The Little Professor

Adventures in Academic Life: The Spring Semester Edition

With the new semester comes a new installment in my chronicles of what a full professor at a regional comprehensive does to earn her keep.

Teaching

  • I have a course release this semester (for the reason, see "service," below), so I'm offering only two courses: an undergraduate seminar on Victorian Poetry, which I've taught before, and a new graduate seminar on neo-Victorian fiction called (perhaps not altogether imaginatively) "After the Victorians."   
  • I also need to develop a course proposal for the fall for a new undergraduate religion and literature course, although I'm not yet sure of the precise parameters.  Part of me is thinking of The Pilgrim's Progress and the nineteenth-century novel, if only because I keep telling my students that they really ought to read TPP, and yet, I don't think anyone ever assigns it.  However, the other part of me has doubts.  I'll keep thinking. 

Scholarship

  • Since last I wrote, a book chapter and two book reviews have appeared.
  • I keep saying I'm going to finish this article, and I keep adding footnotes to it.  This is a problem, because the article is really long and as it stands, there are almost certainly only two journals to which I can send it.  The main text, mind you, is finished--it's just the footnotes that keep multiplying. (All together now: just finish it and put it in the mail online submission system.)  The article will also be a book chapter (eventually).
  • Now that I've figured out (again) what I'm doing with Book 3 1/2, I can sit down and draft the first chapter this semester.   Incidentally, I wish the first edition of The Fairchild Family was available online somewhere.  (Sherwood made some significant changes to it, in case you're wondering.  You probably aren't.)
  • I have two book reviews to write.
  • In another window on my computer, I'm writing a conference paper proposal.

Service

  • I'm Associate Chair this semester.  This primarily involves dealing with undergraduate advising issues, but also such things as updating the department website, helping the chair with the schedule, making Open House arrangements, attending whatever meetings the chair can't attend, etc., etc., etc.
  • I'm one of the external examiners on a doctoral committee, and so I'm currently reading a dissertation.
academic teaching