's in a hot place. This is exciting and also fortuitous. For the conference, you see, has very little to do with my work, ultimately. I mean, I replied to a CFP for a particular panel - which then turned into two panels - because it's very rare to see anything conference-y that is specifically on the topic I research. So it's a great forum to make my first stab at this new work, which will become a book (I still laugh when I write that). But the rest of the conference? I've looked at the program, and there's almost nothing for me; just a few panels of interest. However. I am not sad about that. Partly because this means I have excuses to swim in what is apparently a very nice outdoor pool, and sun myself while I catch up on my grading, and look around the sprawly city - if I can figure out how to manage that sans vehicle. Also, I am a major fan of hotels. So just having the luxury of a hotel room - with cable, for cableless me! - is a draw in itself.

And it's good, because I kinda hate conferences. No matter that they have been useful for making connections and have led to publications, etc...I don't like them. I don't find that listening to people read complex pieces - pieces that are meant to be read - is a very effective way to absorb or learn anything. And I hate the frantic undercurrent of competitiveness, the silent screech of everyone's nerves.

I also loathe presenting; it makes me very uncomfortable. But I note a difference this time...The last time I went to a conference was just under a year ago; it was a month before I defended my PhD. I was, as always, very wrought up - even though I wasn't even presenting, but only part of a seminar, for god's sake, for which I'd had to write and share a paper. But this time, I'm not feeling wrought up...I feel confirmed in the notion that I have something of at least a tiny bit of value to say...all because of that little old doctoral defense. It's that "will you look at that, I have some authority after all" thing, which I wrote about here as a nice post-PhD state from which to approach writing. It sure is calming to see that translate, even just a little bit, in terms of presenting, too. I won't lose sleep over my panel. And I can just be in it, for probably the first time after a dozen presentations...It's nice to get to grow into this career, if you know what I mean.

Random weekend update

This weekend is just what I needed...it is the perfect mix of outside in beautiful weather, with Mr. K, and inside watching drama on the telly, which I almost never do. Sadly, GF is not here, and I miss her since I don't see her during the week, being away in Uni City. On the other hand, it is nice - and exactly, exactly, what I'm craving - to speak to no one except the dog and dog park people for multiple days. Talk about recharging the batteries.

Yesterday I took Mr. K out for over two hours in the stunning, sunny morning, then came home, ate favourite/treat foods for lunch (veggie salama sandwich with pickles on - yum!), then spent the afternoon watching the three-hour BBC miniseries-ness of Tipping the Velvet (which I loved - I thought it had a great deal more complexity than the book, which is rare). I discovered, then, that I had forgotten to pick up a key ingredient for mac and cheese, so made myself lemon fettucine instead, and then settled in to watch the three BBC hours of Fingersmith (a bit upsetting for over-sensitive me, but satisfying overall). What a great day. I didn't do a stitch of work.

Today I took the dog out to another dog park - on another beautiful morning. I marvel at what lovely places dog parks are. Dogs bring out the best in people, they really do. I will have another sandwich, and then go out again into the beautiful day - this time on my bike, which is my preferred mode of transportation in Home City - to do a couple of errands. Pick up a book or two at the library so I can finish preparing for this conference I'm going to this week, and maybe check out a skirt I've had my eye on, and pick up the key ingredient for the mac and cheese. I will settle down with my comfort food tonight and watch another DVD...a friend who's a film critic has given us a big old stack of good films to watch. I also should do some work - some grading, and some reading for my little reading group/dyad tomorrow - but it's so nice to just be able to fit that in among all the treats of the day.

I love having this block of time with the dog, just me and him, hanging out. Here's a recent picture of Mr. K that captures him in all his jauntiness, which is really on display this weekend in the beautiful weather. This was from a couple of weeks ago at my friend's cottage:

Weekend and story

So the relaxation weekend has begun, the one I realized last weekend I was so desperately in need of. I'm here with my new cozy throw on my knees, eating homemade soup, just back from buying shirts (I went to return one sweater I'd bought that GF confirmed made me look like Stevie Nicks, and came back with five new ones!) and picking up some of the fixings I need for a freaking huge, marathon-weekend pan of macaroni and cheese, as well as green olives, fresh pineapple - it's comfort food/pyjamas/dvd's of Fingersmith and Tipping the Velvet weekend, people. Also, my good friend - the one who was visiting when this incident happened - is staying with us for a couple of days. The circumstances of his visit aren't great, unfortunately - his father had surgery for prostate cancer in Home City yesterday. Still, it's wonderful to see him, and to share parts of my relaxation weekend with him - he sure needs it, too.

Anyway, the other thing I was doing while I was out buying comfort food and shirts was mailing off a job application, for a job that is absolutely perfect for me. And that got me thinking about my ex-girlfriend. Let's call her JZ. Why was I thinking about JZ as I was mailing off this application for a job for which I'm eminently qualified? Well, let me tell you the story...

When I was in my MA program - my second year - I met JZ. There were immediate sparks, and the leaving of my already precarious relationship with someone. If there was ever such a thing as a soulmate (and I don't really believe in this concept now, but let's just use it for effect), we were it for each other. It was one of those world-shaking experiences...it seemed there was some sort of transcendent, quasi-spiritual connection between us. It was an interesting match, in some ways, given how quiet I was, and how very charismatic and outgoing she was.

JZ and I moved in together. We started our PhDs in the same program, proposing very different projects. The dynamic between us, and our personalities, were such that she always claimed that I was the "true academic", the "smart one", and she was just a joker who knew how to talk the talk.

As soon as we started the PhD, we both became disillusioned (in fact, I think I simply fed off JZ's unhappiness), questioning why we'd not taken some time off. So we hatched a plan, which was to spend the following year in France. I got myself hooked up with an exchange program so that I could do some of my PhD coursework over there, and teach. JZ withdrew from the PhD program altogether.

Long story short, I came home ahead of her. A lengthy breakup followed, initiated by her (the first time). We got back together and broke up three more times, until the final breakup came in late 2001. JZ had decided she wasn't ever coming back to our PhD program, but instead started in a new one in a different city. The way that this played out, for a number of reasons, is that she was the one who was hurt more than I was, in the end. And she proposed, a few months later, that we start all over again. I turned her down.

Now, my area of research had been established since the first year of my MA. I had a very specific topical, theoretical and temporal focus that continued through my PhD and that I still have. JZ knew my work inside out, but did very different work herself.

But what happened when she started this new PhD program? She announced to me that she had taken a course in "my stuff" and loved it, and now it was her stuff, too. This area I'd been working on, at this point, for years - she'd become a player in it.

I found this a little odd, but I got over it. We remained friends, staying in touch by email from time to time, getting together when I was in her city. Her dissertation work is uncomfortably close to my own work, but I was able for a long time to put this out of my mind. We had a good rapport, and I even hired JZ to do some grading for me last year.

But now. Now, it's job market time. JZ finished her PhD just last month, I believe, and she's really on the TT market for the first time. And I know we're competing for all the same jobs, with practically the same qualifications - although my achievements skew toward the teaching side, and hers toward the research side. And today's job, the one I'm eminently qualified for? Well, I can say with certainty that she's applying for it. And it's at the university where she did her undergrad degree, in the city where she grew up. The major player in that department was her undergraduate thesis supervisor. And JZ is a consummate charmer - people just love her. This job is practially in the bag for her, it seems to me.

And it just feels sickening. And you know what? It sorta makes me angry. Rationally or not, I resent that she encroached on this academic territory I'd carved out for myself several years before she decided on a topic and focus. Doesn't it seem a bit creepy and controlling? Especially with the way she claimed that I was the "true" academic, and she was just a joker. Yeah, right. The award-winning joker..."Oh, I don't know what happened...I just accidentially stumbled into your exact field...and just happen to have won all these awards and fellowships...shucks darn, I don't know how I did it. But don't worry, you're the "real" academic..."

What do you think? Am I overreacting to be, only now in retrospect, resentful of this, to feel as if it's just too much, too close to home, too coincidental?? Is it just job market hysteria making me feel this way? Or does it sound a little weird?

Things other than teaching?

I wish I had anything of substance to say besides blah blah about teaching. It’s reflective of how intense it is, I suppose – it consumes nearly all of my brain space. Last year GF found it hard by the end of the academic year, because all I ever talked about was teaching. That, and my job search. There were arguments about this. It becomes exhausting to be around, I’m sure. I even bore myself, sometimes, with my own thoughts. But I haven’t much else going on up there. Which is probably bad.

That said, I am trying right now to actually stay on top of writing and thinking as complementary activities to teaching. I am just finishing up a conference paper to be presented next week – I get to go to a warm place, yay! In my mind, this is the first microscopic piece of new research that will go into a book project about which I’m pretty excited. (Hey, Sfragett – although I dithered about it all summer, and even declared just over a month ago on here that I would be trying to do major revisions to my dissertation to turn it into a book, I have in the end taken advice you gave me back in a comment in June: to turn to another project, if that’s where my energy is, instead of pursuing the dissertation. Diss has already given me one publication, and I think I will turn out at least one more article that builds from its theoretical framework. And that will be that. On to new, better, fresher things! Thanks, S.) Last year I couldn't really get anything accomplished in terms of research and writing - the teaching and grading load was so extreme, I had no room for anything else. I love that I can work this into my life again.

Also, a grad school friend and I – he lives in Home City – are doing a little reading group. Or reading dyad, I suppose. We’re meeting on Monday for the first time. This is exciting, though sort of terrifying. He and I both do cross-disciplinary work – both of us do Field X combined with another field (a different one for each of us). And since my teaching is all about Field Y, and not this Field X, I worry that I will become rusty on Field X! Is that even possible? Anyway, he shares the same concerns – so we’re meeting to read some essays that I picked out in Field X and get our brains thinking in those terms again. This is crucial because, of course, Field X informs my research as much as does Field Y, the discipline I teach in. No rustiness allowed.

I’ve always said this is a good idea – this reading group thing – but I’m nervous about it. What the hell? He’s just one other person, and a friend, at that. But I guess it reminds me of being a student again – and I hated going to classes, even as a grad student. So it’s bringing up all sorts of shy-person reactions. Which is probably good, because it will get me to work through those intellectual fears.

But I’m excited because of what it symbolizes in terms of possibilities for collaboration. He and I do overlapping work, and I love the idea of editing a volume together, or running a seminar at a conference where that’s done, or organizing a panel. I hope this will inaugurate a long-term intellectual partnership – I could use that.

Community and classroom

It has recently struck me just how important campus community – in various incarnations – can be to the overall quality of thinking, the actual content of the course, for students. I am really coming to see how much “extra-curricular” activities can inform and enrich curricular activities, at that level.

I’ve had an opportunity to inadvertently conduct a kind of experiment, to use an alarming word. I am teaching my theory class twice – once at the uni’s main campus, and once at the satellite campus. I have about 25 students in the main campus class, and a mere 7 at the satellite. I do essentially the same thing in each class…and what students know to begin with, and get from the material is really different.

The main campus one is the class I’ve been raving about – and it has now officially become the highlight of my week. Full of engaged, challenged/challenging students who us all think - including me.

At the satellite campus, students do the reading and listen attentively and participate and all that good stuff. But there’s not the same kind of spark, and heightened intellectual discussion, as in the other class.

And so I’ve been thinking about the profile of the students in each class. The students at Main are, very many of them, involved in activities on a very politicized campus. Queer groups, film societies, student-run organic cooperative cafes, women’s centres. They live and breathe political-intellectual issues, some of which have a great deal of overlap with the issues we cover in our class. Their life on that campus is like one big salon.

At Satellite, students are largely part-time. They exist in this amorphous realm, with no community, no women’s centres/queer groups/film societies/cafes/salons to speak of. They’re mature students, many of them, returning to school, juggling work and school, crazy-busy with mundane things. No time or space for salon dicsussions. It’s a very different context for being a student.

And I really think the students at Main do so well, and that class is so electric, because of their involvement in non-scholarly activities that really inform and bleed into what we do in the classroom. They’re privileged – even the learning part of university is a richer experience for them because of that campus/activist life, in which they spend time hashing out and experiencing some of what they then cover in class. And it’s too bad, because it seems to me that my students at Satellite, many of whom have such tightly constrained lives, could use a little bit of that richness.

Homebody

This here bit of off-white softness is my salvation this weekend. After coming home to Home City at my post-midnight hour on Thursday night, and having to be out of the house from 7:45 the next morning till after 5 in the afternoon, I realized that I hadn't had any down time all week. Literally. My weird schedule and living arrangement in Uni City makes it so.

It wasn't till I was doing an errand in a shop yesterday and saw this throw, and thought, "I MUST have that," that I realized how much I crave doing-nothing, in-the-house-goddammit, cozy, pyjama-wearing time. I bought this thing - it is one of the softest, coziest things I've ever felt - took it to bed with me last night, and have been sitting with it draped over me ever since I managed to rouse myself this morning. It incarnates coziness.

Last night we were supposed to have friends over for dinner. When GF came home and found me crying as I tried to clean up the disaster of an apartment - with no plans for what I'd actually cook, less than two hours away from their arrival - we decided to take them out for dinner instead. This was a hard call; I get pretty worked up about entertaining, due to some family history in this area, and felt as if I'd failed by not being able to pull off this dinner - which was supposed to be reciprocating after they'd had us over for dinner, all Martha- and Nigella-like (as always). But I just couldn't face it - I needed not to be madly dashing anymore, please please please.

All I want to do is nest. I'm cancelling my trip to last year's Uni City next weekend. I just don't have the energy to do that. I am "on" way too much of the time - I don't need a long weekend of cooking and entertaining and running from one engagement to another. Next weekend, I plan to stay in my pyjamas as much as possible. And look at Mr. K's cheeks as rejuvenating therapy.
And right now, though I've been out of bed for last than four hours, I'm going to crawl back in. With my throw.