The Family

Well, my technique right now for avoiding all thought of my sister's divorce and impending move to Florida (happening in ~ a month... a new and exciting development in the saga!) is to overcommit to projects that will build a strong resume.

I wanted to share a couple of projects I'm working on, because this is pretty much My Life As It Exists In April 2009. To make this more interesting, I'm going to add pictures of kittens.


I volunteered to TA for a course on literary criticism, which is becoming my principal area of interest. This course is usually 16 weeks long, but it's being condensed into a 4-week summer course. Class periods are 2 1/2 hours long, and the course is going to cover everything from Plato to "pomo"--the hip, up-and-coming word for "postmodern theory" like Deconstruction, Post-colonialism, and Post-structuralism. (I put "pomo" on par with "fro yo" in its sophistication and overall finesse.)


I'm writing two papers on Battlestar Galactica, one (I hope) with Nietzsche's notion of master-slave morality and resentment applied human-Cylon relations and the other with the functioning of the word "toaster" to identify and subjugate Cylons as a racial Other (i.e. "toaster" as a euphemism for the n-word in terms like "toaster-lover") and the functioning of the word "frak" as a real-world cultural marker for BSG fans (i.e. how language can "code" people as being part of a subculture).



Another project is supposed to provide an historical framework for understanding "Heart of Darkness"... I'm looking at Leopold's political rhetoric in justifying colonialism, specifically at the interplay of the civilized/primitive binarism and how the capacity to "experience" emotions is a marker for the extent to which a body is civilized. (Interestingly, emotional restraint usually marks civilization.)


I recently presented a book review on Thomas West's Signs of Struggle: The Rhetorical Politics of Cultural Difference and facilitated a discussion on Brian Massumi's understanding of the late capitalism urge to produce and consume as a means of forging an identity and establish subjectivity... "I'm buying an iPod because I am an iPod!"


I'm also applying for a summer internship as an editorial assistant at Interweave, a beadwork magazine, which has its roots in Loveland, Colorado, about 10 minutes south of me.

So... I'm pretty excited about this stuff. I have a not-so-horrible shot at publications for one of my BSG papers and the Leopold paper. We'll see.

Adorable kittens!