Google Scholar

Bauerlein makes the argument in the Chronicle that there is too much scholarship in the Humanities, that this scholarship is not cost-effective. He uses google scholar to make his point. Now there seems to be a contradiction here, in that pointing to the low numbers of citations that many articles get invests these citations with a value that they do not have, in Bauerlein's own view. in other words, if a piece of scholarship has no intrinsic worth, then it cannot be accorded value simply because other, equally worthless scholarly articles cite it.

My most influential article, one that I know for a fact has defined a debate in my field, has only 13 citations on google scholar. Because of this article, I was well-known in Spain even before Apocryphal Lorca. Many people disagree with this article, but that's ok with me, because you can't be deliberately controversial and then expect agreement.

Some of these citations are me, citing my own article. Others don't seem to be citing me at all, or cite me only tangentially. Apocryphal Lorca has two citations, one from another article by me and one from the introduction to the special issue on Lorca in which my article appears. I guess the impact of this book is also non-existent, even though numerous people have written to me about it, how they have used in their courses, etc...

A New Trend in Hiring

A new trend I've noticed is that you write a recommendation for a PhD student, and then the school calls you with a list of question to answer. They go down the list of questions mechanically and you just answer them out loud. Presumably the nice faculty member on the other side of the phone takes notes on what you say, probably including the most significant phrases.

Never mind that you spent time and effort to craft a very careful letter of recommendation that includes all the information, but conveyed with more nuance and art. I noticed this last year or the year before. It never happened to me before.

The Ideal Job

I know psychologists describe human satisfaction in terms of autonomy, competence, and relatedness. I tell my student that my job is the greatest I could ever hope for. I research and teach Spanish literature and they pay me money to do it. It almost seems unbelievable.

I experience high levels of autonomy in my job. Nobody tells me what I have to write about, and I can design courses of my own that reflect my own interests. Aside from class time, office hours, and a few meetings, I can organize my time however I want. I am trying to think of a job with as much autonomy as mine and I cannot think of one.

Autonomy also brings competence, in the sense that I can be responsible for my own areas of competence, developing them with no interference from anyone else.

Relatedness, in contrast, is a sore point. I have a hard time "relating" to students sometimes (to use a favorite word of theirs). I don't collaborate on research with anyone. I like my colleagues very much but I don't spend a lot of time with them every day. Autonomy and relatedness are inversely correlated much of the time. I value autonomy very highly, but I am suffering a bit from the isolation of academic life, especially since my personal life is rather miserable too.

Why This Is Wrong

Clarissa pointed me to this vile editorial by Russell Berman. I'm afraid I might have to quit the MLA again in protest. In my field, two years of course work for the PhD is not going to be enough. The reason is that students coming from Spanish majors simply have not read enough in their undergraduate programs. To do enough reading to be even minimally competent would require more than three or four years of course work, but two is ridiculous. This proposal would give an even bigger advantage to students from Latin America and Spain who have more extensive cultural capital coming in.

I know it takes a long time to get a PhD. But let's think for a moment about what level of erudition it takes to be a "doctor," or learned one, in literature. There are few prodigies in scholarship, because it takes time to absorb knowledge and develop originality. An originality based not on disconnection from the field, but from deep absorption.

Berman also proposes a kind of fixed, lockstep curriculum, streamlined to allow for quick progress. So students would not be exposed to the research of their faculty members (courses based on the interests of the faculty) but a kind of one-size-fits-all approach that would make graduate teaching deadly for all concerned. This streamlined approach would not have allowed Jill and I to do our "poetry and performance" seminar, for example.

In place of a dissertation, Berman proposes three articles. In practice, this would amount to three seminar papers. The so-called PhD would not really be an expert in anything in particular, having written 75 pages rather than 250. He or she would never have been exposed to the original research of the faculty, and so wouldn't have a clue to what research really is.

Why do we elect literature haters to the presidency of the MLA? People who have contempt for the life of the mind? First it as MLP, then Gerald Graff, and now Berman.

Ineffective Habits

How many of these do you have?

(I found this through Tanya's facebook feed.) I am quoting these habits and then interpreting them for my own purposes.

"Consuming more than you create"

Obviously, as scholars we have to do more reading than writing, in number of pages for example. But an example of consuming more than you create might be spending most of your research time reading and procrastinating rather than beginning to write. The minute I have an idea for an article, I begin to write it. I then read in order to find the answers that I need to include in the article I am already writing.

"Watching your own vanity metrics"

This one stopped me in my tracks. I spend a lot of time tracking blog stats, and looking myself up in google scholar. I am going to stop that right away. No more tracking my downloads on KUScholar!

"Starting the day responding to others"

I do check my email first thing in the morning. It's not a problem, because usually there is not much there. A solution might be to turn email off completely while working on specific tasks, especially writing. I tend to keep the email on all day and respond and/or delete as they come in.

"Prioritizing the wrong activities"

I think I have my priorities straight (though see post below this one). Giving my students my best self and being a productive scholar are my two main priorities.

"Relying on multi-tasking to 'save time'"

I am against multi-tasking on principle. Aside from the email problem, I don't tend to do it. I could solve the email conundrum easily by turning it off and checking it once an hour. I wish I could filter out all the crap the university sends me. KU today, KU this week, message from the provost about this, message from the chancellor about that... The only email I want to get is directed to me personally and relevant to my work or life.

Now make a list of your own ineffective habits that don't appear on this list. I've been able to save a lot of time for the next few months just by doing away with the email vigilance and with the vanity metrics from today on.

How Self-Confident Should You Be?

Self-confidence is a great tool. The last few days I have felt that I was writing a masterpiece of criticism, a great trilogy of Lorca criticism, that I could do what I was doing well and that nothing would stop me (despite some recent turmoil in my personal life).

Curiously, the renewed self-confidence resulted simply from returning to work, after a few months in which I wasn't producing a lot or even trying that hard. My self-confidence seemed to slip during those months. No mystery there. Cut off from the source of my strengths, I began to doubt myself. Sure, I had been able to produce before, but would I ever do so again? Even though the break was a deliberate one, in some sense, and I knew intellectually that I would be able to resume when I wanted, the effect was predictable.

Of course, if you're anything like me, you will be doubting yourself with some frequency. Isn't the book I'm writing just a repetition of what I've done before? Aren't people going to reject this, or be uninterested in it, because most people want to follow the dominant paradigm of Jo Labanyi Spanish cultural studies in which poetry itself is insignificant? Writing another book or two won't get me a better job / salary / a distinguished professorship here at KU, etc... Maybe I don't write well enough in Spanish to write my book about Lorca in that language?

Doubt is useful, I guess, but I would advise that you address doubts as pragmatic problems to be resolved rather than as existential ones. In other words, if you have a nagging doubt, bring it out into the open and see what's going on. A generalized doubt like "I'm not good enough" is largely useless, because it has no practical solution.

Self-confidence is not arrogance, but the necessary fiction needed to get the work done at all.

Preparing in Real Time

I can prepare a class in about the same amount of time it takes to teach that same class. In other words, I can take an hour and 15 minutes to prepare a class of equal length.

This excludes the extra time it takes me to read a lengthy novel, for example. If we are reading 60 pages for a particular day, then I would need an hour to read those pages, and maybe another half an hour to 45 minutes to prepare the actual class.

Sometimes, preparation is quicker because I have materials from previous semesters that I can use. Sometimes, it is much slower because the material is all new. Prep can be broken down into two aspects: knowing the material and planning the actual class.

I can grade x number of papers in an hour. Maybe 1 graduate paper, 2-3 undergraduate papers, 4-6 short compositions, etc...

So finitude ought to be possible with teaching as well as with research. If I teach five hours a week, I can spend five hours preparing and an average of two hours grading. That is twelve hours. Add meetings with students and other extras, like answering emails from them, that is about 15, if I don't have to read novels.

If I were better organized I am sure I could spend less time and be a better teacher than I am now. For example, I often just reprepare a class instead of using perfectly fine material I once prepared, simply because I cannot find it.

I am writing about this because I think that teaching is the missing link in the management of scholarly writing. I hear people say they cannot get other things done because they are teaching, or because the semester is too busy... Even I fall into this trap sometimes. If you treat teaching as a finite activity, requiring a certain number of hours, and you schedule those hours, then you will be able to see what time you might have for research. For example, if you are teaching 3 rather than 2 courses, then my twenty hours might be 30.