27 March 2007

Penultimate Lecture

Gave my last full lecture this evening. The class actually meets for the final time next week, but I'll only be giving a short, summing-up type of lecture, followed by evaluations and take-home exam distribution.

As has been the case for the last few weeks, though, I didn't have a big group tonight. I've been asking around and discovered that it's definitely a trend amongst students generally - all the other instructors I've spoken to so far have reported that attendance really drops in their classes not long after mid-term. Which is really a pity in my case, because for me, the second half of the course is the most interesting part.

Tonight's lecture was probably the most enjoyable for me so far - we talked about Victorian women for the first hour, then about religion and high culture in the second hour. I found time to pull together a slide show of images of Victorian art and architecture, which went over well. We even got some lively discussion going - predictably, they had lots of questions about 19th century morality, prostitution and pornography. ;-)

I had a lot of fun tonight - the last half of this course has been especially good. By about Week 6, I felt I really hit my stride, and I've been feeling pretty relaxed and confident about what I'm doing. Just a shame that it wasn't long after that so many of the students stopped attending regularly!

25 March 2007

Stirrings in the Garden

Since the last of the snow melted and we've had a couple of mild, sunny days this past week, I went out this morning to uncover the flower beds, just to see how they were looking (we'd laid some fur and spruce boughs over them earlier this winter, for protection).

Sure enough, there are lots of shoots - and my snowdrops are quite well advanced. I'd imagine they'll start blooming later this week, if the mild temperatures continue.

24 March 2007

Bye Bye Birdie

Last night A. brought home a little chickadee. Someone had found it and brought it into the clinic, as it had a broken wing.

We were going to look after it for the next couple weeks. Apparently, broken wings can heal if the bird is kept in a small cage, so it doesn't move around too much. This little guy was very bright and alert too - he was hopping about all morning, eating seeds and preening himself, so we thought the chances were good for recovery. I was going to take his photo this afternoon, to post on here.

But I just went and checked on him a few minutes ago, only to find the poor little guy keeled over dead.

Argh. :-(

22 March 2007

Moving, Pt. 2

Whew. OK, so I still need to get sorted out with new chairs...but I finally got my office sorted out this morning.


I'll tell you what - after two years of working in a room which had always been used as a dumping ground for other people's junk, it feels great to throw all that stuff out and finally lay claim to my own space. Ya gotta be grateful for the small stuff, you know?

20 March 2007

Moving, Pt. 1

Movers were meant to show up at our offices late this afternoon to take away our old furniture. Instead, they showed up at 12.30 pm. There goes plans for the rest of today's work, then.

Hurriedly flung the contents of my desk drawers into boxes, before the desk itself was spirited away. So I'm sitting on my office floor right now, typing with the keyboard in my lap. Argh.

Lovely new desk arrives first thing tomorrow morning. At least, it's meant to. *fingers crossed*

17 March 2007

Paddy's Day

From ye olde postcarde collection:

14 March 2007

Jeez, Was It Something I Said?

Had a skeleton crew in my class last night. Normally, I have between 20-25 people each week (out of a total class of what now numbers 29). Last night, though, only 12 showed up - and I lost five of those during the break halfway through.

I think it's probably because of this time of year - most essays for arts courses will be due this week and next (mine are due next week) and a lot of students are skipping class to work on their essays instead. Which, I suppose, is understandable - but I'm a bit worried about it all the same, since last night's lecture was possibly the most important of the entire second half of this course. The topic was nineteenth-century politics and reform - one hundred years in two hours. *whooooosh*

[Note to self: may need to change the order of my lectures next time I teach this course, to schedule the most important ones well before essay deadlines.]

08 March 2007

Top 5: Historians

Top 5/10/whatever lists seem awfully popular these days, don't they? Normally I abstain from such things, but today I crumbled. Invited to put together a Top 5 list of my own choosing, naturally I chose...historians. Why? Because I'm a total nerd girl, of course - and insufficiently versed in any of the usual hipster topics (music, fashion, sport, etc.). So here ya go.

Top Five: Historians

In no particular order...

1. Edward Said – RIP. Love him or hate him, the brilliance that is Orientalism has ensured a place in the historical canon for Said. He’s one mean, paradigm-shifting mofo. *sound of Said spinning in grave* [edit: can't believe I just used the term "paradigm-shifting mofo"...bwahahaha!]

2. Elaine Showalter – OK, so technically she’s an English professor. But her literary histories are empirically-grounded, fascinating and highly readable. What’s yer fancy? Madwomen in attics? Hysteria? Sexual anarchy at the fin de siècle? I’m always interested in anything she has to say.

3. Margaret MacMillan – The granddaughter of David Lloyd George! And Canadian! A truly terrifying intellect, for sure. Paris 1919 is as dense as treacle, but one feels smarter just for having read it. It was one of her earlier works, Women of the Raj, which switched me on to women’s history many years ago.

4. Francis Fukuyama – Ah, I just love the smell of schadenfreude in the morning, don’t you? He makes my list simply because of the breathtaking audacity it takes to write a book called The End of History. And then, a decade on, to see it all proved so utterly, ridiculously wrong. But hey, thanks for coming out, Francis.

5. SJ Brooke – not a telly don or a media star...but the fella who made me want to become a historian. And a damn smart guy too.

07 March 2007

Facebook

I set up an account over at Facebook, over a year ago, but until the last few weeks, I never really did much with it. Since I started teaching, however, I thought I should update my details. I've also been hearing more and more about how university recruiters are using Facebook to target potential students. Since my MySpace page is totally personal, and allows for no networking in uncool fields like education, I thought I'd better get a work-based, professional page going over at Facebook.

After doing some browsing, I've actually found some people I know over there - far more than is the case on MySpace. Given that until recently, Facebook was restricted to people in education, I guess this isn't surprising. This morning, I even got a friend request from one of my own students. Heh. Not quite sure why a hipper-than-thou undergrad would want a stodgy lecturer on her friends list - but there you are.

Not sure I want to find my students' pages, actually. Naturally, they're chocka with glitter graphics, protestations of lurve, drunken photos, etc. Hee.

06 March 2007

Office Hell

Argh. My office at work looks like a bomb hit it.


We're in the process of moving offices at the moment, so we're all having to stockpile various items until the move is complete. As for me, I've got 7 desktop PCs (5 of which are being donated to charity), 2 old laser printers, and 8 bookcases.


Being surrounded by towering piles of junk all day, with only a narrow corridor cleared between the door and the desk, is a tad depressing, to say the least. But help is on the way. The computers should be gone by tomorrow, and we're all getting lovely new office furniture delivered next week.

I hope by the end of the month I'll have a lovely new office space.

05 March 2007

Spring is Coming

It must be. All the snow we got Friday night has already melted, and the doves have returned from wherever they were hiding for the winter. Just now, I heard them cooing outside my office window - such a lovely sound. :-)

04 March 2007

Dinner and a Show

Super tired today...not sure why. Endless grind of work, perhaps?

Went to Neptune last night - the play was
Mourning Dove, in the studio theatre. Very well-written and acted, but in typical Neptune fashion it was heavy stuff. The theme was mercy killing, with the storyline heavily based on the Robert Latimer case. Argh.

Beforehand, we went over to the Hydrostone Market, to try a new bistro that's opened there called Rogi Orazio. But it was all booked up, and I hadn't made a reservation - so we ended up going next door to Epicurious Morsels instead. It was very good indeed, so that wasn't too much of a hardship. Plus, we had a table right by the window and so had a great view of the lunar eclipse, as it was unfolding.

01 March 2007

Amazing Grace

This week, I've been reviewing outlines submitted to me by my students, for their research essays (which are due in three weeks' time). It's interesting, seeing what some of them have decided on in terms of topics.

The abolition of slavery in the Empire seems to be popular so far - I've already seen three outlines for that. And coincidentally, there's a movie about to be released on that very subject. It's called Amazing Grace and focuses on William Wilberforce, an evangelical reformer and MP in the early nineteenth century who was the leader of the antislavery movement in England. The film has a good cast and crew behind it, but I don't know how historically accurate it is - or if it's as moralistic as it appears. I see from the official website that it's being heavily marketed to Christian groups, a la The Passion of the Christ...and one of the sub-plots revolves around the man who wrote "Amazing Grace".

Regardless, I'm happy (though presumably the students in question are not) that it's not being released in Canada until after the essays are due. Otherwise, I'd be concerned that some of them would just go watch the movie and use that as a springboard for their essays, instead of conducting proper research in the library. It's a common 'shortcut' for some students to take.

Battening Down the Hatches

March has certainly come in like a lamb, as the old adage says - the last couple of days, we've been enjoying sunshine and relatively balmy temperatures approaching the freezing mark. It's a nice relief from the deep freeze we've been dealing with since early January.

Apparently it won't last, though. There's a winter storm warning issued for Halifax tomorrow evening - we're meant to get ice pellets, freezing rain and upwards of 20 cm of snow. If that happens, it will be the first significant snowfall here since our only other storm of the season - back in early December.

A. will be delighted, at least - it'll give him an excuse to fire up his new snowblower, for only the second time this winter.