The Ph.D. Problem

I recently read "The Ph.D. Problem," an article on the imperiled humanities PhD system by professor and Pulitzer-Prize winner Louis Menand. I found it cogent and eye-opening, even though it is basically only a few short excerpts from his new book, The Marketplace of Ideas. Here are some excerpts of the excerpts, with special attention to my discipline. First, he lays out the problem:

English was one of the fields surveyed in the two studies of the Ph.D. It is useful to look at, in part because it is a large field where employment practices have a significance that goes beyond courses for English majors. What the surveys suggest is that if doctoral education in English were a cartoon character, then about 30 years ago, it zoomed straight off a cliff, went into a terrifying fall, grabbed a branch on the way down, and has been clinging to that branch ever since. Things went south very quickly, not gradually, and then they stabilized. Statistically, the state of the discipline has been fairly steady for about 25 years, and the result of this is a kind of normalization of what in any other context would seem to be a plainly inefficient and intolerable process. The profession has just gotten used to a serious imbalance between supply and demand.

Up to half of all doctoral students in English drop out before getting their degrees (something that appears to be the case in doctoral education generally), and only about half of the rest end up with the jobs they entered graduate school to get—that is, tenured professorships. Over the three decades since the branch was grabbed, a kind of protective shell has grown up around this process, a culture of "realism," in which exogenous constraints are internalized, and the very conditions that make doctoral education problematic are turned into elements of that education. Students are told from the very start, almost from the minute they apply to graduate school, that they are effectively entering a lottery. This has to have an effect on professional self-conception.

Wow. I wish I had read this before I applied to graduate school. As an undergrad, I was told by my graduate student TAs that graduate school would be difficult and that not everyone would get a job at the end of a PhD program. But I don't remember being told the extent of the disparity between supply and demand.

Besides supply-and-demand issues, there is the problem of prolonged time-to-degree. OK, for those who won't bother to click on the link above, I am going to quote in its entirety the section that I found most interesting, in which Menand offers some surprising suggestions on what specific changes could transform the system for the better. (I'll interject my own thoughts in parentheses.)

It may be that the increased time-to-degree, combined with the weakening job market for liberal arts Ph.D.s, is what is responsible for squeezing the profession into a single ideological box. It takes three years to become a lawyer. It takes four years to become a doctor. But it takes from six to nine years, and sometimes longer, to be eligible to teach college students for a living. Tightening up the oversight on student progress might reduce the time-to-degree by a little, but as long as the requirements remain, as long as students in most fields have general exams, field (or oral) exams, and monograph-length dissertations, it is not easy to see how the reduction will be significant. What is clear is that students who spend eight or nine years in graduate school are being seriously over-trained for the jobs that are available. The argument that they need the training to be qualified to teach undergraduates is belied by the fact that they are already teaching undergraduates. Undergraduate teaching is part of doctoral education; at many institutions, graduate students begin teaching classes the year they arrive. And the idea that the doctoral thesis is a rigorous requirement is belied by the quality of most doctoral theses. If every graduate student were required to publish a single peer-reviewed article instead of writing a thesis, the net result would probably be a plus for scholarship.

(If the latter were the case, I know many colleagues who could have had their PhDs much earlier than they did. Even I could have my PhD by now!)

One pressure on universities to reduce radically the time-to-degree is simple humanitarianism. Lives are warped because of the length and uncertainty of the doctoral education process. Many people drop in and drop out and then drop in again; a large proportion of students never finish; and some people have to retool at relatively advanced ages. Put in less personal terms, there is a huge social inefficiency in taking people of high intelligence and devoting resources to training them in programs that half will never complete and for jobs that most will not get. Unfortunately, there is an institutional efficiency, which is that graduate students constitute a cheap labor force. There are not even search costs involved in appointing a graduate student to teach. The system works well from the institutional point of view not when it is producing Ph.D.s, but when it is producing ABDs. It is mainly ABDs who run sections for lecture courses and often offer courses of their own. The longer students remain in graduate school, the more people are available to staff undergraduate classes. Of course, overproduction of Ph.D.s also creates a buyer’s advantage in the market for academic labor. These circumstances explain the graduate-student union movement that has been going on in higher education since the mid 1990s.

(For more on the super-exploitation of student labor, see Marc Bousquet's posts at The Valve, like this most recent one. Important perspective.)

But the main reason for academics to be concerned about the time it takes to get a degree has to do with the barrier this represents to admission to the profession. The obstacles to entering the academic profession are now so well known that the students who brave them are already self-sorted before they apply to graduate school. A college student who has some interest in further education, but who is unsure whether she wants a career as a professor, is not going to risk investing eight or more years finding out. The result is a narrowing of the intellectual range and diversity of those entering the field, and a widening of the philosophical and attitudinal gap that separates academic from non-academic intellectuals. Students who go to graduate school already talk the talk, and they learn to walk the walk as well. There is less ferment from the bottom than is healthy in a field of intellectual inquiry. Liberalism needs conservatism, and orthodoxy needs heterodoxy, if only in order to keep on its toes.

And the obstacles at the other end of the process, the anxieties over placement and tenure, do not encourage iconoclasm either. The academic profession in some areas is not reproducing itself so much as cloning itself. If it were easier and cheaper to get in and out of the doctoral motel, the disciplines would have a chance to get oxygenated by people who are much less invested in their paradigms. And the gap between inside and outside academia, which is partly created by the self-sorting, increases the hostility of the non-academic world toward what goes on in university departments, especially in the humanities. The hostility makes some disciplines less attractive to college students, and the cycle continues.

The moral of the story that the numbers tell once seemed straightforward: if there are fewer jobs for people with Ph.D.s, then universities should stop giving so many Ph.D.s—by making it harder to get into a Ph.D. program (reducing the number of entrants) or harder to get through (reducing the number of graduates). But this has not worked. Possibly the story has a different moral, which is that there should be a lot more Ph.D.s, and they should be much easier to get. The non-academic world would be enriched if more people in it had exposure to academic modes of thought, and had thereby acquired a little understanding of the issues that scare terms like “deconstruction” and “postmodernism” are attempts to deal with. And the academic world would be livelier if it conceived of its purpose as something larger and more various than professional reproduction—and also if it had to deal with students who were not so neurotically invested in the academic intellectual status quo. If Ph.D. programs were determinate in length—if getting a Ph.D. were like getting a law degree—then graduate education might acquire additional focus and efficiency. It might also attract more of the many students who, after completing college, yearn for deeper immersion in academic inquiry, but who cannot envision spending six years or more struggling through a graduate program and then finding themselves virtually disqualified for anything but a teaching career that they cannot count on having.

(The first response I had when reading this last paragraph was simply: WOW! -- I know, not very sophisticated. -- I would like to see the consequences of making it easier to get PhDs. One assumes that it would entail more than the work currently required for a master's degree in a humanities field. Yet while I like the idea of more PhDs enriching the non-academic world, couldn't those students who "yearn for deeper immersion in academic inquiry, but who cannot envision spending six years or more struggling through a graduate program," simply decide to get a master's degree anyway? Also, the comparison of the humanities PhD with the MD and the JD is a little bit off, since the demand for doctors and lawyers is still higher than that for humanities professors. I'm not sure if I am misreading Menand here.)

It is unlikely that the opinions of the professoriate will ever be a true reflection of the opinions of the public; and, in any case, that would be in itself an unworthy goal. Fostering a greater diversity of views within the professoriate is a worthy goal, however. The evidence suggests that American higher education is going in the opposite direction. Professors tend increasingly to think alike because the profession is increasingly self-selected. The university may not explicitly require conformity on more than scholarly matters, but the existing system implicitly demands and constructs it.

Word.

Something I would have liked to see from Menand's reading of the existing data is an analysis of how all of this breaks down for women and minorities. I have the sense that his call for more "diversity" in the professoriate (and the graduate student population) is at least in part about racial diversity. But what are the specific data? I also wonder how the time-to-degree data is affected by the experiences of female graduate students, who from my admittedly limited anecdotal knowledge are the ones more likely to have "stop-time" -- withdraw for a few years before finishing -- because of the demands of childcare.

Overall, a very interesting article, even if it deals with depressing issues for me.

Lecture: The Child As Self And Nation

I really wish I could go to this lecture!!! It looks like it will be amazing and may have significant bearing on my dissertation. (And once again, UIUC is hosting a great Fil/Am studies event.)

The Child as Self and Nation: Stories of Dependence in Early Twentieth-Century American Juvenile Travel Literature and the American Indian Day School Movement

Kimberly Alidio

Wednesday, November 18, 2009
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Asian American Cultural Center Lounge
1210 W. Nevada Street, Urbana, IL

Tis The Season

It is fellowship season again. I was so relieved last year when I decided not to apply to anything, mostly because the process just takes so much out of me and, to be honest, I hate to bother my committee about anything. I kind of regret it this year since I feel a little bit at loose ends. But now that the end (my PhD) seems a lot nearer than it did just this past summer before I finished the first draft of a dissertation chapter, I actually feel compelled to go through the application process. For one thing, I saw my committee chairs recently and they knew and seemed to approve of my decision to apply (and thus they know to expect to write some letters). For another, since I have made some headway into the dissertation, I feel more confident about my dissertation plan and my work's significance in various fields.

Yet...well, applications are still difficult for me. Like I wrote a couple of years ago, writing about my work for one of these fellowships makes me feel uncomfortable and vulnerable. Maybe it is because I feel really invested in a lot of this work, and I hate the feeling that a rejection is a rejection of me as a person, kind of the way some students feel that getting anything less than an A is a personal judgment call on the part of the teacher. I simply have to get over this, I know. Unfortunately, I don't think I developed enough of a thick skin while I was in grad school, especially since I did relatively well in the classes I took during my first two years. Perhaps moving away after coursework was more like running away, even though I don't regret the move; I am -- we are -- so much happier living and working here. (I do miss going to school regularly, however, and I wish I could teach at least one more class before getting my degree. Oh well.)

Anyway, I am venting just a little here so that I can get it out of the way before I go back to work on my research statement and plan. If I don't come back for a while, happy Autumn to you, my dear few readers!

Assistant Professorship in Asian American Studies

Just got this job announcement today:

Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies
California State University, Northridge
Asian American Studies Department, Northridge, CA 91330-8251
Salary: $51,024-$62,000 (subject to budgetary approval)

PhD in Ethnic Studies, American Studies, English, or closely related fields, with an emphasis or a demonstrated interest in Asian American and Pacific Islander Literatures and Cultural Studies. Tenure Track. Degree expected prior to August 17, 2010. Desirable secondary interest may include media studies, composition theory, creative writing, performance studies, popular culture and postcolonial theory. Evidence of teaching and research excellence, an understanding of Asian American Studies as a disciplinary field and a commitment to providing service to the Asian American community required. CSUN is a Learning Centered University with a diverse student population drawn largely from the Los Angeles area.

Send letter of application, C.V., at least three letters of recommendation, evidence of teaching effectiveness, publications or recent writing sample, and representative syllabi of Asian American Studies courses taught or in planning to Asian American Studies, CSUN, Northridge, CA 91330-8251. CSUN is an EO/AA, Title IX, Section 504 Employer. Primary consideration given to applications postmarked by December 14, 2009. Review full announcement on our website: http://www.csun.edu/aas/.

Alas! The timing is all wrong for me, but I do wonder if the position will get budgetary approval in the end. The university systems in California seem to be imploding right now...?

First Chapter Draft Done

Wordle cloud of my Chapter 3

I sent off the very first draft of a dissertation chapter to the co-chairs yesterday. Although I went past my original deadline by over three weeks, I am really proud of myself. The first draft ever of the dissertation! (And yes, I started on the third chapter rather than the first.) It is also the first real paper I have written since the prospectus two years ago, and the first since giving birth. So it was really quite an accomplishment for me.

Basically, full-time childcare (mothering, to be specific) is a major obstacle to academic writing and researching. While trying to get this chapter together, I was dealing with a toddler who absolutely did not want me to type anything into my laptop while he was awake and would, for the past few nights, completely wake up in the middle of the night while I was writing and insist on staying awake for several hours so that he could play with me, or rather have me play with him. As you might have guessed, I had to do the bulk of my work -- both reading and writing -- in the wee night hours, which meant that I was completely exhausted during the daytime as, of course, I had to get up and take care of the child. No sleeping in and recovering after pulling an all-nighter. After a couple of weeks of this, my brain simply was not running on all cylinders when I needed to write. I definitely had to take nights off from writing despite the deadline. But as the dh said, at least I made progress every time I was at the computer, even if I could only write a net of one or two pages a night. (Can you imagine? Sometimes I really miss my college days. I once wrote 20 pages in one night!)

Now, while I am really proud of myself for actually getting a draft out there -- one that is 40 pages, no less, one of the longest papers I have written -- I have to emphasize that it is a draft and needs some rather severe revisions. Because the texts I am working on are not widely read, I got bogged down on plot summary and did not make up for it with really good analysis. In fact, because it seems as if I am still feeling my way around the dissertation (this is only the first chapter I've written, after all), I do not yet have the confidence to make bold claims about the work. I also decided to refrain from citing a lot of social and critical theory to help make any such bold claims because of that uncertainty about where the dissertation is ultimately going. (You would think that making bold claims would help, but what I really mean is that I need to finish much more of the research first.) For that reason, and because I also decided not to integrate another primary text that I had originally planned on using, the chapter is about fifteen meaty (by which I mean my own words, without heavy quotes from the primary texts or other sources) pages less than it could/would have been. If I had had more time, maybe I could have worked on these two particular aspects, but I was already three weeks behind as it was.

In any case, I thought it would be interesting to share some of what I was working on through the Wordle above. I have to focus on the victories, right, else I will never get this dissertation done!

(I got the idea to make this Wordle of my chapter from Natalia.)

CFP: Red Feather: An International Journal of Children's Media Culture

CFP: Call for submissions to the premier issue of Red Feather: An International Journal of Children's Media Culture. The first issue will be published February 1, 2010.

Red Feather facilitates an international dialogue among scholars and professionals through vigorous discussion of the intersections between the child image and the conception of childhood, children's material culture, children and politics, the child body, and any other conceptions of the child within local, national, and global contexts. The journal invites critical and/or theoretical examination of the child image to further our understanding of the consumption, circulation, and representation of the child throughout the world's visual mediums. Some sample topics include, but are certainly not limited to: studies of images of children of color; child as commodity; images of children in Africa, Asia, Middle East, South America, etc.; political uses of the child image; children in film; children in advertising; visual adaptations of children's literary works; child welfare images; children and war; or any other critical examination of the child image in a variety of visual mediums.

Red Feather is published twice a year, in February and September, and adheres to the MLA citation system. Authors may submit articles in other citations systems, with the understanding that conversion to MLA is a condition of acceptance.

Interested contributors please submit the paper, an abstract, a current CV, and a brief biography as attachments in Word to debbieo@okstate.edu

Deadline for submissions for the premier issue is December 15th 2009.

A Status Update

It has been so long since I last blogged anything that I feel funny in this space again. Like a lot of people, I gradually began to spend most of my online time on Facebook, because I can keep in touch with friends more easily there. Blogging is definitely a different animal, as not only do I have nearly unlimited word allowance for my "status updates," as it were, but also this is a space where I feel the need to practice the craft of writing, which I have admittedly neglected for quite some time now.

As for my status update: after reading my last few posts, I realized that I left my audience hanging on several things. Let me go in reverse chronological order. First, if you want to know what's been going on with my friend who has the abusive adviser, read the comments on the last post.

Second, the essay that I needed to revise for publication will soon be in the process of typesetting and, later, copyediting. It seems that the journal is definitely going to publish the special issue, but no word yet on issue number and date. Right now, the aggregate manuscript is going through another round of revisions before typesetting because the whole thing is about eighty pages too long; some of the contributors did not heed the journal editors' request for a specific number of pages and have been asked to edit down their papers once again. Thankfully, I don't have to go through another revision, which would have severely cut into my dissertation-writing schedule. (I already have too many things going on this month family-wise, so producing another revision for this essay would have been nearly disastrous.)

Third, I did indeed present in Hawai'i last April for the Association for Asian American Studies, and I had a wonderful time. I took my child and partner, and we had a few days in Maui with other family before going to Honolulu for the conference. The baby was a big hit with friends who had never met him and also with strangers (some of whom are now friends). It was quite funny because there was a point when I realized that "networking" had become easy: with the baby, I was welcome everywhere, and many people would simply come up to us. Moreover, people were very solicitous when I took him to the conference areas, and it gave me a good feeling about the conference in general, that the people who attended it welcomed and openly acknowledged the role of families in many academics' lives.

Fourth was a complete and utter surprise: I actually won that best graduate student paper award at the Rocky Mountain MLA conference that I mentioned here. I was one of three winners this year. I was floored when I got the packet in the mail, especially since it arrived on April Fool's Day! I exclaimed and laughed so loudly that the baby freaked out a little. It really was a very lovely surprise.

Despite all this good news, I know that I am not as productive as most of my peers, as I witness colleagues finishing their dissertations or receiving well-earned jobs and postdocs. I am reminded of the holding pattern that I am in and the precariousness of my situation with regard to my chosen career. The case of one young colleague doing research in another country in the first year of graduate school provokes thoughts of "if only I had done things differently back then..." and "what if life hadn't blindsided me," etc. But at the same time, I am really enjoying my time as a full-time babysitter to my son, who is 16 months old today and who has recently started walking, dancing while standing (it is hilarious), and babbling like he is having full conversations with us. Every newly-cut tooth is a cause for celebration. Every morning I wake up with kisses and hugs from an adorable toddler. I honestly would not trade this time in his life for a tenure-track job that would force me to put him in daycare.

I have finally found a few other young mothers here who face similar choices regarding career and childcare, and it has been a relief to know that I am literally not alone in this and that I can ask others nearby for advice and help. A couple of these women have recently offered to babysit for a few hours a week to help me with my writing, which was so humbling. I don't know if I can bring myself to take advantage, but I was just so grateful for what their offer symbolized, which was their support of what I am trying to do with my life. I am feeling quite optimistic at the moment. I hope this feeling will carry me through to finish the chapter draft that is due in a month and a half.

A Story

Last evening, I had a long chat with a good friend from my program. She regularly calls me whenever she's facing a big decision regarding her academic career and future. Last night, it was about the possibility of not finishing her dissertation and just leaving with a master's degree. Of course, she is not the first person in our program to do this; others have left even without the master's. But she has already written so much of her dissertation and has been very focused on what she wants to write. She has had to deal with an abusive chair for the past couple of years, and even though she has been incredibly disciplined about writing, the chair now wants her to start from scratch despite having signed off on the dissertation proposal a year and a half ago and having read and basically approved drafts of at least one chapter. (Moreover, the chair takes far too long to return comments on drafts; my friend had to wait half a year for comments on one draft!)

Like most of us grad students, my friend cannot afford to stay in school indefinitely, yet her chair seems oblivious, insensitive, to this fact. At this point in her career, my friend has decided that she may not want, in any case, to run the rat race to get a tenure-track job in some much less hospitable region; she has particular needs that must be accommodated properly, and where she lives now is the best place in the country for those needs. If she cannot resolve this problem with her chair by, say, switching to a different one, she thinks she should look for a full-time job locally and wash her hands of academe.

Our talk made me sad and angry. She and I always joked that we would ride the other's coattails to academic stardom. After all, my friend was able to get a very famous gender studies/queer studies professor on her committee. And her prospectus meeting went forward, with the document signed at the end of it. It seemed all she needed to do after that was write steadily, and she is fulfilling her end of the bargain, so to speak. (A devil's bargain, perhaps.) Now it is unclear if she will even finish with the degree she originally wanted, let alone get a job as a professor, because of one person who is acting irrationally and abusing their power.

I confess that, while I am much more sanguine about my chairs, I can't help but feel anxious that I may not end up with a PhD, either, if one of them suddenly decides that my project needs to be scrapped. I doubt this would happen, or that it would happen so abruptly, but one never knows. And my friend has to be so careful about not offending her chair as she attempts to resolve this impasse. Rather like a beaten child who must then come back and say sorry. Sometimes graduate school really sucks.

Jasbir Puar's Terrorist Assemblages

I've been reading this, and it is really great. I haven't read an academic book in a while, and this one made me feel like I was really, truly learning something. It made me question my assumptions by showing different sides to the issues of terrorism, U.S. exceptionalism, patriotism, race, gender, heteronormativity, and homonormativity. How refreshing after the last political season of un-nuanced arguments about these very things. Even lefties generally don't get it. (Huffington Post writers and Jon Stewart, I'm looking at you. And yeah, that's where I get my news, lol.) Puar's arguments seem very new and, really, very logical. Instead of finding mere oppositions, differences, and/or contradictions among the various indexes above, she instead argues that we look for "proximity" and "complicity." Her analysis of frameworks/discourses about terrorism vis-à-vis sexuality really blew my mind, or opened my eyes, whatever you like. And it made me think about what is at stake in movements like gay marriage and who benefits the most, and to personally reflect on a minor movement in Asian America and other communities of color to make our voices and opinions heard by showing how much buying power we have (i.e., via boycotts). What does boycotting mean for minoritized subjects? What kind of position(s) do we fall into when we range ourselves like this against the market and against the state? What is the trap of (neo)liberal subjecthood? . . . Anyway, I am reading the book to help with revising my essay (see previous post). These last few questions don't have much to do with what I'm writing, at least, not directly, but the revision is starting to shape up in my head. I'll need to ask family members to babysit for a few sessions, and then I hope to get this revision done on time.

Report

It is probably no surprise that I've been silent here for so long, especially since I only want to post when I have some real news to report. The baby will turn one year old in a little over a month. He is beautiful, delightful, a revelation. But he is also a handful. I haven't been able to truly work since before he was born.

(As an aside, I also haven't had a full night's sleep in over a year, but I've gotten over it. Mostly. I hold on to the knowledge that it will happen again someday, a full eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. Ah!)

Nonetheless, I have done some work. In October I presented at my first conference since giving birth. It was at the Rocky Mountain MLA in Reno, which I mentioned in my last post (from all the way back in May, wow). I had fun, although Reno itself and the hotel holding the conference were not that pleasant. But my panel turned out to be truly excellent and cohered in a way that none of us expected. I even drew a nomination for best graduate student paper, about which I am not holding my breath; I saw other presentations by graduate students and mine was certainly not the best!

What was nice about that conference was that I was able to dive into part of my dissertation work in a productive way, and now I get to present the material once again at another conference, this time in Hawai'i in April. I will probably report back again then. In the meantime, it needs to be revised further, even though it is already presentation-ready. Since the paper is the jumping-off point for one of my chapters, I also want to expand it so that I will have something more substantial to show my advisers in a few months.

Finally, I had some exciting news last week: I learned that one of my essays was accepted for a special issue of a refereed journal. The caveat: while I have heard from the editor at the journal itself, I am still unsure if the collection will be published; it might still be in the review process. But in any case, I was really excited, and not a little surprised, to hear that I might be published with a stellar group of scholars. It is a testament, I think, to the subject matter of my paper, which I will share here when (if) I learn that a publication date and issue number have been set. It has been about two and half years since I first submitted this paper for this particular collection, and almost twice that long since I first wrote it (five years? Yes, crazy, I know!). Our editor/collector has been incredibly patient and persistent with the publishers and the publications process, which has been more complicated than expected. To be honest, I wasn't sure if my piece would be included given the fact that I could not revise it properly when it was submitted for this particular journal. (At that time, two years ago, our heater had broken down in the middle of winter, my new kitten was dying, and an uncle in the Philippines had just been murdered. So, yeah, the revision process was an utter failure.)

After getting the feedback from two anonymous readers and a good friend, I am looking forward to properly revising the paper. And one last thing: I know some established academics have strong feelings against graduate students publishing their work while in graduate school. But given the attenuation of my graduate career, the fact that I am still in the early stage of the dissertation when I should already be finishing up this semester, and the uncertainty of my future as an academic, I feel a little better knowing that I might have another publication. It makes me feel like my time at this PhD has not been for naught even though most of the past year has been spent on childcare and self-care. I don't believe that I should feel guilty about putting my career on hold for this precious time in my baby's life, but I do, anyway.

Moreover, when I do finally go out on the job market -- which by all that I've heard is ugly and depressing and getting worse given this economic climate -- I don't want my application to be ignored. My job requirements are so specific that I need every edge I can get in order to land a good job in the location that will be best for my family. I felt convinced when I first entered my PhD program that I was doing it with my eyes wide open; then, I didn't mind the possibility that I might have to move to a different state for my job. I also planned to be on the fast track, given that I already had a master's degree. Oh, she was so, so naive, that old self! As the saying goes, if only I had known then what I know now.... Life blindsided me my first year in the PhD, and it has been doing it ever since. The last five or six years of my life have turned me around and sideways and every other which way. No one expects such big life-changing events to occur practically one right after the other. To tell the truth, I'm not sure I've adequately processed the last half-decade of my life. Yet here I am, still chugging along, still going after a PhD when a GED might have more than sufficed. If this article is actually published, it will, strangely enough, feel like I am moving towards more stability in my life. That means a lot (especially to someone with my personality).

Tidbits

I have been consumed with childcare for the past two and a half months and generally cooped up in the house. It has been particularly hard to get all of the e-mail announcements about exciting lectures, symposia, and conferences and not be able to go since I cannot yet leave my child with someone else for more than a couple of hours (attending those events would require at least two hours of driving already). However, I am excited about presenting at a conference this coming October; it came as a surprise because I did not apply for it. I am substituting for someone else who had to pull out early, but I am not ashamed! In fact, I jumped at the opportunity when I was asked, in part because of the venue (Northern California in the fall will be beautiful). But the other reasons are even better: I will be presenting with good people; the subject matter ("ethnic studies") was broad enough for me to slip right in with my own work that I will not have to tweak; I now have something to look forward to that is related to my dissertation; and I will be able to bring my partner and child so that we can have a little family vacation. This also seems like a good way to ease back into academic mode, or rather to learn how to balance my personal and professional worlds, now that my personal life has become more demanding. Aside from the inconveniences of traveling, I cannot think of a downside to this venture.

I have also been able to sneak in reading while the baby eats and sleeps. At first I could only read fiction in my favorite subgenres, and I consumed a couple of stacks of such novels during his first month and a half of life. But lately I have had enough brain power left for more challenging reading. I am currently perusing this edited collection of Filipino American critique; like a gourmet, I am taking it in slowly, word for word, and enjoying each demonstration of intellectual prowess in my field of specialty. I had only read a couple of essays in it before, when I supposedly had more time for academic reading, but it really is a gem. Kudos to the editors who were able to draw the work of such a distinguished group of Filipino Americanists. I am happy to say that there are many more whose work I would also have included if I had my way, but I hope that this collection is only the start.

Conference: Philippine Palimpsests

I salivated when I first saw the flier for this, but I won't be able to make it, of course. (By the way, the Asian American Studies Program at UIUC, where I worked for 9 months, incidentally, seems to be taking off like crazy. They have a few more exciting conferences like this coming up.)

Philippine Palimpsests: Filipino Studies in the 21st Century
March 7-8, 2008
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Conference Website:
http://www.aasp.uiuc.edu/PhilippinePalimpsests/index.html

E-mail: aasp@uiuc.edu

It is no secret that Philippine, Filipino diasporic, and Filipino American studies have burgeoned with the arrival of Filipino and Filipina scholars into academia. While it might be too early to claim that we have reached "critical mass," given the welcome addition of tenured professors, new junior faculty, and emerging doctoral students into the ranks, we can no longer discount the large numbers of Filipino studies scholars who have graced various conferences, including the Association of Asian American Studies, Asian Studies, American Studies, and various by-discipline symposia. Needless to say, there is a tremendous potential for scholarly production, intellectual growth, and networking among scholars that remains untapped.

It is thus with a view towards providing a venue for such exchanges that we at the University of Illinois have organized a conference called "Philippine Palimpsests: Filipino Studies in the 21st Century," scheduled for March 7-8, 2008 at the campus of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This conference will bring together around 28 prominent and emerging U.S.-based Filipino American scholars to exchange ideas and create a strong network of support and scholarly contact. According to the OED, the term "palimpsest" connotes "a parchment or other surface on which writing has been applied over earlier writing which has been erased" and "something reused or altered but still bearing visible traces of its earlier form." Indeed, we seek to assess the state of Filipino studies and anticipate its rhizomatous extensions into the 21st century but, as the word palimpsest implies, with a profound awareness of the "hybridity," "heterogeneity" and "multiplicity" of our Philippine pasts, as well as a non-essentialist acknowledgment of the indelible traces of capital, empire, and labor upon our present.

Assistant Professorship For Filipino Americanists

This would be my dream job if it were in California and if the start-date was for 2010.

Assistant Professor, Position 82125, College of Social Sciences, University of Hawaii at Manoa, full time, 9-month tenure-track position in Ethnic Studies Department to begin January 1 or August 1, 2009. Duties: Teach undergraduate courses from a transnational perspective on Filipino diasporic communities in Hawaii and the US; the intersections of ethnicity, race, class and gender; and process of migration. Advise and mentor undergraduate students; seek extramural funding; participate actively and provide professional service to the department, university and the community, particularly with the Filipino community in Hawaii. The successful applicant should maintain an active program of research and scholarly publication that integrates innovative theoretical analyses with applied research. Minimum qualifications: Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies or related interdisciplinary studies, humanities or social sciences field at the time of the appointments. Demonstrated ability to teach and conduct research on Filipino diaspora/transnational communities in Hawaii and/or the U.S.; evidence of excellence in research, teaching, and community service; and commitment to innovative educational strategies and to working with students with diverse backgrounds and experiences. Desired qualifications: Evidence of research and university-level teaching about the Filipino American experience; ability to teach courses on immigration, transnational communities, and/or ethnic/race relations, Philippine political economy and US-Philippine relations; previous experience in interdisciplinary teaching and collaboration between programs such as ethnic studies and other social sciences or the humanities; evidence of outreach activities to minority communities; ability to contribute to the College of Social Sciences Public Policy Center; a record of peer-reviewed publications. Salary commensurate with experience. To apply: Submit cover letter indicating how you satisfy the minimum and desirable qualifications, a curriculum vitae, and three letters of references, to Ibrahim G. Aoude, Chair, Departments of Ethnic Studies, University of Hawaii at Manoa, George Hall 301, 2560 Campus Road, Honolulu, HI 96822. Closing Date: Continuous with screening of first applications on August 15, 2008. EEO/AA Employer.

Happy New Year

I hope you are having a productive 2008 so far.

As for me, it has been an unusual week academically. I was approached by two scholars I had never met -- one of whom found me through this blog, as a matter of fact(!) -- to be part of a panel and a seminar for different conferences later this year, but unfortunately I had to decline both although they sounded very interesting. Because of my baby's imminent arrival, I cannot make any promises about my schedule especially in the first half of the year. In fact, I expect that I will not be able to travel very far from home until late August or September.

In general, the first three weeks of 2008 have been very busy for me at home, so writing and processing have had to be set aside for a while. Besides the routine preparations for the baby, the hard drive on my Mac laptop started to die, which threw me into a tizzy for a couple of those weeks as I tried to make sure that my data was salvageable. I had my prospectus/dissertation backed up, but not all of the academic pdf articles I have downloaded over the years or schoolwork from my PhD program. Plus, it would have pained me to lose my photos and music. The idea of losing it all again (another hard drive died on me three and a half years ago) pained me. But I was able to access and back up all of my data at an Apple Store, and then get the hard drive replaced under the extended warranty I had fortunately bought with the computer. Even better, I finally got the latch on my laptop fixed for free, also under warranty. So that is that.

Coming up next: I have an essay review for a journal due in a couple of days (I am a "reader" for this journal), and the essay is actually very interesting; I expect to recommend it for publication but with revisions. Then I would like to finish my memo for the prospectus meeting before the end of the month, but because of the setback caused by the laptop problems, I will not hold myself to this deadline.

Prospectus Meeting

I figured I would update now before the end of the year got away from me.

I am happy to report that my prospectus meeting last Friday went well. It lasted about an hour and fifteen minutes, and there were a lot of productive questions, criticism, and back-and-forth discussions among the professors (who, thankfully, all like each other). I was a little stymied in the beginning by a request to summarize or re-cap my project, but I sidestepped it and jumped into my little half-prepared presentation on the questions I wanted the committee to address about my proposal; insofar as the point of the summary suggestion was for the committee to hear my take on the project, my presentation and list of concerns accomplished the same thing. Then each professor went around the room giving their comments, with discussion at certain points when others jumped in. I was unsure how much I needed to respond to each question/issue, but it was a relatively relaxed atmosphere -- unlike my qualifying exams last year, which were a true oral defense. Overall, I felt that all four of the professors on my committee were behind me and the project. One professor observed that one of the things she liked about the project was the feeling of being taken on a journey, with no sense of what we will find at the end of it. I appreciated her comment a lot, as that is precisely how I think of scholarship and its purposes (in contrast to the outsourcing type of scholarship, via Professor Zero).

In the next month, I will be writing my "memo" of the meeting, which needs to be more than just a summary: I will need to craft my responses to the issues brought up during the meeting, especially regarding the project's quite ambitious political and methodological scope. Basically, I must make the research more manageable and not consider it my magnum opus; I was in fact encouraged to think of it in terms of two "books." "You can save it for the second book." That is something I have to really think about, as I am not certain how easy it will be for me to disaggregate or de-link one or two factors from the others. (Perhaps this is why I am not in the sciences. Ha!)

In other news, I wanted to share the good news about one of the Filipino Americanist tenure denial cases that I mentioned here last month: a negative tenure decision from earlier this year was overturned unanimously by the new tenure and promotion committee, so the professor was awarded tenure after a review of the last process. I am thrilled about this. The professor, who recently published a beautifully-written and well-received book, had already been unanimously supported by her/his department the first time around, so my disappointment at hearing about the tenure denial over the summer was due in part to a dread about the gatekeeping employed against people of color in academia. I feel that this new decision is in the vanguard against the artificial inflation of expectations for professors of color who are up for tenure.

P.S. I have added my del.icio.us links to the sidebar.

Back From The Workshop

I am recovering from the dissertation workshop over the weekend (Thursday night to Sunday afternoon). It was basically as long as a conference, and it felt like half a semester's worth of seminars packed into a few days. I got back to my house Sunday night and I still feel fried after a couple of days back home.

About the workshop, it was for graduate students engaged in the "tangled strands" of race, gender, and/or sexuality. The other students' projects were really exciting, and I am happy to report that I did not feel like the "poor relation" as I expected. In fact, there was no poor relation to be found there. The professor-interlocutors told us at the end that we were the most cohesive and generous group of students that they had had in the six (or so) years of the program. Not only did our projects speak to one another's, but we, the students, also engaged with each other extensively during the discussion of each project. I was awed by how a couple of people seemed to be "on" most of the time, and how brilliant they were. It is a skill I have yet to hone, this ability to remain on one's toes during intellectual discussions despite, for instance, the need to jump from one discipline to another and back again or even simple weariness from a long day. My contributions were more hit-or-miss, but I do hope that at least a few of my comments were helpful or at least directed the conversation in productive ways.

Interestingly, I found that at certain points comedic relief was more than welcome. After all, we were stuck together for 72 hours all told, and it seemed necessary to be able to laugh together as well. But I have had seminars where little jokes have consistently fallen flat, partly because of the professor's repressive personality and partly because of the students' arrogance. It did not consciously register while I was preparing for the workshop that I was afraid of this type of atmosphere, but thankfully this atmosphere did not materialize. Most of us went to that table nervous and uncertain about ourselves, but none of us tried to overcompensate by being arrogant and disdainful of others' attempts at levity. Moreover, we were not being graded (not officially, anyway!) for our projects or our performance as budding scholars, so there was even less reason to act out. It was nice.

Other highlights: I did not get flak about my pregnancy, although I may have seemed preoccupied with it because so many people kept asking me questions about it! Part of my worries about the workshop had to do with sharing a room with other people while dealing with the embarrassments of pregnancy, but that also turned out fine, and I liked my roommates a lot. We went to a guest ranch in Sonoma that specializes in retreats, so the area was quite beautiful. And it was in some ways a relief to be so out of touch with the rest of the world for a while. While I could have used more lighting in the cabin, thicker walls, a full-size tub in the bathroom, etc., the food, served buffet-style, was excellent. I mean, excellent. I felt spoiled and slightly guilty at every meal, as if I were spending $50 at a restaurant for myself. And the few sips of red wine that I had were also lovely (we were in wine country, so no surprise there). It was also neat to discover that many in the group were cat-lovers; given my homesickness, it was nice to be able to talk about our cats, and a couple of the professors even shared photos of their feline companions (that was kind of hilarious, actually, as one of the photos was of a couple of sibling cats on their 5th birthdays, wearing party hats -- ahahahaha! I'm sure they just loved being made to wear those things). Finally, I was glad to get to meet other students in my department (English) doing work on race, gender, and sexuality who are also very kind people; I had never met them before because they are in earlier cohorts and because I basically stayed away from my department after my first year and so preempted any opportunities to run into them randomly.

I came away from the workshop with much food for thought about my project. Mine was one of the few in the early stages, so most of the others went to the event hoping for practical suggestions on how to organize their chapters as well as for some inspiration to write the next chapter or section (and to finish). I have only a prospectus and part of one chapter, and I definitely expect my proposed chapters to change during the researching and writing, so I was mostly interested in concepts/larger implications of the work. The workshop was helpful for both sets of students, though I believe some of us got more out of it than others, which makes sense. At this point in my dissertation, I got as much as I could have expected to get out of the workshop -- essentially a more nuanced way of thinking about the "big picture" I want to offer with my dissertation as well as tips on some of the issues that I will need to flesh out in my introduction -- and I hope that I am now more prepared for my prospectus meeting in a week and a half.

Done

Just checking in.

I am done with all of my immediate deadlines, including fellowship applications and preparation for this workshop. I am told the letters of support have been sent as well. Although a bit sleep-deprived, I feel so much better now than I did this time 24 hours ago. Who knew that writing a short, six-page mock-introduction to an anthology could be so difficult? Mind you, I did not even do it well; I waited too long for "inspiration" to strike and then had to pull an all-nighter to churn something, anything, out. But at least it is finished. Now I just have to worry about tying up loose ends at home, getting ready for travel, and psyching myself up for three days of non-stop academic engagement. Unfortunately, none of those appeal to me very much right now. Must sleep.

Applications

I submitted the first fellowship application yesterday, a full day before the deadline. I felt elated about being done but spent the rest of day putzing around, doing crossword puzzles, sudoku, and a little Scrabble online. I wanted to do more reading for the dissertation but found that I simply did not feel like it. I get tired easily these days, more intellectually than physically or mentally (hence the lack of posts on what I have been reading). Moreover, today is Friday, which means I get another free pass. I am psyching myself up for the next few days, during which I must deal with more deadlines before the Thanksgiving holiday.

Speaking of fellowships and applications, my policy is to stop thinking about them after they have been sent out into the world. Que sera, sera, and all that. This has worked for me very well in the past as I did not waste hours worrying about what I could no longer change and what I could not control, i.e., what selection committees were looking for. At the same time, I have not applied for anything in a long time, and I am feeling a certain anxiety that I think has to do as much with future job prospects as with the more immediate question of how to support myself in graduate school next year. Will my dissertation have any resonance or relevance in the academe? While I stand by my project and my ideas, will they be enough to land me a job (let alone a "good" one) in the career I have chosen for myself? Will I even end up with a decent dissertation? These are the thoughts that run through my mind while producing these applications. Talking up one's project sometimes feels like taking a leap of faith.

Time To Breathe

The first draft of fellowship applications was sent out last week to my reference letter-writers. The first application is due in a week and a half, which gives me a little time to breathe before I need to polish. I do need to get back to reading for the dissertation, however.

In tenure matters, I heard some good and bad news the past couple of days regarding two Filipino Americanist professors at other universities. Neither case has been finalized, but I am feeling a little deflated at the moment. I respect both academics and hope for the best. In the one case, denial of tenure has been overturned and the tenure process reopened, which I think is promising given that the professor now has a book contract, but it is unfortunate that tenure was not granted by the arbitrator. In the other case, the denial of tenure was not unexpected -- not because of the quality of the professor's work, but because of what I have heard of the institutional environment there (which was the reason I did not apply to this professor's university for my PhD). This follows upon another tenure denial earlier this year regarding another Filipino Americanist whose work I like; I have not heard what is happening with that. Sigh.

Workshop

I found out earlier today that I have been accepted into a three-day dissertation workshop with 10 other dissertating students and five professors who will be our professional interlocutors. I am excited and scared at the same time. It will be three days of intense academic engagement, much more intense than, say, conferences, where I can sit back and melt into the audience; or even seminars where participation is expected, because these last at most three or four hours. We are, moreover, expected to read and synthesize all of the 11 proposals into 5-6 pages, written as if we were editing an anthology. This extra work is a bit of a surprise, but I am looking forward to the challenge and to reading all of the other proposals. Having a deadline like this is galvanizing. Also, I know at least one of the other students and have met two others (all English majors -- there are strangely a lot of us for such a small workshop), and I am looking forward to meeting the professors I haven't met already. It is my hope that getting feedback from these professors and students in a workshop setting will make up somewhat for my distance from the university and thus my inability to take or sit in on classes and lectures.

But I do have a couple of misgivings with no upsides. For one, I am afraid of embarrassing myself if I have to room with another person, basically a stranger, for a whole weekend because, well, to be frank, pregnancy makes it more difficult for me to control my body. Also, for the sake of full disclosure, I will admit that I used to work for one of the research centers sponsoring the workshop and that I was also a reader for the director of this particular research center, who is one of the five faculty interlocutors. Since I use this blog as a platform to be honest about my insecurities, among other things, I will say that I have the suspicion that I was chosen partly for the above reasons; if this is indeed true and my proposal is not on a par with the others', then I am afraid of -- how shall I put it? -- getting slammed during the workshop. I have the backing of the professors on my committee who say that my proposal is good to go, and I believe them; at the same time, this suspicion niggles at me, especially since the professors on my committee and the professors at the workshop may have totally different expectations. And I do not know how to prepare for the possibility of being the "poor relation" in the group, except maybe to avoid it by declining the invitation.

That said, I am almost positive that I will go. My misgivings and suspicions may be nothing more than products of my usual tendency to downplay or denigrate myself, a tendency for which people have (kindly) scolded me before. This invitation is an honor and a great opportunity to hone my project; and, I suppose, if the workshoppers find it severely lacking, then at least it will be a good thing to know that.

CFP: Asian Pacific American Studies Graduate Conference

Call for Paper or Panel Proposals

Creating a Community of Scholarship on Asian Pacific American Issues: A Graduate Student Conference

University of California, Berkeley

April 4-5, 2008

A National Conference

Current scholarship on Asian Pacific American issues is expanding beyond traditional disciplinary and regional boundaries, signaling a movement toward establishing new paradigms of understanding aspects of APA experiences. This conference highlights emerging scholarship of graduate students examining issues pertaining to the Asian Pacific American community as they partake in shaping the future of the field. What new projects or research questions are emerging? What are new communities of study, modes of analysis, pedagogies, and possibilities for collaboration and comparative research? We hope that interested graduate students will use this conference to become familiar with each other's research themes and methodologies and come to challenge traditional notions of research in Asian Pacific American scholarship.

We believe this conference will be an excellent way to build a community of scholars because graduate students working in the field of Asian Pacific American studies are most often scattered in different departments at every university. This conference will provide a space for interdisciplinary and intercollegiate exchanges through the presentation and discussion of cutting-edge projects in the field. Following University of Illinois Urbana Champaign in 2006 and University of Illinois Chicago in 2007, this conference marks the third year of organizing efforts specifically in support of graduate student-centered scholarship and research in Asian Pacific American studies.

We welcome paper or panel proposals that advance the knowledge of Asian Pacific American experiences by graduate students at any stage of their research and in any discipline. The proposal should include an assessment of where this scholarship fits within the current literature of the chosen field and how the work contributes to and/or expands the knowledge of APA experiences.


Submission Deadline: November 15, 2007

Email: communitiesofscholars@gmail.com


Paper submissions should include (1) contact information (including university, year in school, address, telephone number, fax number, and e-mail address); (2) a 300-word abstract summarizing the paper's argument and assessing its relation to the field; and (3) a one or two page curriculum vitae and a brief biography for each presenter.

Panel proposals should include (1) a cover sheet with contact information for the chair and each panelist (including university, year in school, address, telephone number, fax number, and e-mail address); (2) a one-page rationale explaining the relevance of the panel to the theme of the conference; (3) a 300-word abstract for each proposed paper, summarizing the paper's argument and relation to the field; and (4) a one or two page curriculum vitae and a brief biography for each presenter.

Submission guidelines:
* Please submit individual paper proposals or full panel proposals via e-mail attachment by November 15, 2007 to communitiesofscholars@gmail.com with the subject line, "Conference Submission." Please also direct any questions to that email address.
* Attachments should be in Word, pdf, or rtf formats.
* Submissions should be one document (i.e. include all required information in one attached document).

Notification of acceptance or rejection of all submissions will be by made by December 15, 2007.

Limited support for graduate student travel to attend the conference may be available.

For more information, contact communitiesofscholars@gmail.com


Sponsored by the Critical Filipino/a Studies Working Group, the Asian Cultural Studies Working Group, the Graduate Asian Pacific Islander Collective, and the Asian Pacific American Studies Working Group at the University of California, Berkeley; and University of California, Davis Asian American Studies Graduate Student Group.
****

Libe Stuff

It is all work. I am working.

I went to the library today and borrowed books on Southeast Asia and gender, on the Ilongots, of José Rizal's letters. I will return for more on Friday. I am feeling pretty happy about these texts. I already went through them once today (to make sure they were worth lugging home -- I can no longer carry heavy weights these days), but I am looking forward to deeper study soon.

The downside today: I had to pay $5 for a recalled book that was overdue a mere ONE day. I did not even find out that it had been recalled until the day that it was due. Usually I am notified by e-mail. Damn.

Guilt

Now that committee issues seem to be resolved, I have re-set my mind towards working on fellowship applications. I have applied for fellowships before, but for some reason I have been feeling slightly guilty about it since it isn't, strictly, working on the dissertation itself. But I should be applying for money to finish my dissertation if I need it, right? Come to think of it, I feel guilty about not being able to read my dissertation material faster. I feel guilty about asking my advisers to do stuff for me (like write letters and give me feedback even though that's part of the relationship). I feel guilty if I have to do errands for home. I feel guilty about relaxing in front of the TV or a non-dissertation book. I even feel guilty about being pregnant and having so many doctor's appointments, even though I know I shouldn't; a friend thoughtfully sent me a couple of Chronicle of Higher Education articles about pregnancy during graduate school, and these reaffirmed my right not to be judged and not to have my commitment to my career questioned because I am having a child. So why all this guilt?

Thinking about all this rationally, I know I need to climb out of this mire (it's probably some displaced former-Catholic angst, anyway). But maybe I'm just in a particular mood. Or maybe it has something to do with the culture of academe. Or the feeling that, as a woman of color, I need to keep pushing myself to work harder and faster than everyone else because, otherwise, they'll believe that I got to where I am because of affirmative action; or, as an Asian American, that I got here because I was assumed to be smarter than I really am.... Yeah, I really need to stop that. These thoughts do me no good.

In other news, I sent off an application to get into a two-day dissertation workshop. It would be great if I got accepted, but it won't be a huge disappointment if I don't. Also, I am entering into a long-distance dissertation critiquing/writing partnership with someone I met over the blogs. That sounds a little funny, but I respect her writing and her work, and I am looking forward to this. Which reminds me: I should get off this blog and do some critiquing-partner work. (Ah, this is the good kind of guilt, the kind that sparks a tinder under my butt to get going.)

Another Committee Update

I thought that all was hunky-dory with my committee. I was pretty happy with the way it turned out, with four faculty members who get along and who all do interesting, relevant work that I respect and admire. But I guess sometimes I misinterpret situations, which is frustrating in any sphere of one's life, personal or professional. I have always been an independent worker, and living so far away from my university, I guess I assumed that certain things were OK when they weren't, not really. I hope it is all resolved now, but I am worried about my ability to correctly judge situations especially in academic settings where so many things are perceived in unexpected ways. Although I suppose I shouldn't be surprised by this; I'm talking about people who think for a living, after all.

Committee Update

I just got an e-mail from the professor with whom I have been trying to curry favor, and I believe my committee will soon be complete. At least I hope so. In any case, the e-mail provided some relief from the feeling of dis-ease I have had since completing and sending off the second draft of the proposal last Friday. I.e., the draft was good, even enjoyable to read. I had been muttering to myself for the past few days about how my heart felt like throwing up; it was/is not really nausea at all, of course. I expect that most graduate students, and perhaps most academics in general, understand this feeling. In any case, I shall know for certain about committee issues in the next couple of days.

P.S. I forgot to add in my last post that the professors of color who have left/are leaving my department were all tenured faculty. Which makes it all even worse. I do not know what future incoming graduate students who desire to be mentored by faculty of color will do now. The faculty of color who remain already have immense workloads and face demands from a large number of current graduate students, including me.

{ADD} Yes, indeed, as I found out later today, I now have all my committee members. I was also able to set the prospectus meeting for mid-December (on the ONLY day that all four of them could make it. Egads -- I can't believe how difficult it was to find just that one day). Now, on to fellowship applications.

2nd Prospectus Draft

I finished the second draft of my prospectus earlier today and sent it off to the co-chairs and to one professor I am "wooing" to be on my committee. I am not quite sure why I don't feel more relieved about getting it done. No, wait, actually, I do know why. It was quite a substantial revision, but my diction was terrible and I feel as if I am still waiting to find better sources to use as examples. Being pregnant, I have been fuzzy-headed for months now; I can still think relatively clearly when I am focusing, as was the case with the revision, but I haven't been able to get back into a groove where the words that I need just come to me. My memory is also shot. For example, twice in the last two weeks I have come up short on my share of the dinner bill while out with friends. For some reason, both times, I assumed that I had a $20 bill instead of a $10 bill. The difference in my share was only a couple of dollars each time, and thank goodness for easygoing friends, but I would never have done that before (I've always been finicky about exact change).

By the way, speaking of dis-ease, I was just thinking how messed up things might be in my department. This is already common knowledge, or at least it is relatively easy to find out, but in the last two years, at least four professors of color have left or are in the process of leaving for other universities. Given how many professors of color were in my department to begin with, that is quite an exodus, and in such a short time. It's pretty disheartening. I may have mentioned it here before, but it's part of the reason why I am still trying to get one last member for my dissertation committee at this late date. I guess I took classes with the wrong professors, or rather, I didn't start relationships with enough professors before moving away. Sigh.

Where Has The Summer Gone?

Good question. It is not that nothing happened here; it is that too many things did, things that did not necessarily have to do with my dissertation work but that definitely cut into my academic work time.

I will summarize: since June 29, I found out that I was pregnant (I am now about 4 months along); I had to deal with nausea and fatigue and various health problems associated with a suppressed immune system induced by pregnancy; we got a new kitten; we got ringworm (a fungal skin infection, not a real worm) from said kitten; and I taught a six-week course called "Asian American Women" at UCLA. I have spent the last week at my university trying to move along my dissertation committee and prospectus, which I should have been doing a month ago when classes began here but could not because I was still teaching classes at home.

(Yes, I am writing this while away from home. Incidentally, in the week that I have been away, the weather flipped from summer to fall, so that basically I missed the changing of the seasons in my home. That gives me a pang of regret.)

In any case, my trip here has been relatively successful academic-wise. I acquired one new committee member whose name holds some sway in Asian American circles, and I hope to acquire another committee member who was incredibly nice and knowledgeable during our first meeting last Tuesday. I also let my co-chairs know that I am still alive and working, despite being pregnant, about which they have both been supportive. They are both actually quite good over e-mail, but I hoped that seeing me in the flesh would impress upon them the urgency of my case. I.e., I would like to get all the bureaucratic, logistical things done before I give birth next semester.

Back

I'm back from almost a full month away from this blog. Don't make the mistake of thinking that my absence was due to my working hard on the dissertation or class prep. I have a friend who says that June for her is usually a throwaway month in terms of productivity. I think it must be the same for me, partly because it's summertime. Instead of working I spent my June taking care of homestuff and having reunions with family and friends, including several family members and friends whom I see only once every year or year-and-a-half. One of those friends was the first guest ever to spend the night in our house, and it's good to know that our hosting skills are survivable.

Anyway, after re-reading my previous post, I realized that I spoke too soon. Not too long after mildly bemoaning the fact that I don't get much feedback on my work (see #8), I received very generous comments from a friend; I had shared my prospectus draft with her because she had let me read her brilliant, tried-and-true prospectus when I was looking for good examples of prospectuses from a literature department. Her feedback was wholly unexpected as she had been dealing with heavy deadlines to complete the first full draft of her own dissertation (which she succeeded in doing).

I also wanted to note here that I've been appreciating looking at the old stuff in the libes when I've had the occasional chance to do so. In contemporary Filipino American circles, both academic and non, there is a sense, a strong impression, of Filipino invisibility in the U.S., and given this, I experience a thrill at the evidence of a preoccupation with Filipinos in the American popular cultural imaginary, even if such evidence was produced in the first half of the 20th century. But because I can't get inexpensive copies of my own of these texts (photocopying hundreds of pages is not cost-effective), I have to really work to be selective of the things that I type out when I take my notes. And sometimes I'm not too successful at selectivity because who knows what I will eventually need during the writing phase? One of the unexpected results of this is that I sprained my right index finger last month (it's fine now, after a hiatus from intensive typing). I don't want carpal tunnel syndrome from the dissertation. Ay de mí.

Writing Meme

To follow up on the previous post, I am doing the academic writing meme from Professor Zero's blog. I currently find myself in need of self-reflection; this is one way in which that need manifests itself.

1. Do you outline?
Yes, but only very generally at the very beginning and then in more detail as I am actually writing. {Add} Actually, the dissertation prospectus I am working on is basically a detailed outline of my project, much more detailed than my outlines for individual essays. But there is still, perforce, much vagueness in the chapter descriptions since I don't know for sure what I am/will be arguing by the end of the writing. All I truly know is that I have certain questions, and in the process of writing I will be unpacking the assumptions behind and implications of those questions.

2. Do you write straight through a book, or do you sometimes tackle the chapters out of order?
I have never written a book but have produced a master's thesis and am currently dissertating: I wrote the master's thesis out of order, or, rather, I wrote the chapters without any real idea of their order until the very end; as for the dissertation plan, I am already planning to write chapters out of order.

3. Do you know how a book is going to end when you start it?
No. Not at all. I'm thinking about the dissertation as well as the thesis, but this goes for essays, as well. I have a general idea of the direction I'm going, but I don't really know if it will make sense at the end of the road, so I try to be very flexible. It's a bit scary, but I think it's the most appropriate method of writing for me since writing, for me, is a bit like a journey. The uncertainty is the price I pay for theoretical work, I suppose.

4. Where do you write?
I write mostly at my desk, once I've been able to clear it off. (I do most of my reading at the kitchen table, on couches, or on my bed.) I can't write in cafes or other public places. I need almost perfect quiet and a way to read aloud what I've written without fear of people thinking I'm crazy!

5. What do you do when you get writer's block?
I putz around, read my "fun" guilty-pleasure books, spend more time with family, or try to reflect on my writing process by completing memes like this. ;-) But when I'm under the gun, I re-read my sources and my notes and/or cast about for new sources to help jump-start my writing process which, after all, is about synthesis and inspired thinking. And when I'm under pressure, I do force myself to brainstorm (i.e., write in almost random fashion) for a few minutes at a time, or even produce idea bubble trees; sometimes that provides the catalyst.


6. What size increments do you write in (either in terms of wordcount, or as a percentage of the book as a whole)?
I am talking about essays here, since I have never completed a book: because of deadlines that run only a few weeks at most, I tend to spend the bulk of the time before the deadline doing my research and reading, and then spend about two weeks writing while still finishing up the research. This means that I write when I get inspired, and sometimes I can draft 15 to 20 pages in a night (though I must emphasize DRAFT) but I am thankful for 5 good pages a night. This isn't what I plan to do for the dissertation, however; I expect to draft at least 5-10 good, relatively revised, footnoted pages a week once I start on a chapter, which I hope won't run more than 40-50 pages each.

7. How many different drafts did you write for your last project?
My last real project was an essay I submitted for an anthology which I subsequently asked to withdraw since I couldn't (had no time, no energy to) do the revisions the editor and I wanted, and I didn't want to have something so poorly written/conceived floating out there. The project before that was an article published in a journal, based on a couple of chapters from my thesis; like a lot of people I revise constantly, so I don't know the number of real drafts I produce during a project. But I remember that I had to draft a whole new essay based on those two chapters against my will. The editor expressed interest in the original abstract, which was based on one chapter, but encouraged me to do a comparative essay because of the relative glut of critical works on the one book on which I based the original chapter. I revised this new essay as much as I could by myself then submitted it for publication; the readers' notes came back with the suggestion to accept with revision, and I revised as per the readers' really excellent comments, after which the paper was basically done (though I have to say I didn't think the new essay was as interesting or well-conceived as the original). A more recent project, though not an article or book, was my prospectus draft, which I didn't show to anyone else before submitting to my co-chairs, who I felt should be my first readers -- or at least I thought I should try them out as first readers to see how it worked out. It turned out quite nicely, actually, but of course I didn't turn in a totally sloppy draft; since I revise as I go along, I was able to give them my first completed draft, which took between 10-12 days, I can't really remember.

8. Do you let anyone read your book while you're working on it, or do you wait until you've completed a draft before letting someone else see it?
No, I am actually very shy when it comes to sharing my work, despite my willingness to read and comment copiously on other people's work. I just haven't found a good critiquing partner, since most people seem too busy to read my stuff and sometimes the feedback I get is too shallow because the reader isn't in my field(s). My best feedback has come from professors whose classes I've taken and usually for whom I wrote the papers. I only beg colleagues to read my stuff when I am desperate (like when I am under a deadline and need a new eye). For instance, I went through the process of applying to graduate school basically without other people reading my stuff; I was sorry the one time I let my boss (who was in my field) read my personal statement because his comments were so superficial.

9. What do you do to celebrate when you finish a draft?
When I finished my prospectus, I read my fun books, watched TV and movies, and ate out with the dh. The fact that my birthday had just past added to the festive feeling.

10. One project at a time, or multiple projects at once?
One prioritized project, with others waiting in the wings. I have several ideas I am still considering but for which I have done absolutely no research.

11. Do your books grow or shrink in revision?
My essays usually grow, actually. Huh. Never thought about it before.

12. Do you have any writing or critique partners?
Alas, no. I would prefer a critique partner over a writing partner: I have tried writing/reading with other people and found myself unable to do much work. As I wrote in #4 above, I need to be alone, in a very quiet place, when I write. Critiquing, on the other hand, I can do either face-to-face or over e-mail.

13. Do you prefer drafting or revising?
It depends on the project; it depends on which process (drafting or revising) produces the most euphoria that comes from inspired writing and thinking.

14. What are your favorite writing books?
I don't think I have any, or I can't think of any at the moment.

15. Morning writer, evening writer, or doesn't matter?
Evening/night, for sure. If I am writing in the morning, it usually means that I have been up all night writing.

16. How do you handle reviews?
I haven't had to deal with them yet, although anonymous reader reviews during the peer-review process can be really daunting. I still haven't completely read through the last one.

17. How do you handle rejection?
With as much avoidance as possible. Publishing is not yet crucial to my career, so I try to treat rejection with as much sangfroid as possible; dwelling on it will only depress and stall me.

18. Do you prefer to work on writing by yourself? Or do you prefer collaborating?
I have never collaborated on an essay outside of classes, and I must say I did not enjoy these collaborations unless we were appointed specific tasks that we could call our own.

19. Able to work on airplanes?
No, I prefer to read non-academic texts on planes because they keep me awake better.

20. Have you ever abandoned a book or an article that you had finished? When? Why?
I abandoned the article I mentioned in #7. I simply could not continue it, in part because it wasn't for certain that the anthology it was part of would be published nor that my contribution to the anthology would even make the publisher's cut if the project got picked up. But the most important reason was that it wasn't related to my dissertation, which I had to start prioritizing at this point. And I was getting tired of doing presentations and writing on stuff that wasn't going to be in the dissertation.

21. What writing advice do you really believe in?
Writing is a craft, and one needs to write constantly to improve one's writing. But I have to say, my few moments of brilliant writing and thinking have come from inspiration, and thus I have learned to trust my gut instinct as much as possible when I write.

On Organization

Professor Zero, who seems to know very well what she's doing, shares her approach to academic writing in a meme. I personally like the index cards idea (#20):

I keep next to me a pile of index cards, on which I jot down a) the ideas and phrases this that come to me, do not fit in with my writing that day, but do fit elsewhere in the project, and b) the ideas and phrases that come to me and do not fit in with this project, but may be useful for something else.

I put the cards with the first group of ideas and phrases in the set of file folders I have set up, of notes towards other portions of this project.

I put the second group of cards in a box.* When I get stuck, I draw a card out of the box at random, for inspiration. When the project is finished, I use this box as seed material for other projects.

* This "box" turns out to be another blog.

As the artifacts of my own research start to pile up, I am realizing more and more that I need a better mode of organization. In fact, today, I considered going to the local big-box bookstore to buy a new journal/notebook since I have earmarked my current working notebook strictly for notes on books and articles. I have been writing the random ideas that invariably come up in older notebooks and on post-its that may get lost in the burgeoning shuffle of my workspace. I think that starting a separate file folder of "IDEAS" and using index cards would be much more organizationally smart than jotting down random ideas in different places. Or, for the notes that may have direct bearing on the dissertation later on, I can designate a whole new notebook for that purpose. Yes, I think I will. A new blog may be helpful as well -- perhaps I will follow Professor Kiita (of Chasing the Red Balloon)'s example of starting a tumbleblog -- though I must think more on this plan as I already have several blogs and webpages to maintain.

More Professor Blogs

As I have started to move into the final years of my PhD program, I have become more and more fascinated by the professorial trials, travails, and triumphs that possibly await me. I've been enjoying these particular blogs, by queer* professors of color**:

chasing the red balloon
Professor Zero
Slaves of Academe

Excellent writing all around, too.


* By "queer" I don't refer to the person's sexual orientation but to her sexual and gender politics.

** Even "of color" is a provisional term, especially in the case of Professor Zero, who has had some very interesting experiences about the curious fluidity of racial boundaries.