One of life's little rewards!

I just received word that I won the Edward Peck Curtis Award for teaching, which is given to five graduate student teachers each year. The award committee selects recipients based on faculty and student nominations, a statement of teaching philosophy, teaching evaluations, and sample course syllabi. It turned out to be a wonderful end to a rather rough day. One: I'm battling a case of the flu that's making my head feel like someone packed it in cement. Two: my office computer decided to corrupt my Badlands notes, turning them into illegible gibberish, and I couldn't print the in-class assignment or the annotated version of the article I'd asked my students to read. So I headed off to class armed with nothing more than my passionate belief in the film's brilliance and my foggy remembrance of the notes I'd adapted the night before. Luckily, I have the pleasure of teaching incredibly engaged students this semester and they came through in impressive form, participating enthusiastically in an off-the-cuff discussion about the film. It was also very nice to receive congratulatory emails from the professors who'd written in support of the nomination. All-in-all, a good teaching day, despite (or perhaps because of) the challenges.

Working under pressure

I just received word from the Director of Graduate Study that the Department would like to nominate me for a dissertation fellowship. Good news, right? Of course. It's an honor to be selected, especially given that each department is only allowed to nominate one student. The college then chooses one graduate student from the River Campus and the Music School for the award. The problem is that I've got to get all the material together by Monday. That means I'll be spending the next five days proofreading a sample chapter. I'll also have to make revisions to my prospectus because I wrote it two years ago--well before I could fully envision my actual dissertation. In fact, I still have a hard time "envisioning" the monster even though I've now written more than 50% of the damned thing. Ah well. It sure would be nice to receive the award so I'll do my best to get it all ready by Monday. The fellowship would prevent me from teaching next year, but that's just fine with me. I relish the thought of having a year off from teaching to simply finish the dissertation and prepare materials for the job search. I'm sure the competition will be stiff, so I won't count on it. What ever the outcome, it's nice to be given the opportunity to throw my hat into the ring.

On that note, off I go to start revising. It's going to be a hectic weekend.

A Hole in Which Hopes Are Buried

Aviva's father forwarded this Washington Post article and I though it was worth sharing. Cohen certainly presents a very astute critique of the Bush administration's handling of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the war in Iraq. You can visit the Post's website to read the full article, though it will require you complete their free registration process.

A Hole in Which Hopes Are Buried
By Richard Cohen
Washington Post, Tuesday, April 4, 2006

NEW YORK -- President Bush is starting to look beyond his presidency. His focus is on his legacy, which he is sure will vindicate his decision to go to war in Iraq. But his most fitting memorial is likely to be where I was Sunday: the immense gash in Lower Manhattan known as Ground Zero. More than 4 1/2 years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the hole has yet to be filled.

Tourists come and look. The selling of souvenirs is prohibited at the site itself, but around the corner, on Vesey Street, peddlers hug the shadows. The proper souvenir to take away from this place, though, is the memory of its immense emptiness. It's a hole filled with broken promises and silly rhetoric, an inverted monument to the Bush administration's unfathomable failure even to capture Osama bin Laden.

. . .

This hallowed ground, this pitiless pit, has become Exhibit A on the inability of government to function. Plans get announced, news conferences held, breathtaking models shown of buildings reaching for the sky -- and nothing happens. George Pataki, the governor of New York, supposedly fashions himself a presidential candidate, yet he cannot even get this development underway. He is at loggerheads with the site's developer, and so nothing happens. In a city where developers are king -- this is Donald Trump's home town, after all -- you can still go to Ground Zero and see zero. This is 16 acres of Katrina and all it taught us about feeble political leaders.

Maybe we should leave Ground Zero as it is. The imagination can provide a fitting memorial to those who died. "We dig a grave in the breezes," Paul Celan wrote in his Holocaust poem "Death Fugue." We can dig ours as deep as the World Trade Center once was tall. The ugly emptiness will remind us always to be wary of the grand schemes of politicians. They can't build a building. They cannot capture a mass murderer. They cannot wage war in Iraq. This is their hole. It is, by dint of failure, George Bush's presidential library. His proper legacy is a void.