Being aggressive towards oneself

My yoga practice is more like my academic life than I thought.

I started doing yoga only a couple weeks ago. After struggling with stress during my MA, I signed up for yoga at the start of my PhD as a way to both try stay somewhat active and take a mental breather a couple times a week.

The sessions are getting both easier and harder. I can now shift through my downward dog flow without thinking through every step, but already my mental noise has gotten worse and I can't seem to find my balance, physically or mentally.

My frustration came to a head during one of the final, more difficult stretches (half-pigeon, anyone?). With my forehead on the mat, I was trying to use my breath to carry me through the tense stretch and to a place of stillness. I kept cursing myself for not finding a calm space, then noticing my thoughts and trying to clear my mind, then feeling guilty that I couldn't - finding a moment of quiet just to lose it again and becoming increasingly frustrated.

Then, I suddenly tuned in to what the instructor was saying.

"Often, we are aggressive towards ourselves during difficult poses. Acknowledge your frustration."

I actually teared up a bit as I had a realization: I had been being aggressive towards myself lately, but not only in my yoga practice - I had been in my academic practice as well. I'm sure you know the feeling - guilty because you didn't manage your time well enough, or prepare enough for a course, or finish a reading before class.

It's a sort of self-shaming that goes along with impostor syndrome, and the idea of "being aggressive" towards ourselves is something that I've seen manifest among both myself and many grad students of my acquaintance. Feelings of inadequacy and ineptness are expressed as frustration at not being able to read faster, manage time more efficiently, or even understand why we're so stressed, with the perpetrator and person to blame, of course, always being ourselves - we should just be infinite variations of "better."

Everyone deals with such feelings in a different way, and with the term just beginning, grant writing in full swing, and, for some of us, a new program and new city to become accustomed to, it makes sense for us to be a bit more tense and, perhaps, a bit more aggressive towards ourselves. 

So, in order to reclaim my academic practice, I'm going to try apply some of the strategies of my yoga practice:

• Breathe and be in the moment, without worrying about what the next pose will be.
• Listen to your body and your mind; acknowledge tenseness and frustration, and then release them.
• Modify positions to what you can do, without worrying about what everyone else around you is doing.
• Thank yourself for your practice. 

Have you found yourself being "aggressive" towards yourself? How do you deal with it?

No offices for you, humanities grad students

I'm frustrated and sad on behalf of my cohort back at the University of Saskatchewan.

In the last year, we have lost our English grad student room due to a reshuffling of offices in the Arts tower to provide room for an "administrative commons" following sharp cuts to the Arts and University budget. This room was important for grad students, particularly the MA cohort and lower year PhDs; we would meet up there before and after courses, and it was distinctly our space; the English Commons Room upstairs was the dominion of profs and while students were welcome to stop by, we always had to be professional.

Were we spoiled compared to the lot of other grad students or other institutions? Perhaps. The only other hangout space, other than the small undergrad Arts student lounge, the undergrad pub, or other eating places on campus, is the general grad student lounge, which is a 5 minute walk across a busy bus loop and parking lot, hidden in (an admittedly beautiful) old chapel tucked behind some other buildings. This space isn't great as a hangout space if for nothing else other than location, although it does have coffee and washrooms and a lovely interior. It's too far from the the convenience of the library shelves, professors' offices, and classrooms to be a practical gathering place.

Now, in another recent blow to English grad students, they have lost their office spaces in the north wing of the Murray Library. In late August, they received an email notifying them to move out.

They were given a week's notice.

The offices, which before belonged to two MAs or one PhD student, will now become communal. Every grad student in English and several other humanities disciplines will have a key to the offices, and (as I understand it) the use of them will just be on an occupied basis. First come, first served. They're essentially carrels with lockable doors.

I understand the egalitarian perspective of it for those who may not have had any office space, particularly when some of the rooms (*cough* ones without windows and with only one flourescent light *cough*) weren't used very often.

However, I think it is more indicative of the University's general belt-tightening strategy (TransformUS, psh) to cut costs, and again it is at the expense of the student. The reasons for this shift in room use has been driven by increased grad student enrollment and displaced grad students from many other humanities departments due to construction and their grad spaces being turned into classrooms. The humanities administrative assistants were left scrambling to find space during a time when available space is being reduced, and I give them all the kudos in the world for trying their best, but the simple problem is there isn't enough space (or money) allotted to humanities grad students to accommodate their research; as researchers and students, we (and the work we're doing) just isn't valuable enough to the institution.

Does that sound bitter? Full disclosure: I am, a little bit. For the University to keep hypocritically proclaiming research as one of its priorities and then shoving valuable researchers (many of whom are SSHRC funded, if they need a "value" system) into the old corners of the library (example: my office had no windows and the plugins were only two prong), then practically out of the library entirely leaves a sour taste in my mouth, particularly when upper level administration tries to frame all the cuts as having little to no impact on the students.

The benefit of having a locked office is the ability to keep all your research supplies present. For a humanities grad student, that can amount to several dozen of personal, library, interlibrary, and professor's books. When in the course of research a student can need to refer to many different books over a single day, the value of these private offices dramatically increases. They are also a personal work space with plants, posters, coffee cups; essentially, a comfortable space where one can spend several hours a day, often more than 5 days a week.

Apparently lockers will be provided in the offices eventually where personal books can be kept, but how will that work if someone else is currently in the office? Will they be big enough to fit several texts? Too many questions and conflicts remain at this point, though I hope something like that would at least help alleviate some pressure.

I can see several negative outcomes, garnered both from my own experience as a grad student and the helpless comments from others who are now preparing to spend the next years of their PhDs in home offices with research articles close at hand.

The number of Sasquatch grad students, that you hear exist but never really see, is going to climb dramatically.

Corollary: the number of grad students who come to events and interact with professors and each other is going to drop dramatically.

Similarly, all those MA students who look to PhDs for guidance are going to see a distinct reduction of mentorship, if for no other reason than the PhDs simply won't be on campus. Some of the most important discussions of my grad student career thus far happened after running into a PhD student in the hall, or when just stopping by each other's offices for a chat. The PhDs that came to English grad student events were those who spent time on campus - coming out for a drink or trivia or literary theory reading groups or the student-run colloquium or sitting in on a class wasn't a big deal when they were already on campus.

The blows to research will be frustrating and isolating, and the negative impacts on the sense of community among the department and grad students of all levels will be palpable. Of course, other areas, such as how TAs carry out preparation for classes and meeting with students and RA work, will be impacted as well; meeting up with a student by Starbucks to discuss a paper because no offices are available on short notice may not be a pleasant experience.

It's a double blow, and all I can do is watch from a distance, feel frustrated on behalf of everyone who is having to deal with this personally, and fear for what the upcoming TransformUS cuts are going to bring for the University in general.

Hopefully it won't hamstring the humanities too much.

Scholarly, Digital, and Social Editing - belated post

I meant to have this post out and published weeks ago, but moving has put such a spin on things!

Back in July, I attended the Scholarly, Digital, and Social Editing Conference at the University of Saskatchewan. Several months before, Peter Robinson, the organizer, had approached me and asked if I would present a paper for a conference he was putting together. I agreed, and then proceeded to not think about it much until the conference approached.

The schedule is here, and though the majority of the names might not mean much to you if you're outside of digital humanities and textual editing, for me, several of my academic heroes are on that list.

A great mix of people were present, representing a variety of disciplines and areas were present, and many of them were from overseas, including a large complement of Australians. A nice balance was struck, from my grad student perspective, of experienced and established scholars and some more new to the field. Because of the variety of people combined with their heightened interest in the topics being presented, the discussions following presentations was always stimulating, and sometimes resulted in some passionate debates.

For example, Robinson's talk was focused on digital humanists. One of his lines of argument was that digital humanists and scholarly editors need to stop collaborating (for a more detailed description of this presentation and others, see Geoffrey Rockwell's excellent conference notes). An energetic discussion ensued with scholars on both sides.

Barbara Bordalejo's assertion that transcribers are not editors, however, probably inspired the most dissent from audience members. Listening to the dispute that followed made me really appreciate conferences; while some I have attended had probing questions, I have never witnessed the spirited and knowledgeable discussions that went on at SDSE.

The keynote presentations and several of the others were a pure intellectual joy to listen to, and the projects and ideas that people were working with left me with a small notebook full of notes. I particularly appreciated the folks who were outside the humanities/academic field. Ben Brumfield, a software designer (if I remember correctly?) had a great presentation on amateur editions, and asked some very relevant questions throughout the conference. Paul Flemons, who works more with biology, offered a similarly valuable different perspective.

As a grad student among such eminent scholars, I had many "eep!" moments. My paper was on the same-old "Here's what I've been working on with the Dunciad" material that I've presented variations of before, so I wasn't terribly excited about it; however, it went over well enough. However, I was honestly more excited to be able to not only listen to the various presentations, but also to talk to the presenters afterwards. So many of the scholars were incredibly gracious, and I had lovely conversations with the likes of Melissa Terras, Laura Mandell, Paul Eggert, and Peter Shillingsburg, the latter of whom I had a great conversation with about logging with draft horses and retirement. And, of course, I met some other grad students, all of whom were working on fascinating projects.

There are too many amazing crowd-sourcing projects going on to which I would love to contribute. I've also been inspired to look ahead to my own PhD projects coming up in the next few years. I really can't imagine a better conference to attend, and I am thankful to Peter Robinson for stopping me in the hallway back in the early fall.

Yay, conferences!

A select few websites from the conference:
Geoffrey Rockwell's notes 
The Atlas of Living Australia, sharing biodiversity knowledge
Papyri.info, for the study of papyrus - the sheer amount of information and documentation is incredible!
Transcribe Bentham, making Bentham's manuscripts available
And, a shout-out to the project I've worked on, created and curated by Allison Muri, the Grub Street Project!

PhDing: justification

One month from today, I move to Montreal in preparation for starting my PhD in English at McGill.

I read daily about the state of academia and the PhD process, and as anyone else who reads such material knows, the vista awaiting grad students, adjuncts, and scholars trying to get tenure and grants can resemble more of a zombie wasteland with the half-alive bodies of our former comrades stumbling about and just trying to make it a few more steps than the ivory towers and grassy knolls of campus.

An exaggeration? Perhaps. However, resources like 100 Reasons NOT to go to Grad School,  Pannapacker's Graduate School in the Humanities: Don’t Go, Schuman's controversial Thesis Hatement, and Skallerup's excellent and unapologetically honest College Ready Writing series exist for a reason. And these texts are hardly the beginning; Googling "should I go to grad school" is overwhelming.

I feel, therefore, like I need to justify my choice to go to grad school. This decision isn't just because I'm scared of doing anything else! I've thought it through! In a way, I feel like a truant child; I want to be part of my favourite adults' party, but they're telling me that for most of the members, the party is actually pretty wretched.

I don't necessarily want to be at this party for the long term, but I think I could at least hang out for a little bit.

I did both my undergrad and MA in English at the University of Saskatchewan, in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Saskatoon, the largest city in the province at about 240000 people, has been my home during my degree; before that, I lived in small towns of around 700 people.

I did well in my undergrad, due in no small degree to the excellent faculty at USask. In particular, Dr. Allison Muri took me under her wing, recruiting me to English during my first year, helping me get a job in the Library in my second summer doing digitization work, and hiring me as an RA for my senior years of my undergrad. I can say, quite frankly, that I would not be where I am today without her mentorship.

Because of my high marks, but also, I suspect, because of the amount of research I had built up by the time I applied to my MA, I was awarded a SSHRC to do my MA. After living on student loans, scholarships, and a bit of money my (lower-middle class) parents had saved up for me and my siblings' education, SSHRC felt like an outrageous amount of money.

During my final year of undergrad and my MA, I was planning on going to do a PhD, except for the few months early in my MA when I had an existential crisis (WHY am I here, what am I even doing, does this matter, am I good enough, ack!). With a publication under my belt, a clear research goal going into my MA that built off my undergrad research, and, of course, good marks, I applied to SSHRC for PhD and to 6 institutions in Canada.

I was accepted to five of the six institutions and, as I discovered a few months ago, awarded a SSHRC.

I had better financial offers from other institutions, but chose McGill for a couple reasons. First, I will be supervised by one of the top scholars in 18th century literature. Secondly, they have a solid digital humanities group developing. And, third, McGill is in Montreal.

For a small-town prairie girl who hadn't been on a plane until last summer, Montreal is a big deal and a big draw.

So, summary: I can live in Montreal (where, as an anglophone, it would be very difficult for me to live otherwise), study at one of the best institutions under an amazing scholar, and be making more money than I have ever before. I will be able to live well above what I have in the past.

Well, but what about after? you ask. And a good question it is.

My answer? I will take it when it comes, just like I decided I would after doing English as a major in my undergrad.

I know the state of academic jobs. I am not going into this commitment expecting to get a tenure-track, or even adjunct, job afterwards. My tentative plan if I have no job prospects after is to go teach English overseas. My identity is tied to academia right now, but I know I've done enough volunteer and summer work in other areas to know that there are other things that I would also be happy doing the rest of my life.

Grad school can be isolating and competitive, but I am outgoing enough and am so oblivious to drama that I think (hope?) I will be fine. I know only my supervisor and a not-yet-met cousin in Montreal, so I know it will be lonely at times at the beginning - but isn't making new friends and groups part of the adventure?

Nobody will read your research, you say! Well, nobody read my material during undergrad except for professors and I was the only person doing 18th century and, to a lesser degree, DH in the grad program at USask. I'm used to my research not being understood or relevant to my friends, never mind my cohort.

Grad school is full of angst and depression and doubting oneself. Maybe. It is for some people, and isn't for others.

Grad school can drag on, though - what if you go on past your funding period? What if you are a grad student FOREVER? Well, my supervisor is retiring four years after I start and will supervise me one year from retirement, so I have extra incentive to finish it on time. I finished my undergrad in four years and my MA in one, so I have some good precedents set, at least?

Hopefully, I won't look back at this post in future years and shake my head at my naïveté.

Or, rather, I will, but I will also recognize that it was worth it.

Wizard of Oz Shoes - Critical Making

From January to April of 2013, during my MA, I was in an awesome grad course called The Book as Object: Fine Printing, Artists’ Books, Chapbooks, and Graphic Novels (taught by the amazing Dr. Jon Bath). 

The course included several critical making assignments. I'm planning on posting about all the ones I did and on the benefits of critical making in general, but for now, here is the one where the constraint was to make one textual object out of another textual object.

I've always wanted to make a pair of shoes that had a text of some sort on them, so when this assignment came up I was prepared. I had an old pair of ballet flats, mod-podge, and even a text picked out: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, in which, of course, shoes figure quite prominently.

I found a copy of the first edition of the WWoO online (go check it out - it is gorgeous!), did some planning, and then got to work.

My general plan was to use quotations I liked as a background, with favourite images overtop. The planning is where the majority of the "critical" part of the making comes in: what quotations do I choose? Do I arrange in chronological order? What images are appropriate to place with which textual material? I ended up going more by the shape of the text and where I needed it than placing it in context - the constraint of using the shape of one form on the other was more difficult to maneuver than expected. In some places, like with the one scene of the Tin Man, I tried to place a quotation near him; however, since you would not be using these shoes to read the text primarily, I took aesthetics and practicality as my first concerns.

I quickly found it was more difficult than I expected. Because I was doing this basically in a one-off making session, I didn't have time to try arrange everything; I had to estimate as best as I could. Furthermore, mod-podge didn't stick especially well to the faux-leathery material of the shoes, but I discovered the key was to apply liberally and then give it a lot of time to dry.

The most difficult part was definitely fitting around the curves of the shoes.

I did the work in layers.

  

Luckily, I printed off double copies of the textual material. It was really hard to judge how much I would need to cover the shoes, and ended up using nearly all the text I printed off, even just to use as a kind of filler underneath other layers so that the original shoe wouldn't show through.

Of course, predictably, the whole process made quite a mess.

But the finished product, I think, was worth it! Unfortunately, I'm going to have to modify them a bit more, because the paper along the edge made them a bit too small to wear, but overall? I think they turned out lovely.

I later took a black marker to color where the paper went over the edge of the sole. 

Ignore my funny coloured feet - poor circulation, a cold day, and a weird flash/colour thing going on don't help!
But you can see how on the side I placed the images. In the future, I would place more, I think.

Clarissa: pt. 1

Clarissa is a long book.

I have the Penguin Classics edition, and it clocks in at just under 1500 small print, large size pages, not including any of the periphery material. I knew it was one of the longest novels in the English language, but I thought, eh, I've read my fair share of epic fantasy, this can't be so bad.

And then my brick came in the mail.

For the sake of comparison.

I'm reading it for a grad class that starts next January (insert "good thing I'm starting it now!" joke), but also because it is a standard of 18th century literature.

However, I've actually enjoyed reading it thus far, even though I feel like I'm making hardly any progress.

My thoughts overall?

Argh! The plot is so frustrating, but in a way that enhances the work. I'm right in the middle of L21, and Clarissa is struggling with her family, particularly her mother at this point, because she refuses to marry Mr. Solmes. The narrative is told through series of letters, and the system has thus worked very well to express Clarissa's emotional hardship. I can't imagine such a text being done in a different medium; what I would find contrived and self-indulgent in a more traditional narrative comes across as organic and sincere.

Anna Howe, Clarissa's closest friend, has written a couple letters and has been the receiver of most of Clarissa's, but I am intrigued to see how other characters, particularly Lovelace, are portrayed through their writing.

I keep translating Clarissa's experience to a modern context and stereotyped (but obviously not always occurring) teen experience: "Agh! So frustrating! Odds are stacked against her, and she has awful parents and family, and she should just tell everyone to #(*$ off and go live on her dairy farm!" I have this thought multiple times on a single page. Of course, I often have to reread certain sentences in order to make sure I actually understand what is being said, so that textual frustration kicks in too.

Compared to the other (very limited) 18th century texts that I have read, though, Clarissa is in many ways far more accessible, a factor mostly due to the highly personal and sincere tone which, in turn, is influenced by the letter format. 

I started Clarissa on June 1. It is now the 11th and I'm on page 115. If I have any hope of reading anything else this summer, I'm going to have to amp up my reading speed and time.

Review - The Graphic Canon, Volume 1

The Graphic Canon, Vol. 1: From the Epic of Gilgamesh to Shakespeare to Dangerous Liaisons

Russ Kick
Seven Stories Press (May 22 2012)
978-1609803766
512 pages
CDN$ 21.91 on Amazon
Website


Summary: A very mixed bag of pieces in a variety of styles, often in colour, which make it fun to flip through; however, some are poor interpretations, and sometimes Kick's commissions fall flat. For twenty bucks, though, hard to go wrong if you have the space.

I was terribly excited to find out about this collection, as my interest in graphic novels (comics? sequential art?) has been rejuvenated by my Book as Object course (Winter 2013) and I am, as an English scholar, intensely interested in both questions of the literary canon and adaptations of texts.

The Graphic Canon presents 56 graphic adaptations of various "canonical" works. A First Nations' creation myth is followed by the Iliad and Odyssey, excerpts from the Bible and stories from the Middle East and Asia are presented, and, towards the latter end of the work, the reader can look at interpretations of Shakespeare, Milton, Swift, and Benjamin Franklin. The variety is quite good; I appreciated the inclusion of works like Hagoromo, a Japanese Noh play, and the other non-Western literature. Although the styles of art are pretty broad, I have to point out - no manga? There must be some manga of Asian myths, or even Western myths for that matter, out there good enough to make it into such a collection. There are several depictions of nudity and sexual activity in the comics, which numerous critics on Amazon complained about; however, people (both in real life and in literature) had carnal relations back in the day, and I appreciate that the editor did not edit such representations out, especially in great pieces like the London Journal excerpts adapted by Robert Crumb.

The publication is of good quality. A large format (8.5 x 10.875) means that the artwork is of a good size, but the book is also not outrageously hard to handle, though it is relatively heavy. The printing quality is high, and the book is in general well-designed.

Unfortunately, content-wise, The Graphic Canon fell kind of flat for me. I have some issues with the overall construction and ideas behind the work, and while some of the comics were amazing, others were notably lackluster.

My expectation going in to this text was that it would be a collection of comics that have been done over the years as adaptations of canonical (Western or otherwise) literature. Kick would have chosen representative excerpts from the works that displayed how the form and content of the art, lettering, and interpretation of the original worked both in relation to and against the original material.

However, the majority of the comics were solicited by Kick. In his Introduction, he notes that "My instincts as an anthologist kicked in. I needed to gather the best of what had already been done, commission lots of new adaptations, and put it all in one place" (1).

And there, of course, is the problem word for me: "commission." Admittedly, it is interesting to see the range of artists he manages to recruit, and he writes of getting artists from a variety of countries and backgrounds (like one artist who designed album covers for heavy metal bands). However, I feel like recruiting someone to do a piece reduces the integrity of the collection a bit. (note: I'm not really sure how to put my feelings about this into words, and I feel like a weird high-low culture snob. Ugh.) The commissioned creators aren't necessarily doing this because they originally loved the material or have studied it extensively (though, to be fair, maybe they have or did!). Maybe I'm just a stick-in-the-mud academic for expecting such anthologies examining the canon and claiming to contain "the world's great literature as comics and visuals" to collect adaptations that have already demonstrated their importance in one way or another - in this case, as being recognized (by either scholars or the public) as making an important comment on the original work.

Furthermore, I consider a good adaptation to also be an informed act of criticism and engagement with the text. The spirit of the original, insofar as that can be interpreted, should be present in some manner as well, and an awareness of the original context of the work should be demonstrated. Unfortunately, some of the pieces within this collection don't necessarily fit this description to the extent I would like (again, maybe my academic stick-in-the-mud coming through).

Two final pedantic notes before on to the comics:
In the introduction, Kick says "I asked the artists to stay true to the source material - no setting it in the future, no creating new adventures for characters, etc." However, some comics are definitely set farther in the future than the original text was set or written. I'm not sure if he meant our future (?) or just made allowances for some authors, but it came across as a bit careless to me. Also, he says "The adaptations are true collaborations between the original authors/poets and the artists" (1). Umm, not really possible, as the original creators are long dead. Again, it feels like somebody missed this in editing or he had a different meaning; I haven't read anything else by Russ Kick (though apparently he's relatively well-known?) so I'm not sure if this is just his style.

Now, on the comics themselves!

First, to get them out of the way, the bad. Some comics in this collection are poorly executed. Sometimes this is a result of careless aesthetic style, while at other points the form (physical representation) just doesn't match the content (the original source material).

The worst is, by far, Medea (Euripedes) by Tori McKenna. The dialogue bubbles are carelessly drawn at some points, and although McKenna's body language is often well executed, her variable colouring and facial features (is it part of the myth that Medea's hair is changing from black and white all the time?) reduce the impact of the story. Her interpretation is far too cliched for my taste as well. My main issue is with page 74, where the step-by-step representation of the narrative is uninventive and trite.

(disclaimer: I took these pictures with my iPhone in poor light, so just imagine them all looking...well, better, I guess?)

Page 74. Licking a knife? Really? Also, the lettering is rather amateur (in a way that doesn't add to the comic)

Page 66

"Advice to a Young Man on the Choice of a Mistress," originally by Benjamin Franklin and adapted by Cortney Skinner, falls through because the single image has a basic representation of the text, but doesn't really add anything. The introduction page shouldn't have to reproduce the entire text in order for the viewer to understand the comic - that's not how comics are supposed to work. Paintings and other non-sequential visual work, perhaps, but not comics.

Page 466

The fragments of Sappho's poetry similarly fall flat. I don't really see how the text and the ghostly figure are supposed to work together in this piece.

Page 427

Others have a lot of potential, like Yien Yip's interpretation of Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress." Unfortunately, while I love her illustrations, this combination of text (I dislike serif fonts that attempt to look old-fashioned used in excess) and images (putting it vaguely in the 1800s?) doesn't stand out.

Page 454

In the same vein, I have to mention Gareth Hinds' adaptation of Swift's Gulliver's Travels frustrates me because while the art is lovely, the text. Oh, the text. Italicized and with a sometimes used background attempting to look like a journal on a torn out page. Ugh. Also, some pages get awfully text-heavy. I would have appreciated more of his excellent art.










Okay, now for the stand out comics!

"The Coyote and the Pebbles," by Dayton Edmonds and Micah Farritor, was lovely; a perfect mix of evocative art and stimulating narrative.

Page 27. It had a beautiful water colour feeling to it.

Beowulf, by Gareth Hinds, also stands out. Yes, I criticized him earlier - but for his typography and use of text, and in this beautifully paced work, it's panel after panel of action.

Pages 184-185
                                    

                                    

                               

 Eisner's Don Quixote is, unsurprisingly, one of the best of the bunch; brilliant colours and an acute awareness of the form of comics (panels, angles, pacing) makes it a delight to read. Similarly, Boswell's London Journal by Robert Crumb, another of the old vanguard of comics, is wonderful - complex and tight art and panels, and, despite a heavy amount of text, a good flow throughout the piece. His work reminds me of Hogarth's representations of 18th century life.

Page 471. My poor camera and cropping skills are exemplary here.

Page 404. The colours look so much better in person!

The final thing I will mention is some of the odd editorial choices, primarily how some comics (Gilgamesh, Lysistrata, etc) go on for pages more than needed. Anthologies provide excerpts of such long works, and that space could have been used for other pieces instead of attempts to present as much of a work as possible to the detriment of other comics.

Of course, my perspective is my own; several other sources gave the collection glowing reviews, and I encourage you to read them as well. I feel like, in general, they were too generous - caught up in the excitement of seeing classics represented in comic form, or in the ambition of such a collection existing. For example, at the New York Times the reviewer says "Here you will discover that literature can be hilarious," demonstrating an issue several reviewers seem to have of looking at the comics as being commendable simply because they make the canon more accessible. From Kirkus: "Classic literature gets desterilized with the help of the modern world’s most daring graphic artists." By far, the best review I have found was from The Comics Journal, which gave an astute overview of pieces that worked and ones that fell flat. They also noted that the collection's self-proclaimed presentation of "the world's great literature as comics and visuals" is a little problematic when the majority from from Western Europe, especially Britain.

Is it really the Legend of Zelda?

Trash Talk, a grad student conference focused on pop culture, was this weekend in Regina. I only went down for the Saturday, so unfortunately I missed a few presentations (including some by my PhD bros, alas), but the ones I did see were pretty great. A couple papers on Harry Potter, and one on the "feminine" computer in Galatea 2.2, a 1995 novel by Richard Powers, were particularly interesting. Also, the keynote presentation, “Lives in Little Boxes: The Unstable Subjects of Graphic Biography” by Dr. Candida Rifkind, was very engaging, especially considering my Book as Object class and the graphic novels I've been reading lately.

My presentation was on representations of gender in Nintendo's Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, with a focus on how Zelda and Sheik are portrayed.

Here's a brief summary:

Zelda is heavily gendered (virginal) feminine, including through her clothing, body language, and actions (or lack thereof). She does a lot of waiting, and we only see her in places where the player expects her to be, or she is forced to be - behind castle walls, being saved by Impa, captured in Ganondorf's castle.

Sheik, on the other hand, is gendered masculine. There's a great deal of debate over whether Sheik is actually (biologically?) male or female; however, that isn't the most important part of my argument. Instead, I focus on how Sheik is portrayed as masculine: s/he roams around the most dangerous places of Hyrule, demonstrates great physical fitness, strength, and dexterity, and dresses in masculine clothing. Most importantly, however, the player and other characters in the game treat Sheik as a male, at least on the first time through; most notably, Princess Ruto refers to Sheik as "a young man," and in the Japanese version of the game, Sheik apparently uses a pronoun that is usually used by young men.

Most importantly, however, consider what happens when Sheik reveals him/herself to be Zelda: within a span of minutes, Zelda is captured by Ganondorf, which must be awfully disappointing for her after avoiding Ganondorf for seven years while being disguised as Sheik.

But that's all right, because now she can just sit like a prize on the mantel over Ganondorf's organ and wait for Link to save her. Of course, most of the other notable female characters (Saria, Impa, Nabooru, Ruto, Malon) are saved by Link too.

I close with a hypothesis of why Zelda is portrayed this way, beyond just the usual "damsel in distress" trope that is used to sell piles of games. Zelda becomes an object and idea, an embodiment of Hyrule, the Good, and Wisdom, and those things can't exactly act in their own defense. Therefore, Link saving these "things" is why it is called the Legend of Zelda, similar as to why football is called football instead of "two teams that do things with balls."

Some things that don't appear in my notes:
At times, I deviated from my script to show body language and posture.

If you're interested in video games and female characters, I recommend you check out the Tropes vs Women in Video Games project; it has some great insight, and I'm really looking forward to the upcoming videos. This project is the one that you may have heard about on Kickstarter that raised a wicked amount of money, but also drew out the trolls in masses.

Anyway, if you want to read my presentation and notes, you can grab the pdf here.

Lumio - review (pt. 1)

Every now and then, I see a Kickstarter project that I can't resist. Usually, they're more along the lines of online comics that I already enjoy for free so I don't mind giving out a few dollars - for example, I backed the SCIENCE: Ruining Everything Since 1543 (an SMBC Collection). I also backed the Ryan North's To Be or Not To Be: That is the Adventure, because really, a CYOA of Hamlet with many of my favourite artists and in a format I've experimented with?

Lumio, however, was different. For one thing, to back it and get the actual object comes to about $115, and for a student, that's not chump change. I also came across it in one of the weekly emails, and usually I don't give things a second glance unless they're created or recommended by someone I'm familiar with.

But with Lumio, however, the idea grabbed me right off the bat. A book whose pages emitted light?

Want.

I won't post too much about the specs, as you can check them out on the Kickstarter. However, I would like to point out the three main aspects that drew me in enough to spend more than I have on any other piece of furniture beyond my mattress.

1. Practicality. I generally need the stuff I buy to be useful in order for me to justify it, and Lumio fits that bill at least a little. It gives out a fair amount of light, and can last 8 hours on a full charge. Even nicer, it's small, portable, and magnetic, making it pretty flexible for how, when, and wherever I would want to use it.
2. Good design. Man, I am a sucker for good design. In addition to the advantages above, I love that the amount of light is controlled by the degree the book is opened. Terribly ingenious and terribly intuitive, especially considering that it is taking advantage of how we actually interact and understand the form of the book.
3. Aesthetics. Obviously, it's a gorgeous piece, particularly when lit up and in a dark space. It looks like a sculpture or installation piece in an art gallery. I think there's also something to be said for the more metaphysical aspects of the piece. Books and knowledge have often been associated with the concept of light; think of all the times in movies, cartoons, or literature that books emit light when opened. Lumio takes the relationship of words and light and gives them a physical shape, so to speak. It's something I'd like to think about more.

I'm always intrigued by the idea of "the book" and the relationship between form and content, particularly considering my Book as Object course. Conceptually, I love the idea enough to drop some cash on it; hopefully, it'll live up to my expectations. You can expect part two of the review, with the real thing, in September when the second batch are shipped out.

Applications and Waiting

I've expressed this sentiment before: grad school is just a series of applications.

First, in the autumn of the final year of undergrad, start working on my MA SSHRC grant.
Then, apply to get into my MA program.

And then, the fun really beings. Applications breed as though they have a little brothel under my desk. This conference, that conference, this series of workshops. And, of course, the two most stressful aspects of my grad career thus far: PhD SSHRC and applying to PhD programs.

You get a little breathing room early in September. Then PhD SSHRC can easily take over your waking (and sleeping) life. (Yes, I have had a nightmare about a bunch of scholars looking over my SSHRC.) Then, it's out of your hands and you are into final papers and submitting PhD applications in December and January.

The waiting after those were done? Blissful. I didn't have to fill out any more forms or make the choices that the forms brought back; I could just read comics for my course and think about literature in the 18th century.

That lasted for about a month, and then schools started getting back to me. This period, my friends, is the trickiest.

You have a decision looming, and not all the cards have been dealt. Some of them might not be dealt until you've removed yourself from the game. I feel like there's a poker metaphor in here somewhere, but I don't really understand many card games beyond whist and rummy, so forgive me for the crudeness of my figurative language.

I've been accepted to two schools. I haven't heard back from the other four. According to GradCafe, some have heard back from school that I applied to but haven't heard from. And now I'm on tenterhooks, because sometimes it's better to know than to be in a state of angst and I really just want to know if I got in and, to quote GOB Bluth, come on!

What I keep having to stop myself from doing now is worrying about making the wrong choice. If I go to A, will it be better than B? What will happen to me at B if I don't choose A? Of course, I can't really know (maybe virtual reality will be done by the time I'm done my PhD and I'll be off in a world with Digimon), and there are more practical factors like living expenses and funding, but that doesn't stop me from getting distracted from my coursework.

Speaking of getting distracted from coursework, I better go work on my proposal for the upcoming CSECS conference. It's due this Friday, 18thC friends, don't forget! I would really love to go again; it was a great time, both academically and socially, last year.

Sask Gov't and foreign languages

Apparently, the Saskatchewan government thinks knowing foreign languages is a good thing.

In an article published in the Leader-Post and StarPhoenix today, it was revealed that "The government is developing an international education strategy, a big part of which aims to better connect Saskatchewan students with international trade and business markets."

A large part of that, of course, means being able to communicate in languages other than English. The program will, according to David Boehm, assistant deputy minister of the advanced education, "put an emphasis on the development of international languages so they can interact with those markets and those opportunities in a more effective manner."

A business professor at the University of Regina is quoted praising having "a working level of a second language" in order to "appreciate what is going on in other parts of the world," and, of course, be able to improve business relations.

 I very nearly laughed when I read this. The University of Saskatchewan has been slowly strangling languages and linguistics programs and classes for even my short duration at the University. Getting a degree in French? If you don't plan your classes out perfectly, you could be looking at six years to get your degree because a course is only taught every second year. For me, as an English major trying to get enough languages to fill my language requirements for grad school, it was quite tricky to plan out my schedule when I had to choose based around the only two French courses I could take.

Even worse, due to budget cuts, first-year language classes are now taught in jumbo sessions of 100+ students. Luckily, I made it through when classes were limited to twenty people, and there were still opportunities to interact with the professor, engage in broken dialogue with other students, and participate in the other class dynamics that learning languages needs but jumbo classes just can't offer. The weekly smaller tutorial sessions? They can't make up for that much jumbo class time.

There's a smattering of German, Russian, and Ukrainian classes every year, and Spanish is generally popular. There's even a few Cree classes, which I think is awesome.

However, I can't help but think of the town halls held a few years back when administration was addressing student and faculty concerns of cuts in the humanities and fine arts. They began talking about teaching Chinese and other languages that there were a "demand" for. You could sense the disbelief in the crowd, and finally a student stood up and asked something along the lines of "How are you going to bring in new language programs when you hardly support the ones you have now?"

Currently, of course, the University of Saskatchewan is going through some (projected) financial troubles and is planning to make some massive cuts to the tune of $44.5 million, based on the "quality" of the program. The humanities and fine arts (or HumFA as we are now known, bleh) are understandably wary, and I'm not sure whether this new strategy bodes well or ill for the languages. Are languages that are inefficient and can't bring in business deals going to get scrapped? Why learn Ukrainian, a language very important to the history of Saskatchewan and Canada and still relevant culturally today, when Chinese is so much more economically relevant?

The article notes that "At this point, it's not clear how much money the government will funnel into its strategy." On the one hand, maybe the languages could gain some extra funding and exposure. On the other, I hope that if attempts are made to cut back other languages in favour of pumping up the business end of things, students, not just those involved in the languages, will raise their concerns loudly, and in as many languages as they know.