ramble through the bronx

Friday, April 29, 2005

Graeme!!

About a month ago, I sent a letter off to Graeme Nicholson, a professor of mine in undergrad. He was fantastic. He had a wide range of interests, big bushy eyebrows, a wonderful way of holding himself -- so jovial! so merry! -- , and an unending curiosity about philosophy. Anyway, I took PHL102Y: History of Philosophy with him, my first philosophy class ever, and loved it. I proceeded to take at least one class with Graeme every year of my undergrad. I did an independent study with him in my final year that I still kinda like (it's horribly awkward and uninformed -- I didn't have much grasp of philosophical literature, and the notion of being up-to-date on philosophical debate -- but it still expresses a lot of my concerns/interests about the relationship between the individual and the community; my dissertation is a pretty natural outgrowth of that independent study). I bought him a bottle of scotch while I was in Scotland. He wrote me a great reference letter, but most importantly, he told me I had a future as a philosopher.

Anyway, I ended up at Fordham because of Graeme -- he introduced me to his student, Michael Baur, who is a professor here at Fordham, and who invited me to come visit Fordham (which is why I'd heard of Fordham in the first place). Further, it looks very much like Baur will be my dissertation director (either Baur or Tress, with whom I'm currently doing my independent study on feminist ethics & autonomy). So, my whole career in philosophy: all thanks to Graeme.

I got a handwritten response to my card today from him. Yay! How exciting! My hero! Here's the letter, just 'cause I'm so excited:

Dear Jane,

Your card was most welcome, and I thank you for your thoughtfulness. I have often wondered how you're finding Fordham, and it sounds as if it's meeting your needs. I suspected you would be working with Michael Baur (please pass on my best wishes when you see him) -- perhaps on Fichte? German Idealism? I'd like to hear what you decide on.

Did you know I spent three years in New York? Union Theological Seminary, 1957-1960, a great school then at its peak. As it turned out, I didn't opt to pursue theology and went to Germany to pursue philosophy instead.

My three years of retirement have been happy; I've done a lot of reading + writing, and have just about finished a book called Reason and Spirit, some of whose contents will be known to you.

I was glad to learn that you miss Canada, and I hope you'll find an appointment here in due course. I hope you'll let me know if I can write letters on your behalf.

Best wishes,
Graeme

YAY!!! Yay Graeme! I'm so happy. Here's a paper of Graeme's, on Hegel and death (reading it -- it's remarkable how similar Graeme's voice is to Robertson Davies's, in some ways -- two men of a generation, from small-town Canada).

Anyway, I just wanted to share.

[I should be working in my office right now, but my officemate Gary has a student in there who plagiarized. She's weeping up a storm. She sounds really upset. Well, she shouldn't have plagiarized. Poor Gary. She's lying to him right through her teeth, about where she got the material from, which is even worse]

jane 11:59 AM [+]

canadian goings-on

Hey y'all. This is a request for comments, keeping me posted about the buzz up in Canada (the NDP budget deal; Harper; the separatists, etc). I've been reading the CBC website and some of the Globe and Mail articles, but they're no substitute for talking all this stuff over with friends. Unfortunately, I can't really talk about Canadian politics with my American friends since they don't really understand the parliamentary system. So please, please, please, comment about what you think is going on.

thanks.

jane 2:06 PM [+]

So I'm doing it again..

Or, at least, almost. I'm on the verge of accepting to help run the 2005 Ancient & Medieval Philosophy conference. Except now it's not part of my job as a graduate assistant, but a whole separate task, on top of teaching two sections of the freshman course on Human Nature (I'll be teaching Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, a section at 10.30 and a section at 11.30; the classes are 50 minutes apiece; in addition to Plato, Descartes, Aquinas, and Augustine, I want to include a bunch of literature & non-philosophical works-- all suggestions are welcome. So far, I think a chapter of Dallaire's Shake Hands with the Devil, and Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Illych". My freshmen won't know what hit 'em!)

I've been offered a small stipend of $300 for my work, which really is too little, given how much time it'll be and how much money my time is technically worth (goddamit, I have a master's degree now!), but if I get it over the summer it'll really make a big difference. Dr. Tress wants me to take it, but she's also said that she has a "pedagogical responsibility" to tell me not to take it if I think it'll interfere with my academic responsibilities.

Which include, this fall, scheduling a date for defending my proposal. Which hopefully I'll have finished this summer. Very, very scary. YES, two days ago, I registered for "proposal development." That's officially what it says. I handed in my incomplete paper from last semester and, other than finishing off my independent study with Dr. Tress, I'm finished coursework. crazy. very crazy.

I've been reading Alastair Macintyre's Dependent Rational Animals, which is quite fun, although I disagree with him on a few points (he characterizes our care of others in terms of paying off the debt that we owe to the others who took care of us; I don't like that structure), it's very good. (Robin, you would probably particularly like it; skim over some of the technical bits about agency and decision-making -- they're a bit boring and not really necessary to his overall point -- and look at his stuff on dependency, disability, and animals)

(In other news, I assume y'all have heard about the woman on hunger strike for better health care in Alberta?)

Anyway, the overall problem is that I can't back down from this particular challenge, even though deep down I'm not really sure I can do it. But I don't want to say no! Not only do I want the money, but I kinda like the stress.

Of course, I'll also be helping Stephen Minister (a fellow graduate student in the department; he, Jared Woodard, and Adam Konopka have just had a panel on Levinas accepted to this coming year's SPEP conference -- SPEP being the big continental philosophy conference. very very imppressive) plan for our Spring 2006 Graduate Student Conference, on "The Future of Philosophy". We've got Alain Badiou coming from France to talk about philosophy & anti-philosophy, and John Greco from our own department to talk about skepticism. I'm really looking forward to helping with that (partially because I want to see cute Penn State boy again, and I think he'd be likely to come to this conference), but it means I'll be helping with two conferences. Oh well. I think the bulk of what I'd told Stephen I'd help with was some promotional stuff, and accepting & formatting the papers we receive for blind review. How much work can that be? (she laughed maniacally).

And no love-interests for me. I'm going to break things off with James (I've barely seen him in the last month or so, and I told him I'd be busy for the next month; he's hardly still in the picture); and my other crushes are kind of played out -- the friendship is just more relevant than the crush. So that's OK.

So that's my life. Oh, and Megan is visiting in a few weeks! yay!

jane 10:22 AM [+]

sorry for not posting in a long time

busy, stressed, poor, mopey, worried, etc., etc., etc. Nothing really much to report. Nashville was good, the Country Music Hall of Fame was awesome, a cute boy was very cute and actually seemed to like me but of course had a girlfriend, and recently I've discovered that all my male friends that I have vague crushes on ALL, without exception, have crushes on my other friends. A little frustrating. Really. Oh well. That's how it goes.

And Paul, ages ago, gave me permission to share the following:

thought you'd enjoy this.

so Kate and I are sitting playing cards in tequila bookworm last night. I
look up at the people who are sitting down next to us, and I do a double
take when I realise it's avi lewis. I am actually rather annoyed at the
double take. I work with his uncle for chrissakes.
anyhoo, he was getting to know his new producer, from the sound of it, and
she was still rather intimidated by his presence, apologising for her
cellphone ringing, etc. it was all very amusing.

so eventually they get up and leave, and their places are immediately
taken by gad horowitz and s--- b---. you know gad and s---, right?
so, she's working away on her ibook and keeps asking gad all these
questions about word usage, and showing him the text on the screen for his
ok. I began to realise, to my horror, that we was sitting there writing
reference letters. the question of the night, sigh, was her asking "so
Gad, if I have 30 grad students per year for 10 years, that's 300
students, right?"

(And Paul, you needn't worry about my blog being googled -- it doesn't show up; nothing really links to it, so the google spiders don't see it. huzzah!)

jane 2:58 PM [+]

sorry to be so silent

super-stressed; tired; going crazy; etc., etc., etc.

Hope you are all well!

jane 12:11 PM [+]