reeling

my review of Kenneth Goldsmith's Uncreative Writing was published last week in The Journal of Electronic Publishing. it's nestled very nicely into the bottom of their latest issue. this will count as my second official academic publication. if I don't die of teaching freshman English or procrastinating research proposals, there should be more of them, someday.

in other news, I submitted an abstract of my food photography research paper (from Visual Rhetoric last spring) to the Annual Arts and Humanities Graduate Student Research Conference, which will be happening this month... but my project was not selected for inclusion. ah well.

I've also worked up a short one-act playscript for the theatre department. every spring, they put on a series of one-act plays and call it the Raider Red’s One-Act Play Spectacular. that's RROAPS for short, apparently. there was a call for scripts thrown out in our campus email announcements, and I felt like responding, so I did. we'll see what happens. many pre-emptive thanks to friends Chris, Tim, Nic, Cathy, Mel, Morgan, Zach, Allison and Sarah for their praise, feedback, creative readings/interpretations, and title suggestions. I'll let you all know when and if I hear back from whoever it is judging and selecting and all that for the actual spectacular event...

what else? well, if I don't die of teaching freshman English...

1. more food rhetoric. freund Kolby just last night was telling me about this rather marvelous repository of video lectures from Yale University. there's a course from 2008 called The Psychology, Biology, and Politics of Food he thought I might be particularly interested in (wannabe food blogger that I am, right?). I started with Lecture 16, just for kicks. it's about food marketing and such, so it seemed most relevant. someday it would be cool to watch the Milton course. or some Philosophy. it's pretty awesome of Yale to put these courses online like this, eh? we'll see if this one can lend any insights to my rhetorical analyses of food blogs and videos for Dr. Baake this semester.

2. argumentation theory and copyright laws. I need to start working on a lit review and a research paper. what am I waiting for? a warm, quiet moment to sit down and devour the books I've checked out on the subject. let's cross our fingers that such a moment will arrive this week. perhaps tomorrow.

3. a 2000- to 3000-word essay analyzing my development in this crazy MA program thus far, reflecting on the ways my academic work might (somehow) enact, complicate, or contribute to current research and theory in the field. this one is sort of past due already. um. yeah. excuses are for the weak... I know...

4. ten pages of reflection on my work for the Texas Tech University Press. I was musing just thismorning on how much I miss it there. teaching is good for me, I'm sure.... but doing my little bit to shepherd all those books-to-be through the publication process was so lovely.

so it looks like if I don't die of teaching freshman English, I might be severely wounded anyway by all these massive writing projects (curricular and extra-curricular). let's hope a bit of yoga and cooking and the fabulous weather we've been having will keep me alive.