New(s)

A former student and I have been going back and forth on Facebook about how things have changed for us academically since last semester. I've started a new job at a new school and she's started a new major. Trying to describe how much things have changed, though, made me think seriously about how they haven't. Of course, there are the obvious things: I go to department meetings now, write course descriptions, work on curricular planning, and students call me "doctor." These are new, sure. But I've always had to balance teaching with an array of other responsibilities, like research, writing, and planning for the next semester. Part of me always thought that once I got a job I'd be so swamped in trying to get tenure, teaching, and whatever else the department threw at me that my life would be unrecognizable.

But that's just not the case. If I learned anything in graduate school it was productivity by way of procrastination. Which is to say, if I can't work on "x," then I'll work on "a," "b," or "c." When I simply can't look at the article I'm trying to revise for publication anymore, then I do some functional things - write observation protocols, or look up writers to invite to campus, whatever needs to be done. I strike a rhythm with my work that reminds me a lot of what it was like writing a dissertation, then switching over to teaching once I couldn't look at that chapter anymore, then switching over to some committee work when I couldn't grade anymore papers. I find dwelling on the familiar parts helps me approach all the new stuff with excitement, even inspiration. It's weird.

What's So Critical About Music?

A very wise writing professor once told me, "Its easy. Just write the stuff you'd want to read." Right, easy. Similarly, as a teacher, I find myself often trying to shape courses that I'd want to take. A lot more difficult than one would imagine. And yet Byron Hawk makes it look easy. This course seems to offer critical and literary analysis in a way my students here at MC have indicated as not just cool or fun, but as necessary and relevant - to the increasing ways in which rhetoric bleeds into our daily lives. As it does in music. Props to Hawk.

Persepolis

Well, while I draft this Radiohead chapter, I've also been working on getting syllabi for next semester started - and I have to say: I'm seriously excited. I'll be teaching First Year Writing and using the graphic novel Persepolis as a way to talk about the course's theme: displacement. I've already got a number of ideas floating around - I think I'm going to use Scott McCloud's *Understanding Comics* to get discussions of form under way and a number of political pieces to supplement content and get discussions of academic writing off the ground - but I was wondering if any of you wonderful readers out there have taught Persepolis (or any graphic novel) and might have some helpful pointers or texts that you've used with success.

Pop Goes Philosophy

So Open Court Press has a "Philosophy and Pop Culture Series" that takes various parts of pop culture (hip-hop, The Simpsons, The Matrix, etc.) and recruits writers to write in an accessible way about how that part of pop culture speaks to philosophical issues. They have an upcoming Radiohead and Philosophy volume coming up and I'm very proud to say that I'll be included in it! I'll be writing about the way the band disfigures the human voice in Kid A (through the manipulation of human voice samples) and, in doing so, recruits inarticulation in order to speak out of and about the recording technologies that shape expression. I can't wait!

Finally, years of listening to Radiohead pays off. ;)

There Will Be Manhattan

I know this is coming a bit late, but after months of job-market anxieties and, well, all those things people write about along side job-market anxieties, I'm *very* happy to say that I'll be joining the English Department at Manhattan College this fall as assistant professor of English and Director of Composition. This was *just* the job I wanted and the folks in the Department were just the sort of people I hoped they would be: warm, supportive, curious, and excited. I really couldn't be happier. Steph and I have already made plans to sublet for our first year in NYC and things are beginning to fall in place.

On realizing that we would be moving to New York, our first order of business was to say to each other, nearly in unison: "we get to sell our car!" Then we went to see *There Will Be Blood* and relished in our first step toward curing our own addiction to oil. (We also relished in the brilliance of Daniel Day-Lewis and found ourselves wanting milkshakes...)

On Quality of Thought

This weekend I presented at MMLA in Cleveland. The panel was great: four Rhet/Compers trying to press on some of the (new? new-er? new-ish?) tensions between theory and practice in Composition Studies. Given that our panel was at 8:30 Sunday morning, I was surprised to find three people in the audience—and awake and alert, to boot. (I’m actually not complaining about this; the discussion that followed was smart and thorough and pretty rewarding—probably because of the modest size (something I’ve posted about before)). I presented on a topic central to my dissertation (music-in-rhetoric) and felt, more than I have in the past, that I was actually presenting original work that had some bearing on the field. It was a moment of professionalization that I—oddly enough—hadn’t been expecting as I drafted the presentation. I had an idea I felt was “original.” People were interested. They had questions. Conversations spilled into the hallway. I felt like my work as a graduate student was finally, so to speak, getting the show on the road.

Another kind of professionalization followed my presentation. I went to a workshop on the MLA report on tenure and promotion in the field. As a graduate student currently on the market, I thought it’d be wise to at least go and listen to what the report found and what departments around the country might be doing in response. Perhaps unsurprisingly, MLA’s report found that most of the work that folks are hired to do in departments doesn’t accurately reflect how they are assessed when it comes time for tenure. Even more than this, a lot of research considered “nontraditional” has a hard time finding a home in recommendations for tenure. Pitching hybridized research, it seems, is difficult when those deciding on tenure don’t know what to make of your work.

Recommendations abounded. Departments should be clearer—from the beginning of the hiring process—about just what is expected for tenure. Perhaps provide something in writing. Yielding important new research often requires a new kind of scholarship—we should have new methods, then, for assessing such new scholarship and scholars. I sincerely believe that what the MLA is doing here is good and healthy not only for English Studies, but universities in general. What surprised me, though, was my personal reaction to the concluding question.

The discussion had leaned quite heavily (based on the MLA report) on the idea that large scale revisions were required in order to make the tenure process more fair, and even relevant, in today’s scholarly climate. The moderator asked the two presenters, in light of these progressive claims, what, they thought, were the most intelligent responses arguing for tenure processes to remain the same.

One of the presenters mentioned something that he called the “quality of mind” argument. Essentially, requiring folks coming up for tenure to be of a certain unnamable “quality of mind” is just nebulous enough to be a very sound argument against nontraditional scholarship. But that’s just what I want to cultivate as a graduate student! I’m trying to develop a certain quality of mind! None of this is to say that I think the MLA is right or wrong or that there is just one way to understand what it means for someone to have “a certain quality of mind.” But, perhaps because of its nebulous nature, the “quality of mind” argument could be an important ally for those interested in revising tenure processes. After all, it’s just nebulous enough to include several new ways of cultivating “quality.”

Motet: Poem or Song

There's something about the poetry of theory:

"Mmmmmm continues: repeats its murmuring, mouth closed, not even Om, the holy syllable opening the jewel in the lotus of meditation that empties itself of itself: not even the muted utterance in which Hegel heard the lack of articulation between vowel and consonant, like the defect of a night in which the cows are as black as from a blinding light, similar, yes, to the mooing of cows in the night, similar to the vagueness in which the concept loses its own differentiation, in which it wholly consists, similar, yes, to the furrow left in the air or on the paper by the withdrawal of the concept, by a vanishing of difference that does not produce identity, but the buzzing, the humming, the muttering and borborygmus of the consonant that only resounds, articulating no voice. Mmmmmmmmm resounds previous to the voice, inside the throat, scarcely grazing the lips from the back of the mouth, without any movement of the tongue, just a coloumn of air pushed from the chest in the sonorous cavity, the cave of the mouth that does not speak. Not a voice, or writing, or a word, or a cry, but transcendental murmuring, the condition of all words and all silence, a primal or archiglottal sound in which I give my death rattle and wail, death agony and birth, I hum and growl, song, jouissance and souffrance, motionless word, mummified word, monotone where the polyphony that rises from the bottom of the belly is resolved and amplified, a mystery of emotion, the substantial union of body and soul, body and ammmmmmm."

That's from Jean-Luc Nancy's _Listening_.

Western Greats

Back From Western States. Aside from learning the joys of Arizona’s cuisine (Peter’s curry left a lot for future meals to live up to), I also got a chance to see how a modest conference can do things that bigger conferences just can’t. (Even, to a certain degree, RSA). For example, the opportunity cost of going to panels isn’t as heavy. I felt more or less good about the panels I went to and didn’t end up ducking out to go to another panel. Also, it didn’t feel like I was studying for prelims when I read the schedule (an overwhelming feeling I still get at Cs). Easy access to presenters whose work I admired led to really great lunches and conversation. I could get used to it.

Things I've learned in the last two weeks...

1) Doctors and nurses who work in Neonatal Intensive Care Units are the most patient people scurrying about this mortal coil.
2) Grandmas won't let Daddies hold their babies. Daddies must pry them from Grandma's kung-fu grip.
3) Establishing a schedule to see your kid in the hospital is simultaneously comforting and infuriating.
4) When doctors say call anytime, they mean it.
5) The sounds babies make during the day are beautiful. The same sounds are terrifying in the middle of the night.
6) Bringing your kid home after he has spent nine days in the hospital is so totally rad.

A new arrival

I'm very happy to report that Steph and I are the proud new parents of Sebastian Fiorelli Koehler, born on June 10th at 12:51pm, weighing in at 7 lbs and 11 ounces. He's had a rough start of it so far: he was born two weeks premature and had under-developed lungs, but has since shown significant progress and is doing nicely in the Neonatal ICU at St. Mary's here in Madison. We've been in and out of the hospital all week and are very anxious to bring him home, hopefully early next week.

A word about process...

My writing process tends to be very...big. I schedule huge blocks of time, at least a few hours at a time, sometimes days even, surround myself with stacks and stacks of research, make a pot of coffee, and hunch over the computer until I "need to get the blood moving," then I stalk around the apartment for a while (maybe eat something over the sink) and get back to it. In a six hour block I'll usually get a good five pages written. Call it slow, call it inefficient, call it privileged - but don't call it unproductive. These are habits I formed as an undergraduate who worked during the day and had only the night to write. Writing papers through the night was not uncommon. Yes, these papers tended to be due in the morning.

But these habits followed me to graduate school, which was fine at first, I guess. It's very difficult, granted, when there are several commitments throughout the day demanding your time and taking away writing time. But I managed. Weekends, nights, and the occasional non-teaching day.

Last week, though, my wife asked me to drive her to work everyday this week (she's expecting in a month (our first, yeah!) and has to drive an hour each way, so there's no way I would say no). I did, though, stupidly bring up the problem this poses my writing process. (Idiot).

"But I need my computer and, you know, stuff, so that I can write," I say.

"There's a library there. Can't you bring it with you?"

Of course I can. And I did. But I put on the back burner any hope of getting writing done. New environment and all that.

But you know what? I'm writing more and in shorter bursts of time.

Weird.

I haven't blogged since when?!

...Since April!?

Damn.

Been knee deep in dissertation stuff, wondering what the view's gonna be like when I'm neck deep...

In the meantime, I recently finished Michael Jarrett's *Drifting on a Read: Jazz as a Model for Writing* and loved it. Here's the third paragraph:

"Elvis Costello once said in a remark now widely quoted, 'Writing about music is like dancing about architecture. It's a really stupid thing to want to do.' Costello's wit is notoriously barbed, which ensures that interviews with him are always thoroughly enjoyable. But his sentiments, echoing and extending Armstrong's ("Lady, if you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know"), are diametrically opposed to mine. First, as a side point, I'd jump at the chance to see dancing about architecture. Second, writing about music is hardly any more problematic than writing about any other subject."

He had me at "notoriously barbed."

Alternative alternatives

I re-read Raul Sanchez's *The Function of Theory in Composition Studies* last week and have been wondering about some of the ways he portrays the field, specifically his claim that Composition and Rhetoric has not dealt with the relationship between knowledge and writing. To quote Sanchez: "To date, composition theory has helped turn on its head the idea that writing is only the recording or reporting of knowledge. It has instead asserted that writing produces knowledge. But it has not questioned the terms of the supposed relationship between writing and knowledge; it has only inverted their order."

Now.

He's probably right. He thinks the field has "undertheorized" writing and there is certainly a wealth of work that still needs to be done regarding the ways we theorize writing. I've been thinking about this, though, specifically in terms of his critique of Diane Davis's *Breaking [Up] at Totality,* a book that had a pretty huge impact on the way I imagine studying rhetoric and writing - and what "theory" means in that context. Sanchez quoting Davis: "Davis asks 'What would happen if writing were dismissed from its representational servitude, if, that is, we put ourselves in the service of writing rather than the other way around.'" Cool. I'm there. Great question. Later, Sanchez says that by turning to a Nietzschean "pedagogy of laughter" Davis's "theory of writing situates itself squarely within a strand of the philosophical tradition it might otherwise disdain. In other words, under-writing Davis's theory is a discourse with a narrative thread running through the work of Nietzsche, Deleuze and Guattari, and Cixous that Davis cites. But because of this, her alternative theory's status as an alternative within an established ideological system--made up of "traditions" and "countertraditions"--undercuts its own claims to a thorough recasting of writing. Furthermore, it has no empirical dimension."

To what degree are Composition and Rhetoric scholars expected to draw from theorists and philosophers in order to better theorize writing? Does Davis actually call on a "thorough recasting of writing" in *Breaking [Up] at Totality*? A major part of her work in that book seems to focus on "the leak" and the ruptures of language--but this is hardly a thorough recasting of writing. In fact, the "undercutting" that Sanchez points would would seem to re-inforce a lot of what Davis argues.

A major part of Sanchez's own project rests on his claim that Composition Studies has "undertheorized" writing. And it probably has. But Sanchez himself tries to make a case for the need to turn to rigorous theory in order to better understand the relationship between writing and knowledge. He argues that we need more Derrida. Is there a more established theoretical and philosophical tradition within which to work? (There's a great scene in the documentary *Zizek!* where Zizek shouts and spits and pounds his fists at the dogmatic way in which Derrida has been taken up...) I guess Sanchez's critique is a larger question: to what degree has "alternative" "countertradition" become tradition?

But that question gets boring fast. I think Sanchez is simply asking the wrong question (his point, though, is a good one). So what if we draw on countertraditional work that has become an established mode of thinking (which is, of course, arguable)? We should be asking Davis not what her rhetoric of laughter owes the tradition from which it emerges, but rather, how do we begin to use that to recognize the ways in which the scene of writing makes possible more writing, which makes possible (other) ways of imagining what may (or may not) be limited by representation. If Sanchez is willing to take Derrida at his word, why not take Davis at her's?

Spring Fake

How many of you out there knew it was possible to get strep throat in your finger? And why didn't you warn the rest of us?

Like so many others, I had high hopes for the amount of work I would get done over Spring Break (which was last week). I tried not to let the freezing temperatures get the best of my attitude and I decided that I would, no matter what, feel good about catching up on some dissertation reading and organize the next few weeks worth of writing. The freezing temperatures didn't get the best of my attitude, but they still managed to get the best of me.

I came down with a wicked cold/flu thing on the very first day of break. I tried to get some work done, but the theraflu had taken over and I decided that I wouldn't be able to get any quality work done anyway, so why not just lay on the couch and sweat it out? Then, in a couple days I could hit the ground running and get some work done. The next day I noticed my finger was swollen almost twice its normal size.

Doctor does some tests. "Drains" my finger. And the next day the nurse calls to tell me I have strep throat.

Me: But my throat doesn't hurt. I have a cold, but I know what strep feels like and this isn't strep. My finger is what hurts.

Nurse: Well, then you've got the strep bacteria in your finger. You've got a bacterial infection.

Me: Awesome.

So I've been on antibiotics while still trying to catch up. I've been re-reading Sanchez's "The Function of Theory in Composition Studies" and have been trying to nail down what about it I'm reacting against. There's so much in his argument I can get behind, but there's this underlying feeling that I can't shake, one that says "where would Sanchez's writing take us...?" More later...

The Sound of New York

There were, of course, several cool things about Cs—meeting old friends and making new ones, seeing some cool panels, actually feeling surprised that people came to ours—but the following was actually the coolest…

My friend Corey and I escaped the conference for a little on Friday afternoon and went down to a village bookshop, where I found Jeff Chang’s *Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation*. As we left, I was flipping through the book and Corey tells me that the book was written by the cousin of a friend of ours. How cool?! But that’s not actually what I was getting at.

I flew out on Saturday afternoon. And after I met up with the woman who let us rent her unused east village apartment, I had some time before I had to meet my fellow cab-ride-splitters. So I walked to the park and started reading. The first section of the book is about Moses’ famed urban planning, specifically the construction of the Cross-Bronx Expressway (straight through several Bronx neighborhoods) and the way it re-divided those neighborhoods, killed local businesses, and, perhaps most importantly, posed the question: now that the Bronx has been re-divided and economically sucker-punched, what do we do with the people whose neighborhoods and businesses have been displaced? Well, apparently we build filing cabinets (surrounded by a block of park) to stack 170,000 apartments (per building!) on top of each other. Part of Chang’s project looks at how these re-divisions created slums in the south Bronx, how that led to gang culture, and how gang culture begins to find a voice in hip-hop. I’m really flattening his argument here, but immediately after reading this section of his book, I had the opportunity to actually fly directly over the Bronx on our way out of New York and get the bird’s eye view of the places he was talking about. Of course, it really makes you wonder what New York would look like if Moses’ urban planning had been a collaboration with the neighborhoods he sliced up. But I couldn't help thinking about what it would *sound* like.

Panels and Proposals

Well, it’s almost been a month since my last post. And let me tell you why.

I’ve been drafting the final version of my dissertation proposal (which, for those of you interested, looks at the historical and theoretical relationship between music and the Western-European rhetorical tradition in order to productively frame concerns regarding the limits of representation and the writing situation. In other words, what does writing look like when we frame it musically, and what would the writing subject be able to do with it? That's the gist of it). The proposal itself went through various incarnations before finally becoming something that my committee could make sense of. There were days during this past month when I thought to myself “I just want to talk about music and writing. Isn’t that enough?” Apparently, institutionalization requires making sense of what we want.

The good news is that it’s shaped up nicely and I’ll be “defending” it on Friday. I’m told it’s a conference, but I still feel like Mumbles under the hot light in Dick Tracy.

Now all that’s left is finishing up that pesky 4Cs paper.

Which, thank god, I’m co-writing and Scot (my partner in crime) has been keeping me on task. We’ve managed to write something that’s not only pretty damn interesting, but also something I want to talk about to boot…(which is nice). If you’re going to be at Cs, stop by our panel (“Other Rhetorics: Cookbooks, Graffiti, and Post-Rock”). We’re the “Post-Rock” paper (“Making a Scene: Spaces of Affect and the Erasure of Language in Sigur Ros”). It should be cool. We’ll play music. We’ll try to rock it out.

Avery, the fiction anthology I co-edit, also hit bookstores since my last post—this is, of course, undeniably rad. We’ve managed not only to gather 19 awesome short stories, but we also managed to get 10 color illustrations (nine black and white), produce one handsome book, and stay within budget. If you’re interested, check it out: www.averyanthology.org. It’s very exciting...

The Political Economy of Headbanging

Now this is some kind of monster.

Hey - That's Kinda Funny

Last week my wife says to me: “We’re going to down to Rock County to see some one act Beckett plays.”

So we went down to Rock County—where she teaches composition and intro lit courses—to see some one act Beckett plays. And on the way we start talking Beckett. We talked a little bit about “getting it” (I was convinced that I wouldn’t “get it”) but this spun the conversation around into a new direction: why the hell was the University of Wisconsin – Rock putting on a series of Beckett’s one act plays? After all, there’s got to be something more accessible and just as interesting. Why the hell did I have to waste my Friday night watching people stare at me from a dark stage while I drifted in and out of what it all means?

Turns out, the folks of Rock County, Wisconsin totally get Beckett.

We took bets on how many people would show up. I made snarky comments about how elite and marginalizing Beckett is and that watching it performed in community theater might be as awkward as watching a Guns N’ Roses cover band perform at a wedding.

The theater filled up. People had to stand in the back. The crowd laughed through the whole thing. And I’m not talking about the nervous-laughter Beckett’s so good at – I’m talking about full, all out, “we hear you” laughter. It’s hard to explain. But it was awesome.

Next week they’re putting on Hair. I’m totally there.

Things That Make You Go Hmmm

Kevin Brockmeir came to campus yesterday and met with MFA students before heading over to Madison’s west side Borders for a reading. Right now, I’m halfway through his story collection, Things That Fall From the Sky, and have been really admiring how lyrical and poetic his style is. As I read this book I keep thinking to myself, like a good Comp/Rhet grad student should, man, this guy must revise like crazy. Each sentence is so rich and textured. He must obsessively return to his work!

Of course, during the Q and A I asked him about his revision process and he said that he doesn’t really revise all that much. He labors over each sentence and constantly goes over the relationships between the sentences as he pushes through each story, but, he told me in his oh-so-gentle voice, I really don’t return to stories. Once they’re done, they’re done for me.

It’s amazing that for as much as we talk about writing in Comp/Rhet—and the nearly divine process of revision—there really seems to be a wealth of moments when writers who can really knock your socks off throw whatever Composition theory we can come up with right back in our faces. That’s not what Brockmeir did (in fact, I couldn’t imagine a kinder or more adorable man), but I still felt like I had to revise what I considered revision to be. If he doesn’t return to stories once their “done,” I keep telling myself, then there’s something to be said for the individual revisions he puts each sentence through.

Something that really interests me about this is the way this gets at some of the “musical” qualities of revision. That is, if revision is returning to a piece of writing and re-performing the work we’ve done there in order to “improve” it or take it in a new direction—like a live performer “revising” a song on stage by changing the lyrics, rhythm, etc—then how could Brockmeir’s revise-as-you-go-then-leave-it-behind fit within such a framework? Would it be something like improvisation? Finding the “song” in each sentence, then creating a singular performance out of a wealth of songs? Is Brockmeir a jazz writer? Have I reduced the music-rhetoric connection to a metaphor?

Returning...

I'm returning to blogging after switching to blogger from blogsome. Avery (the fiction anthology I co-edit and often blog for) uses blogger and I've found that I blog way more often on blogger simply because it works way better. So here I am. With a short update.

I've drafted my dissertation proposal. It is, of course, in its early, early, early stages. In terms of logical-administrative-like things, I've sent it out to my advisor and one other person on my committee. Then, I imagine, I'll get the "this looks good, this doesn't look so good, and have you thought of this" routine - which I really am looking forward to. I like the writing process, but I get nervous (as most of us do) when I stick my neck out there and say "so this is how I'd like to define myself professionally." I’m hoping to defend it in March.

In terms of what I'll be studying in the dissertation...well, that may evolve. I can, however, tell you what my proposal is about. Much like my "about me" blurb suggests, it explores the intersection of music and rhetoric. Generally, I'm interested historically in how that relationship has been situated (by folks like Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Nietzsche) and how the intellectual tradition has imagined the ways music and language inform the rhetorical situation. Particularly, though, I'm looking at the ways a lot of the great contemporary work on affect and rhetoric can help us better imagine a productive way of looking at rhetoric and how this musical framing of rhetoric can help us re-imagine the scope of rhetorical knowledge. Moreover, this re-framing of rhetorical economies, it seems to me, might also help us re-imagine some of the ways cultural theory and concerns regarding agency, identity, and affect come to bear on what we do in Comp/Rhet. Some of these repercussions I have yet to trace.

I'm anxious to see the sort of reactions the proposal gets. This morning I read a few selections from Mapping the Beat: Popular Music and Contemporary Theory (which was reviewed in Encultration a couple of years ago) and have since been reeling in the sort of concerns at stake when we imagine the way not only music has been used as a rhetorical device, but also as a means through which to imagine the possibilities for identity and invention. How could this not have some sort of bearing on the ways we imagine rhetoric?