anecdotes » Graduate school

Happy new year!

Katharine Beutner — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 20:55:48 +0000

I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to see the back of 2011. Really — I can’t. It was a year full of professional milestones, and I had a wonderful time teaching my first classes at Wooster this fall and getting to know the town and college, but it was harder on the personal front. I’m looking forward to 2012 with optimism and anticipation. I fully expect the spring to be crazy — I’m teaching three classes rather than two, and my senior IS students will be finishing their projects — but I also hope it will be rejuvenating. I’ve been amazed by how widespread this sentiment about the new year has been. I can’t think of another year when I’ve heard so many people express relief at the passing of the old year and hope for the new one, in a way that seems heartfelt rather than rote. I guess it’s just been a hard one for all of us. May 2012 bring positive change for you, too.

Also, mysterious Mayan calendar predictions aside, isn’t “twenty-twelve” just so much more satisfying to say than “twenty-eleven”?

I didn’t get as much work done on Killingly this year as I meant to, mostly for the above-mentioned personal reasons, plus that whole “first semester of teaching” thing, which is pretty time-consuming. But I did get some work done! And I’m delighted to say that I’ll have a student assistant helping me to dig up more research material this spring. If all goes well, I hope to finish the book in summer 2012. I’ve also been writing some nonfiction, partly inspired by the reading I’ve done with one of my IS students.

In March, I’ll be back in Austin briefly to give a reading at UT before zipping down to San Antonio to present a paper at ASECS 2012: “Delarivier Manley Understands the Ladies Better than You: The Female Wits and Feminocentric Satire.” I’m also hoping to attend Wiscon this spring. Anybody else planning to be in Madison?

I meant to post a multitude of things in the last month or so, some still open in tabs from the first time I read them. (I prune my tabs regularly, but still, it’s no wonder my Firefox loves to give me the spinny rainbow wheel.) Here are a few of them:

Lev Grossman on what fantasy is.
An insightful post on Anne McCaffrey and her work.
The Guardian’s obituary for Russell Hoban.
Kristin Cashore on reading like a writer.
Katha Pollitt on Christopher Hitchens.
NPR’s top 5 YA novels of the year.
A call for papers on Georgette Heyer at the Journal for Popular Romance Studies.
A Vintage Smith College tumblr.
Diana Peterfreund on love triangles in YA and love diagrams of Jane Austen novels.
The Band of Thebes Best LGBT Books of 2011 list (with recs from me).
Rachel Signer’s piece at OccupyWriters, my favorite there so far.
What Middletown Read.
Miette’s podcast of “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas.”
Boing Boing’s 2011 gift guide: a little late, okay, but still full of interesting stuff, including many books.
Shauna Ahern’s basic ratio method for converting wheat-based cookies to gluten-free, plus a molasses cookie recipe I’m planning to make soon. (My mother and I made date pinwheel cookies and quinoa flake jam cookies for Christmas.)

And finally, something that makes a dreary January day a little brighter, at least if you grew up with the Buffy kids and still like a good vampire show now and then. 2011 would not have been possible without yoga and Netflix streaming.

A very happy new year to you all.

Things I love about teaching right now

Katharine Beutner — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 03:07:18 +0000

Mid-semester update edition:

Sitting in a room full of students who are working intently on a writing exercise. Some of them are usually frowning. But they’re all creating.
Discussing writing ideas or revision plans with my senior Independent Study advisees, then having them return the next week with surprising, original, clever work inspired by our conversations. I feel unbearably and excessively proud of them.
Hearing my first-year seminar students voluntarily refer to Riddley Walker, a book many of them struggled through, as we discuss other texts.
Seeing my first-year seminar students walking around campus together.
Watching familiar names pop up on my course rosters for next semester as registration progresses. If you’ll pardon a warm-and-fuzzy Internet emoticon moment: <3!

A brief appearance

Katharine Beutner — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 20:05:46 +0000

I’m now in Wooster, Ohio, and have finally just about finished unpacking. I would kill for a papas, egg, and cheese taco from Tacodeli right now, but I’m enjoying the cool Ohio mornings (and sometimes, entire cool days). Everyone here is complaining about the heat, but after a month of 100+ weather in Austin, it feels heavenly to go for a run in a 65-degree breeze, even if the afternoons do get close to 90.

This summer is full of transitions, professional and personal, and I’m trying hard to get a bunch of writing done before the semester begins — so I may be a bit quiet around here. I hope to have time to post more about the courses I’m teaching this fall, though.

One quick bit of news: a few days ago, I was delighted to see this recommendation of Alcestis at After Ellen’s Across the Page. It makes me really happy to know that readers are continuing to discover the book.

TILTS, links, a long goodbye

Katharine Beutner — Tue, 31 May 2011 04:19:33 +0000

I spent most of Friday and Saturday at the third and final TILTS 2011 conference at UT. I’m not exactly a digital humanist by trade, though I’ve worked on digital humanities projects (like eComma). But I’m interested in humanities computing, to use the older phrase, and the breadth of this conference’s speakers was really wonderful — linguists, literary critics, anthropologists, bibliographers, librarians, and others. Intellectually and socially, it was a nice send-off.

Today I cleaned out — well, 95% cleaned out — the cube I’ve been sharing with T. since 2005, our second year in grad school. Then I stopped at the co-op and ran into Rita, who sold us Lahrs the Saab. I’ve been experiencing a lot of serendipitous meetings lately, even though many of my friends from graduate school have decamped for other cities. It’s strange to be getting ready to leave myself. I’ve been living here for seven years now, and I’m going to miss it terribly, excited as I am about my new job in Wooster.

And now, links to share!

First of all, the fabulous Malinda Lo recommended Alcestis (as well as books by Jacqueline Carey and Robin McKinley) in a short piece she did for NPR last week. This was up on NPR’s Facebook page, as well, which resulted in a number of my friends leaving “holy crap, I know her!” comments on the NPR post. Sometimes social media does give one a warm and fuzzy feeling!

On Thursday night, the 2011 Lambda Literary Awards were announced. Alcestis didn’t win its category, sadly, but it sounds like it was a great evening, and all the winners deserve many congratulations!

250 books by women all men should read. (Also all people, but this is a response to an unsurprisingly dude-dominated reading list from Esquire.)

The opening of Jeffrey Eugenides’s upcoming The Marriage Plot. I want it now.

A Times travel piece on Lake Geneva, emphasis on the Byron/Shelley/Polidori era of its history.

A super sensible piece on ebook piracy by Cecilia Tan.

A Q&A by lovely Austin bookstore BookPeople with Robin Black, primarily about her short stories.

The real origins of Memorial Day.

For some less-heartening news, “worst carbon emissions ever leave climate on the brink.” And Laila Lalami posts Tom Lutz’s open letter to his UC Riverside colleagues and students about the demolition of the UC system. I’m not sure which of those links is scarier.

I’m still finalizing my reading lists and syllabi, which means that I’m still reading post-apocalyptic novels, though now I’m back to some I’ve read before. At the moment I’m re-reading Riddley Walker. I’d forgotten just how virtuosic it is. I wish everybody who loved Cloud Atlas knew about this book, too.

A parable or a knife?

Katharine Beutner — Thu, 26 May 2011 20:29:45 +0000

So once again, here’s the current primary-source list for my post-apocalyptic and dystopian novels course (now titled “Coming of Age at the End of the World”). I dropped 1984, but reread The Giver this week — it really is the archetypal YA dystopian, Christ imagery and abrupt ending and all.

The Giver, Lois Lowry
Riddley Walker, Russell Hoban
The Knife of Never Letting Go, Patrick Ness
The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins
Battle Royale, Koushun Takami (film)
Feed, M. T. Anderson
How I Live Now, Meg Rosoff
Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
Moon, Duncan Jones (film)

I’m trying to nail down the book list so that I can submit it to the Wooster college bookstore, but I’m stuck on one final decision — whether to take out The Knife of Never Letting Go, which pairs with Riddley Walker, and swap The Parable of the Sower into its place. There are elements of TKoNLG that I’d really like to discuss, the book’s engagement with gender and masculinity being the most obvious, and I wish Parable were a little shorter (and better edited). But I think the scope of Butler’s book matches up better with the scope of Hoban’s, and I’m leaning toward including it instead. Thoughts? Opinions?

Really what I need is another month in the course so I could teach TKoNLG along with His Dark Materials (and not just because they both have knives in their titles).

Er, wow.

Katharine Beutner — Mon, 23 May 2011 16:28:14 +0000

I didn’t mean to disappear for quite so long. First I had to finish the last few line edits on my dissertation and file it, officially; and then I wrote more Killingly, worked on finding a place to live in Wooster (and I finally have, after the house I thought I’d secured fell through), worked on course planning for fall, cut my hair short, flew to Oregon, and drove one of my family’s cars down to Austin, sharing the driving with my mother. Then I had a great book club meeting with a group of women in south Austin, for which I had to refresh my memory of all things Alcestis. May’s been quite the month.

Did you know that an early-2000s Toyota 4Runner and a late-80s Saab convertible have veeeeery different turning radii? Still getting used to that. I’d just achieved basic competence with manual driving in the Saab, enough that driving an automatic now feels strange (words I never thought I’d type!). Next I need to master the Toyota’s 4-wheel drive, before the Ohio winter, at least.

I thought I might be able to attend the Lambda Literary Awards this week, but the above circumstances and others conspired against it, so I’ll be cheering the ceremony on from Texas while my lovely editor Juliet Grames attends the actual shindig. And on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, I’ll be spending time on campus again for the third and final TILTS conference of the year, which has an impressively varied lineup of speakers.

I’m back to working on Killingly, and I’m also back to course planning. Given all the noise about the goofy Family Radio apocalypse predictions, my post-apocalyptic & dystopian novel course feels trendier than ever — I’m excited to delve into those trends with my students and talk about their cultural underpinnings.

Soon, moving! And packing! Gah.

Another news roundup

Katharine Beutner — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 03:19:39 +0000

Chronologically, as it seems easiest:

Last Friday, I defended my dissertation in the Fleur Cowles Room at the Harry Ransom Center. (You want to follow that photo link, I promise.) Fleur Cowles was one of the sponsors of the internship I participated in at the Ransom Center, so it felt like a nice conclusion to my years as a graduate student to be in that pale-yellow room full of paintings of tigers and flowers and at least one unicorn. The defense itself went swimmingly, as did the dinner and drinks we decamped for afterward. It was really nice night.

This week, I finished up the line edits I’d made while re-reading the dissertation yet again before the defense, and yesterday I officially filed to graduate. A very strange feeling, I can tell you. But pleasant, too. I’m looking forward to being back in the classroom.

And then: last night, Alcestis won the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction from the Publishing Triangle. I wasn’t able to get to New York to attend the ceremony, unfortunately, but I followed the live-tweets (!), and got a report from Soho’s Mark Doten, who attended on my behalf and accepted the award. I hear that some very nice things were said about the book, and I am so honored and touched. Here’s Lambda Literary’s lovely write-up of the awards ceremony, with a photo of the winners who were present.

On a sadder note, I was sorry to see earlier today that Joanna Russ has died after a series of strokes. If you haven’t read How to Suppress Women’s Writing, now’s a good time. (It continually makes me happy to know that there’s a UT Press edition of that book.) If nothing else, read the cover, which in itself is enough to get a good conversation started with students. I don’t know if I’ll have the chance to use the book or its cover next fall, but it’ll appear in one of my spring classes. For more about Russ and her literary career, see this excellent tribute at io9.

I’m still a bit dazed from the last few weeks, but I’ll be moving on soon to more course-planning and Killingly-writing. And planning my move to Wooster!

Questions answered

Katharine Beutner — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 18:40:10 +0000

Over the weekend, Diane Havens, the wonderful narrator of the Iambik audiobook of Alcestis, and Miette Elm of Iambik asked me excellent questions about the book, writing, and audiobooks, including some Proust-questionnaire-style inquiries about my favorite sounds. If you follow the Q&A link, you’ll see a discount code for all Iambik’s titles through the end of the month, too.

I’m in the last push toward finishing up my degree right now, but I’ve been saving up blog material. (And occasionally then deciding not to write a post on it because it was just too annoying to think about in any more detail, cf. Ginia Bellafante’s remarkably silly “girls can’t possibly like Lorrie Moore and The Hobbit at the same time!” review of Game of Thrones and her point-missing follow-up piece. Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

I have managed to go to a couple of readings lately, though — last night was Russell Banks, reading from his forthcoming Lost Memory of Skin, and I’m hoping to make it to Chimamanda Adichie’s reading on Thursday, also at the Joynes Reading Room at UT. A few weeks ago I was fortunate enough to attend the benefit reading for Dean Young held here in Austin. Dean has since received the heart transplant he needed, but he and his family still need support. If you haven’t (or even if you have), do donate here.

YA dystopia in the classroom

Katharine Beutner — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 16:39:01 +0000

In the fall I’ll be teaching a first year seminar and an introduction to poetry and fiction course with some workshopping. I’ve been fascinated by the YA dystopia trend — as are the Independent, the New Yorker, and the New York Times, not to mention countless bloggers — and I’m planning to teach my first year seminar on a related topic. The title will probably be something like “Teenagers and Rebellion in Contemporary SF Dystopia,” or, as somebody shortened it recently, “Teenagers in Dystopia.” So far the book list looks like this:

1984, George Orwell
The Giver, Lois Lowry
Riddley Walker, Russell Hoban
The Knife of Never Letting Go, Patrick Ness
The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins
Battle Royale, Koushun Takami (possibly the film version rather than the novel, or with only part of the novel, as the book is lengthy)
Feed, M. T. Anderson
How I Live Now, Meg Rosoff
Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
Moon, Duncan Jones (film)

The books are roughly paired: TKoNLG and Riddley Walker have a lot of similarities, as do The Hunger Games and Battle Royale, and the Anderson and Rosoff books make an interesting contrast (information overload vs. back-to-the-land fantasy). Never Let Me Go and Moon do some similar things investigating selfhood/individuality. Moon is a bit of a cheat since the main character’s not a teenager, but it’s very much about family and coming of age despite that. (Besides, in that scene in which the two characters mimic each other, they might as well be teenagers.) I still need to pick up Octavia Butler’s The Parable of the Sower, since I grabbed The Parable of the Talents by mistake during my last trip to the library to harvest all their YA dystopian fiction.

I’m not sure if I’ll include 1984 and The Giver or not. I’d like to have that context, but I don’t want to over-assign reading, even though these books are fast reads, since I’ll be adding some secondary material too. And there are so many other primary texts I want to include and won’t have time for, already. I hate not putting His Dark Materials on the list, since it is entirely about the process of becoming an adult, but it’s fantasy rather than SF, and it’s long. As it is we’ll be reading a number of first books in trilogies — and talking about domination of the trilogy model in YA fiction, for sure — but I don’t think it would work to read only The Golden Compass.

Among other assignments, I’m hoping the class might be able to work together to build an online taxonomy of contemporary YA dystopia. (Me and Propp again, I tell you.)

This is all still very much in development, so: thoughts? Suggestions?

And now…

Katharine Beutner — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 00:47:28 +0000

… the other news I hinted at when posting last week: I got a job! Starting in August, I’ll be teaching creative writing (primarily fiction) at the College of Wooster, in Ohio. This is a three-year visiting assistant professor position, an excellent way to start, and I’ll teach introductory and upper-level workshop courses as well as directing senior independent projects. I am tremendously excited: about the job, the town, my already-delightful future colleagues, the whole deal. The academic job market is really tough these days; I am very, very lucky, and not just because I’ve gotten nothing but support and love along the way from my department, my family, and T.

And yes, this means that working on Killingly — and whatever comes after — will be part of my job. Like I said: lucky. And so relieved and happy I’m still sort of breathless with it.