Inessentials: The Blog

“In Tough Times, the Humanities Must Justify Their Worth”
That’s the headline from an article in yesterday’s New York Times. Reading those words makes my skin crawl.
Starting salary for a college professor in the humanities is somewhere around $45,000. Alex Rodriguez earned $28,000,000 last year to play baseball, and I need to justify the existence of [...]

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I’ve begun my fellowship at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale. I’m mostly working on early 18th century British books and pamphlets that are relevant to my dissertation. It’s been pretty wonderful so far. I go to the library each morning, sit in a quiet room guarded by video cameras and security [...]

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The November issue of Jobs for Philosophers has just come out. (In case you’ve forgotten, I discussed this last year.) Things are worse this year than I expected. The economy has hurt universities more quickly than I had initially thought it would, so fewer jobs are being offered, and some have already been pulled that [...]

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Although I assumed I would later regret it, this semester I decided to lead my discussion sections immediately after the lecture on Thursday. I hoped it would help me maximize on the interest generated in class and carry over the discussion. So far, so good.
Last Thursday, I stopped to get coffee between lecture and section. [...]

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Here’s some news.
My eye has been doing considerably better, as judged in the most practical way: I’ve been able to read for about two weeks, as long as it’s in relatively short stretches and not at certain times of the day. Other than a little soreness, it’s not been painful. Somehow, after I take the [...]

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It’s getting closer. I can almost see it.
About 10 days from now I should be through all of my requirements for this semester. All the major deadlines, the must-do’s, the can’t-wait-any-longer’s. Then I have a short reprieve to actually work on the stuff that is interesting at the pace that I can enjoy, while slowly [...]

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