??

 Would you do this for $2,500 a semester?  ($5,000 a year).  It seems like a lot of work.  Getting 20 faculty members to come to an event is asking a lot.  You'd be essentially putting an event together every 3 to 4 weeks. To me it seems absurdly over-ambitious, even the pay were twice that.  Maybe I just lack energy.  

Call for Dean’s Fellow for Research Growth

 

Position Description:

 

We are seeking a dynamic and organized individual to join our team as the Dean’s Fellow for Research Growth at the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. This position offers a unique opportunity to spearhead research events aimed at fostering collaboration, innovation, and interdisciplinary dialogue among faculty members. 

 

Further Details:

 

This role centers on convening 12 collaborative and informative research gatherings annually. Each event will revolve around a specific research theme determined in consultation with the College leadership team, Dean's Research Advisory Committee, Chairs and Directors, and feedback from the College faculty. For instance, a meetup could spotlight Artificial Intelligence, drawing interest from faculty across various disciplines within the College and professional schools. Other themes might encompass Ethics, Quantum Technologies, Cancer, and Community-Based Research, among others. These 12 gatherings will cover distinct topics, offering a diverse platform to catalyze research discussions within the College and beyond.

 

The overarching objective is to bring together individuals with shared interests in specific topics or themes, aiming to foster interdisciplinary conversations and collaboration, secure external funding, generate novel research concepts, and co-author publications. Essentially, the aim is to facilitate meaningful connections among researchers working on similar topics across campus, transcending the traditional silos that exist within our academic environment.

 

Key Responsibilities:

 

• Organize and lead 12 research networking events per year (6 per semester), each focusing on a different timely, important, and impactful research theme. 
• Collaborate with College staff to coordinate and facilitate 2-hour meetings for each event.
• Actively identify and invite experts from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, as well as professional schools, including the Medical Campus, relevant to each event's theme.
• Promote events to faculty to ensure a diverse and engaged participation, aiming for at least 20 faculty members in attendance at each event.
• Facilitate introductions and discussions during events, allowing faculty members to showcase their research areas, propose collaboration opportunities, and discuss potential funding avenues.
• Foster an environment conducive to networking, brainstorming, and the exchange of ideas among participants.
• Identify emerging research ideas, areas, and researchers in need of additional engagement, and document those requiring follow-ups by the Dean’s Office. Deliver regular informal updates to the Dean’s leadership team and submit an activity report at the end of each semester.     

Qualifications:

 

• Faculty appointment in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
• Enthusiasm for promoting interdisciplinary collaboration and innovation in research.
• Strong organizational skills.
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills, with the ability to engage and motivate diverse groups of individual

Some thought experiments

 Take seriously the idea that music and poetry are closely related, in the sense that they have common origin and elements; don't take that as an arbitrary or forced relationship at all. What consequences flow from this supposition? 

Take the ineffability trope seriously, not as some  bogus cop-out. Writing about music is genuinely difficult. Many books about music don't really address music at all, etc.... 

 

Union

 We voted for faculty union, 850 to 132.  It is a convincing percentage, and nobody I know of is saying openly that they voted against. Now comes the bargaining. Wages is the big issue: he have lost ground to inflation and earning less than 10 years ago (on average). Benefits are ok, I suppose. The other thing would be job security. The Board of Regents can authorize the Chancellor to fire people due to financial reasons, and that has occurred at other Kansas Regents' institutions.   

We have high attrition rates. I haven't left because I lack administrative experience to be hired as chair, while not being a big star or following trends in research. 

There are multi-million dollar construction projects, like a total overhaul of football stadium. We have lots of newish buildings, and some old elegant ones, but it seems that buildings are not so important, if we can have school for a year from our couches at home, as we did.  

They make noises about paying market rates for faculty and staff... Needless to say there are deans and vice-chancellors who are not suffering financially.  

Dream of Acting

 I was acting in a production of El público.  I hadn't memorized my lines, and so had to read from a script; was trying to justify this to myself. (Maybe nobody will notice!). But I lost my place in the script and was also thinking that I was not a good actor in the first place. It seemed to be a dream about arrogance. Since I am a Lorca scholar I didn't bother memorizing, or even looking at the play, before hand.  

Table of Contents

 

Misunderstanding Lorca

1.     Introduction: Lorca and Me 

2.     Toward an Intellectual Biography

3.     The Death of the Subject

4.     Is Bodas de sangre a Work of Fiction? 

5.     Lorca and Flamenco: The History of a Misunderstanding 

6.    Teaching Receptivity 

Anderson Cooper

 It is not "ironic" that Salman Rushdie was attacked with a knife while defending free speech. It is the opposite of irony, whatever that is called. It is a "rhyme."  

Misunderstanding Lorca

 I have a book that will either be called Understanding Lorca or Misunderstanding Lorca. 

The first title seems misleading; the second, too facetious.