Delinquent Blogger Repents!!!!

Ok, I'm flogging myself at the moment in guilt and shame for taking approximately 4 months to update my blog (an entire semester's worth of time). And yes, I know what kind of holes excuses are like and that everybody has one. ;)

And now that I am digital camera savvy, I have included a photo display below that can update the past four months. Winter came and yes, has stayed in Michigan. I officially reached my critical edge of sanity yesterday as I walked home in yet another snow storm and declared to no longer leave my apartment for the duration of the semester. I will just have to teach my students via satellite (yeah, like that would blow over, uggh).

Brief run down of events since November: Rocked the socks of prelims (yeehaw!) and have been in an intellectually comatosed state ever since (I'm beginning to think you don't ever bounce back energy-wise after prelims, or maybe it's a winter thing), had a couple great visits back to the Bay, taught two big lectures this semester and boosted my confidence on speaking in front of filled lecture halls (the two were: 19th century empire in the Pacific and Caribbean and the Vietnam War), have been teaching sections for the U.S. history survey this semester with two of the best classes I've ever had (my students are awesome! Super engaged, super fun to teach),

I also just participated in our GEO union strike this week (our GEO won a new contract) and gained a new appreciation for unions and strikes in a way that no history books (no matter how much labor history I've read) could teach me. I will never cross a picket line again (although I can't remember if I ever have). I have such a new respect for how important solidarity is and also how challenging picketing is. Our contract only flew because the construction workers on campus joined us in solidarity and stopped working and took a paycut, and basically cost the University way too much money in construction delays. I also attended this fabulous conference in the past couple weeks called the Campus Lockdown to address issues facing faculty women of color (the event was brought on by the tenure denial of Andy Smith, one of the most amazing scholars on campus--nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize). Anyone interested in seeing the panels from the conference can look up Campus Lockdown on Youtube, I would definitely check out the one with Piya Chaterjee and Clarissa Rojas. They also patched in Angela Davis via satellite (Histcon in the house!!!)

And lastly I've been trying to sort my dissertation proposal and finally secured my chair/co-chair this week and am hoping to write something up and defend it by May. Blah-dee-blah-blah, but that's basically the jist of it. Oh and I'm excited to get to do this teaching program through the university's learning center in May. I had a moment this week where I realized one thing I love about teaching (and am excited for in the future as I get to create my own classes) is bringing in music. Next week I'm going to play my students Phil Ochs "Love me I'm a Liberal" (Intemperate Speech, thanks for that awesome CD compilation again!)

As for what's coming up: hoping to get out of Michigan by the end of May (after hopefully defending diss. proposal). Then heading back to Cali for some RnR, then out to Hawaii for a short research/look at housing trip, then to August conference with Miss Dolce Vita!), then the big move to Hawaii hopefully by the end of August, early September. And hope hope hope to see my lovely Oregonian crew for a reunion either before I take off for Hawaii...or you can all come visit me there!

There's the update...here's the photos...and I'll promise to be better with postings now! Oh and since I couldn't figure out how to do captions, you can read the following photos as: Fall in Ann Arbor, Prelims madness, Winter's attack my my car, and union solidarity (me at a grade-in with GEO!)

Other Career Possibilities...

So as this test looms closer, I find it liberating to imagine other career options I can pursue on the off chance (or likelihood) of not passing. Somehow searching for a few career sounds more appealing than prepping for this exam any longer than this semester. Maybe I could be a marine biologist...a pastry chef...film critic?

I'm officially 13 days out, and still reading new stuff. Ick. I've given up the idea of having much time for review. I still have about 30 new things on the Pacific to read between today and tomorrow, which may allow me about 9 days max to read through everything again. Ick. The good news is I know I have at least one out of three professors in my corner. She's my new hero, she's already offered to throw me and my fellow test taker buddy a dinner party the night of our exam. Love her! But not so sure I have the confident backing of the other two so much, and I feel like I still have so much to review, synthesize, put into coherent words. Ick, ick, ick. This process sucks big time. Boo. :(

It's Official: I've drunk the coolaid

The coolaid of cultural history that is. Yup, I realized it tonight in my urban/suburban history class, after I stood on my soapbox for what seemed like ages and attacked political history for ignoring cultural analysis. I think I may have scared some folks, cuz the class is primarily liberals and many of the books are based on the assumption of progress through policy making. I think the more I read for prelims, the less I'm convinced by the liberal ideas of progress and the more I buy the idea that revolution begins at the barrel of a gun (isn't that how it goes?). I'm convinced this primarily comes from so much studying of colonialism when policymaking seems so detached. I think its about power and othering and mythmaking. I think all of these inform policies and laws anyhow, so when urban histories talk about policymakers, judges, politicians as if they are somehow immune or detached from the culture in which they operate, a "national" one built on slavery, colonialism, empire and capitalism and then wonder why homeowners don't think more communally and aren't willing to sacrifice for another (an "other" who they've been racializing for centuries anyhow), it drives me nuts!

Every week, we spin out into the same wall, trying to figure out why privileged whites didn't act the way we'd like them to have acted. And all of this talk without any discussion of power and privilege in subject formation. Why would people sacrifice? They live in a nation that tells them that everyone is where they are because they either earned it, or are culturally inferior and thus deserve their lot. There is something fundamentally wrong with liberalism. And yet if you accept radicalism, do you just stay depressed waiting for the revolution that will never happen? Or do you spin out into Foucauldian web and accept your own normalization?

You knew the academic rant was coming...sorry. I'll get off my soapbox now.

Losing basic words...

Ok, so I know this blog has become a basic journal of reflections on prelims, which is ick boring, but I'm pretty sure all that's left in my brain at this point. So the latest development, in addition to reduced vision, is I'm beginning to lose basic words. I was trying to ask someone in class the other night if there was a vending machine on our floor (since I'm also losing time to schedule normal eating breaks) and I couldn't recall the name so I had to ask if there was a "machine that gives food on the floor." Ugggh. Good news is, I've managed to plow through about 10 books a day in mass culture and pacific history. I'm wondering if that's a good sign or bad?

I miss my Oregonies!!! I've realized that in addition to prelims depleting my ability for everyday word usage, it's also shortened my censorship skills and patience around fellow cohort members, the bulk of whom I can no longer deal with in a polite manner. I think the lack of energy and exhaustion has squashed even my ability to do the "smile and nod" bit when these students wax on about how politically authentic they are in front of our profs. When you add alcohol to the mix, the sarcasm just seems to flow. Ah well. What can you do? Read another 90 books I guess. That's the plan. Boo. :(

Scholars Throw Down

So the irony of my current readings and eventual research is that the book that was the bane of my existence at Oregon (y'all remember it...612 fun: Islands of History) will probably be core to future work. The funny thing is tonight I've read the two follow up books to Islands and come to a couple realizations: first off, Marshall Sahlins isn't as bad as I took him for the first time around (although it still pisses me off when academics throw French into their books at those key moments when you need to understand the crux of their arguments, and not to mention that it's taken me three times in reading Islands to have a marginal sense of what the heck dude's talking about).

But that said, the other thing I've learned is that if I ever publish anything in the future and it gets bad reviews, I will always remind myself to look back at the book length attack on Sahlins by Obeyesekere and then the book length rebuttal from Sahlins. Holy crap dude, couldn't they just write two page reviews like the rest of snooty academics? Apparently not, and the result is nearly 200 pages (in each case) of intellectual sparring. Lots of cheap shots to the jugular.

Academics...freakin nutty.

Neighbors...

I need to go live in a cabin in the middle of a forest. My neighbors are so loud. On one side of me is a dude who I'm convinced thinks he's American Idol (Johnny Cash style) and on the other side, a couple with bad music taste played at a volume that is penetrating my ear plug defenses. Now I suppose I could ask them to quiet it down, but the sad thing is, it's a Saturday night, not even 10pm yet and the reason I need quiet is because I'm home reading. Ick. Perhaps they just seem loud and obnoxious to me because they're obviously not reading on a Saturday night. Or perhaps it's because if I were them, and not shackled to the books for the next several weekends, I'd get the hell out of this apartment and be elsewhere.

Ahhh, but then reality sinks in and I realize, they too are stuck in Ann Arbor, where nothingness (and beingness?) resides and thus explains their choice of apartment entertainment.

Can you tell I've had my fill of prelims and Ann Arbor...and this freakin apartmnet? Is it obvious that the fill came oh, I dunno, say...three months ago?

Freakin' neighbors....grrrrrr!!!!

I don't know...

Jack crap!!!! Or so it would seem. I'm convinced that studying for prelims seems to confirm this reality on a daily basis. Especially since this week, my usual floggings of inferior knowledge capacity have expanded to the Pacific. Holy crap dudes, the learning curve feels like trying to summit everest. Particularly because all of the general history books I'm starting with (each about 450 pages long and un-skimmable) begin with the peopling of the Pacific (we're talking homo erectus archeology stuff) continuing to contemporary politics. Hmmm...bad idea to choose this as a field to read up on in 5 weeks? Perhaps. But on the flip side, if I didn't have to feel super rushed with the lingering pressure of exams coming up I would be finding this super fulfilling. There are so many fascinating debates going on in pacific history.

Anyhoo, in other non-dorked out news...ummm...the leaves here are turning super orangy-yellow-starbursty beautiful! And I still think Jon Stewart should be president.