The Blotted Line

Our TA union called a strike last night.  I have mixed feelings about the situation (I think everyone does).  Fortunately, teaching third years, I have not encountered the verbal berating some of the other grad students/TAs have: my students are a bit more aware of the complex position in which we find ourselves.  It’s difficult to ignore emails from good students who are earnestly trying to improve their work (I have an unusual number of these students this year).  I’ll miss hearing their ideas for their performance project, and working with them in tutorial (which was starting to be a lot of fun).  Hopefully I’ll be back there soon.

31 October 2009 ~ Hamilton

For those who have been inquiring recently, here’s the record of the (somewhat mundane) events of my existence in the last week (or so).

Things Read:

This morning I took advantage of the first weekend I’ve had in the past two months where I don’t have anything to submit assignments or present in seminar in the coming week in order to catch up on readings, both required and non.  In the latter category is John Marston’s Antonio and Mellida and Antonio’s Revenge. Marston is, to be reductive, quite a lot of fun to read (particularly Antonio’s Revenge, one of the most amusing tragedies I’ve read recently).  Also on the non-required reading list is Gaimain’s American Gods (yes, still), and Chandler’s The Big Sleep (addictive, and the cause of many a missed bus stop in the last week).

On the required reading list are Lady Audley’s Secret which will be, I think, the most engaging text in my Gothic novel course (Braddon reminds me somewhat of Woolf in her ability to satirise by deploying perfectly all the elements of the genre).  On the whole, however, I think I’ll never be overly fond of 19th century literature: I’m presently reading Carmilla, and finding the narrator’s disavowal of her (queer) desire very tedious (unlike Marston’s characters who revel in their sexuality).

Things Bought:

A non-encompassing list, but I feel I should mention the .25 spring I purchased for Celia on the advice of the clerk at the pet store.  It may be the most productive .25 I’ve spent, as it truly and confoundingly does keep Celia entertained for hours at a time, leaving me free to write or read, without tiny paws batting at my hands every time I type or turn a page.

I’m also pleased to announce that Niagara grapes have finally made their way north into Hamilton groceries.  I picked up a carton of Cab. Franc. grapes this afternoon, and while they aren’t quite the same as when purchased from the farms (something about the packaging and storage flattens them a bit), they are reminiscent of home (now if someone could just procure for me some local concord grapes I’d be content).

I’ve also recently purchased soy cheese that almost tastes like actual mozzarella, and a ticket to a tedious movie that we left part  of the way through, opting to spend our time more productively reading over coffee.

Things cooked:

Yes, I’ve also managed to stave off starvation another week.  The two more involved meals cooked this week were pizza (which, if it was any good, was so mostly owing to the sauce made with raspberry honey and cayenne), and cauliflower soup (this soup, it turns out, has more flavour when made with soy milk — and thank you, vegan Jesse, for helping me discover this knowledge).  I’ve also figured out the best way to make sugar-free hot chocolate (which includes fresh melted chocolate and that same raspberry honey — perhaps I should have included that ingredient in the “things bought” category).

Things written:

Not enough.  Comments on last week’s Shakespeare essays (for my students), the notes to my presentation on romance and epic in Spenser and Ariosto, and the script to my presentation on art and history in Lady Audley’s Secret (of which I printed out the wrong copy). And this post. I think I need to get more reading done so that I can write something beyond a list.  I suppose we shall see how this plan works out in the next week.

26 October 2009 ~ Hamilton

This makes me terribly happy.

23 October 2009 ~ Hamilton

we’ve made it through Eliot’s The Lifted Veil and Collins’s The Woman in White.  Both texts seem to take a very long time (longer in Collins’s work than in Eliot’s) to reveal a Secret that, in the end, is rather anticlimactic — because we either knew or strongly suspected the information, or because the revealed information doesn’t produce the same anxieties as it might have in 19th century Britain. (The Woman in White is fairly entertaining, and interesting to discuss in a historical context, but I’m not convinced of its relevance to a contemporary audience.)

I did find both texts interesting reflections on the art history and art theory of the 19th century.  Eliot’s work responds to photography and the relationship of art and technology, documentation and imagination.  Collins’s text takes up the formation of watercolour societies and the way these paints shaped tourism (individuals were encouraged to take their pre-packaged paints into the English countryside), representations of British landscape (the picturesque and the sublime, two fictional responses to the anxieties of overcrowded cities), and the growth of the middle-class (affordable paints worked on smaller canvases allowed this demographic to appropriate a medium which had previously been available to (and a sign of) members of the Royal Academy. (Collins’s primary narrator is a middle-class drawing-master, who teaches wealthy heiresses-to-be the art of watercolours.)

Interesting comments, but I think I’m engaging more with the history of the century, and the theories around the formation of cities, architecture, and art, rather than the novels themselves. I’ll have to see if anything changes while reading Braddon’s Lady Audley’s Secret.

12 October 2009 ~ St. Catharines

I’ve had no in-course assignments for the last month, and am now anticipating three due the week after next.  It always looks like there’s more time available than there really is.

Off to research Spenser’s theft of Ariosto, and architectural traces in 19th century Britain.  And theatricality and (sexual) violence (must extend SSHRC proposal).

10 October 2009 ~ Hamilton

felt entirely normal, and for the first time in a month, I’m not feeling entirely displaced.  I think the increasing feeling of comfort is rooted in a few events today:  I finally received my grant money (and thus have reassurance that I will have the means to maintain this glamourous grad student lifestyle), I managed to make it to the bank and the grocery without getting lost or nearly run over, and I submitted (draft one of ) my thesis proposal (and thus have reassurance that I am in fact working on a real grad project — it even has chapter outlines!).  I can finally settle into my regular reading/research/paper writing schedule instead of worrying about submitting forms correctly.

I do miss a few aspects of St. Catharines: the city smells far more noticeably of trees rather than of steel (and tar — a contribution of the on-going construction on King and Main Streets).  I miss autumn visits to farm territory to collect fresh fruit outside a farmer’s market (I will miss the spring farm visits as well).  I miss the days when ordering books through interlibrary loan meant remembering my student number rather than a 14-digit library barcode.  I miss a various assortment of people.

Balancing these absences, however, I’ve discovered that Hamilton has a free art gallery (for university students at least), a very good (and inexpensive) choral group, and a more fully-stocked library (my thesis supervisor today explained that ten years ago the early modern faction in the department was more sizeable, and ensured the acquisition of the large number of books and journals in this area).

I also have a kitten:

6 October 2009 ~ Hamilton