Continuing this quixotic exercise, here is the third entry (of seven) chronicling One Week in the Life of an English Professor (hi, there!). Â As noted on the first post, the goal is to make visible just what the heck it is someone like me actually does. Â Such labor was invisible to me when I was…
In which we continue the experiment started yesterday – blogging (for this week only) precisely how I spend my time as a Professor of English at Kansas State University. One goal is to demystify exactly what it is that professors do. Sunday, 20 Feb. 2011. 12:35 – 7:55 am. Â Asleep 7:55 – 8:10 am. Â Checked…
Since it’s fashionable in some quarters to attack state employees as lazy (Hello, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker!), I am – for this coming week only – blogging about precisely how I spend my time, as a Professor of English at Kansas State University. Â I’m also doing this because, when I was an undergraduate, I had…
As I wait to hear back from my editor (latest revision submitted January 1st), I continue to tinker with the biography of Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss. Does my manuscript’s silence on the homosexuality of two important figures – Maurice Sendak (who illustrated nine of Ruth’s books) and Ursula Nordstrom (editor of Ruth, Dave, Maurice) –…
Following the deaths this month of Brian Jacques, Janet Schulman, and Margaret K. McElderry, we turn to the last words of those who wrote for the young – Seuss, Dahl, Thurber, Montgomery, Nesbit, Charles M. Schulz, Crockett Johnson, and others. “Yes. I’m not going to die tomorrow.” – Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel, 1904-1991) “Ow,…
Last week, I finally finished Donald Sturrock’s Storyteller: The Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl. I highly recommend it. In addition to being well-written and carefully researched, it’s a heck of a story. In it, you’ll encounter such facts as these: During World War II, Dahl was a spy. (This has previously been documented in Jennet…
“Barnaby exclusively in the Chicago Sun!” Here’s a photo of a Chicago Sun delivery truck in the 1940s. The occasion for sharing the photo is the quest for original Barnaby strips! Â As readers of this blog know, Eric Reynolds and I are co-editing The Complete Barnaby for Fantagraphics. Â We’re currently working on gathering strips from…
On the BBC’s Faulks on Fiction this week, Martin Amis said, “People ask me if I ever thought of writing a children’s book. I say, ‘If I had a serious brain injury I might well write a children’s book’, but otherwise the idea of being conscious of who you’re directing the story to is anathema to…
What would Kansas be like without Langston Hughes, William S. Burroughs, or The Wizard of Oz? Â What would Kansas be like without art? Â That’s what the blog Imagine Kansas Without Art is considering, in light of Governor Brownback’s order to eliminate the Kansas Arts Commission (which, if approved by the state legislature, will go into…
Last Friday, in my English 703: Critical Approaches to Children’s Literature class, the students and I spent 5 minutes talking nonsense. Â We’d been reading theories of nonsense, and Lewis Carroll’s Alice books – I thought it would be both fun and educational to put those theories into practice. So, based on our readings of Tigges,…
