Chicago-Pittsburgh

The bummer about catch-up posts is that they’re never as richly detailed as if I posted them as they were happening.

I Feel Like An Asshole

So I had a hotel booked in Hyde Park, the Ramada Inn. Two independent sources told me stories of squalid conditions there, which made me a bit nervous. I’m not a “no brown M&Ms” kind of guest speaker but I had cause to worry. I was headed over to visit my friends Loretta and Toby and their twins, and figured I’d call the hotel and tell them I was checking in late (rather than driving all the way south to drop off my bags and then go north again). Well, the Ramada Inn lost my reservation. This was surely a sign. So, in conjunction with a very courteous talk organizer, I started looked for alternative options for a place to stay. I found a place downtown for $109 a night, just a couple blocks south of the Art Institute where I would speak on Thursday. How lucky!

I checked in, went to bed. spent my day at the U of C, went to bed, woke up and as I was headed out the door to walk to the School of the Art Institute, I looked out the front door to discover that I was on the wrong side of a picket line Now, had I checked the comments on my blog, I would have noticed Andy’s comment about the Congress Plaza hotel being the site of a long-term strike and home of said $109 deal. But I didn’t do that. So here I was, having already spent two nights in a hotel I should have been boycotting, and feeling like a complete asshole. As one person put it to me, I can’t exactly go to the concierge and say “I’m never staying here again!” as I was checking out. I mean, I obviously didn’t know, and I didn’t think to ask “are your rates so low because your employees are on strike?” when I was searching for a less-likely-to-be-squalid alternative to the Ramada, but that just goes to show that some deals are too good to be true.

Chicago was otherwise lovely. Except for the head cold: Wednesday morning I wake up with a head full of sand and spend the next two days medicating myself with a combination of water, caffeine, decongestant and pain killers. There is a corect mix to achieve lucidity. Anyway, I got to catch up with some friends, and I also got to be the center of attention for two days in a row. Both events — at the U of C and at the School of the Art Institute, were organized by grad students. Come to think of it, MOST academic events at those institutions are probably organized by grad students but in this case there was no pretense otherwise. the U of C event was particularly cool because it wasn’t the usual talk-for-40-minutes-take-questions-for-20 routine. Instead, they read my paper in advance, I got to give a 10 minute spiel on background, and then got a very detailed response from one participant. After that, a free-ranging discussion ensued and I think the whole thing lasted 2 hours. It was very productive and engaging for me. The SAIC talk was also excellent, if less creative in format. The lecture hall was outstanding though and very well outfitted with technology. I suppose that’s necessary since most of their guest speakers are artists.

Pittsburgh was a bit less thrilling, only because the cold got worse and I had to spend much of the weekend recovering. Still, another student defended (that’s one to go!) and I got to see another posse of old friends, though not as many as last time. I felt a tinge of nostalgia as I drove up from the airport in my rental car, though by Monday night I was eager to get home.

“The New Pope is an Asshole”

These were Carrie’s words as she brought in the paper this morning. Let’s have a look at the checklist:

–opponent of same-sex marriage
–opponent of contraception
–opponent of expanded role for women in Catholic church
–former member of Hitler youth

Yep. Asshole.

Here’s a Cool Fact About McGill in Comparison With My Old Job

Semesters here are 13 weeks long. At Pitt, they were 14 weeks long. At Illinois (where I did my grad work), they were 15 weeks long. Let’s say, hypothetically, that I spend the rest of my career at McGill rather than at Pitt. That means I save two weeks of teaching per year. Let says, for argument’s sake, that I will retire in 31 years. That’s a total of 62 weeks, I’ve saved. If we allow for a 28-week academic year at the old job, that means that I will spend the equivalent of approximately 2.2 fewer years in the classroom. Note that this does not include sabbaticals or other factors I’m too lazy to include.

Did I mention I turned in my undergraduate marks yesterday (with the help of my TAs, of course)? It’s officially “summer” for me, and though I have a million things to do, it still feels great. Coming soon: the summer “to do” list.

Attack on Academic Freedom

It’s a big topic in among US academics, with Horowitz’s “Discover the Network,” the attacks on Ward Churchill, and some smaller skirmishes as well. And yet I’ve been saying all along that humanities intellectuals are not on the cutting edge of the attack but rather a secondary front. Today’s Globe and Mail has an article on attacks on NIH grants that study a wide range of issues such as sexually transmitted diseases among truckers to single mothers and beyond. One striking quote from the article dealt with the increasing use of “code” to talk about research subjects, where, for instance “potential mothers” would be substituted for “lesbians” so that religious groups trolling the NIH’s list of grants wouldn’t know to look further. it sounds like a story Slavoj Zizek about state censorship in a former eastern-bloc country.

Between the corporate takeover of science funding and the religious right’s attacks on science in the name of morality, progressive academics in the U.S. have their work cut out for them. Intellectuals who write about culture — in the humanities and social sciences — need to begin seeing their common cause with the scientists who are getting overrun with this bullshit. This is a truly transdisciplinary problem, and if the left wants to get into the action, it will need to move beyond the 1980s-language of the “culture wars” to understand its role in a much bigger battle.

“Cud-Chewing Misogyny”

is the phrase I’ve heard applied to Frank Rich. Having just returned home from Sin City I’d have to say that it’s fitting. Definitely one of the most creatively misogynist movies I have ever seen.