my virtual notebook

Sick & busy-not a good combination....

I'm sick...that's what I get for actually thinking out loud about not having been sick in a while....and this is not a cold but a strange little flu--not much sniffling, but weird and quite severe body ache and fatigue...I AM already getting better--the pattern is that I feel worse at night, but I have found a med that helps with the pain and so I am doing better overall.

One main difference between a flu and a cold--the loss of appetite! Seriously I could never have eaten as little as I have today if I were feeling better! (I have eaten, just not very much).  

What being sick does it that it forces me to prioritize -- and this week that means two things: send the article out and get ready to teach! I am progressing slowly on both fronts--tomorrow I will finalize course prep in between naps.  And regarding the article--I need to generate a works cited list and fix the formatting, and perhaps address some of the issues Ian raised, they are all extremely thought-provoking and will I think make the paper better in the end.  I am so grateful to have gotten this input at this stage.  But I might - for health reasons- just have to send it out without having addressed all the issues....at this stage sending it out is taking precedence.

After that I'm going to dive into the book review that is due by the end of January, and the MArie Sibylle Merian project looms....Apparently her most well-known book was originally published in Dutch. Hmmm. (She lived in Amsterdam). 

Update!

oooh the weather outside is indeed frightful! It's -1 degrees as I type (at least that's what my little accu-weather firefox thingy is telling me...brrrr.....)

so what have I been up to? Not anything too exciting...Friday the 9th was a bit of a "lost" scattered day--it snowed a lot and we canceled an appointment in Dexter, but I still couldn't get into work all that much. Saturday was better-I got quite a bit of editing done, which of course meant that I didn't really do anything work-related on Sunday. I talked to my sister, cleaned house a bit and went grocery shopping with Bill.

On Monday I finished the first round of editing - I know the article still needs some work, but it was a relief to send it off to someone else to look at....if only for a short short while, since it has to be sent off by next Thursday and there is stlll quite a lot to be done. All I am hoping for is that it gets a conditional acceptance...we shall see.

Today all the work was class-prep - I have a really hard time getting back into that groove--once I am in and really thinking about how I will present certain concepts it does get easier, but the initial thinking is hard, even after all these years...

I have made good progress on the two language courses and tomorrow I should finally start thinking about the upper level course on German Woman Writer's. I have taught it once before and I am changing some of the texts. I kicked out my beloved 19th century novella The Jew's Beech Tree (Die Judenbuche) simply because it didn't go over well last time- it's a very well-written gothic tale, spooky yet also quite modern (like a lot of German novellas) but it really was hard going and didn't seem to fit the tone/feel of the rest of the class.

So instead we'll be reading a more modern yet also quite haunting novella by Anne Seghers: Excursion of the Dead Girls (Ausflug der toten Mädchen), which I taught once before in a class on Exile Literature. It's a great story and students respond well to it.

I think this time around I won't be as obsessed with "coverage" -- i.e. we may simply not read a lot of earlier texts--there are so many newer ones thats are good. I might include a few older poems. (18th century).

Of course there is much else to be done: letters of reference that need to be written, two Honors  theses need to be read, a book needs to be read and reviewed very very quickly and last but not least the article -- there are many things I could be looking into regarding it.

And tomorrow I should really work out - I have a bad habit of substituting "snow shovelling" for my work out...when it really isn't quite the same thing....

Progress report

Slowly editing the article, changing things around, tightening up the writing. Tomorrow I want to go back and look at the other theoretical texts I want to make references to in the article, which include an article on the “Ethics of Self-Fashioning, which makes specific references to Foucault and Rorty and their concepts connected to this topic (aesthetics of existence, technologies of self, the “strong poet”) which means I have been looking at various texts by those two—specifically Foucault’s late essay on “Technologies of Self” where he elaborates on the idea of “self-care” and some chapters Rorty’s book Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, plus other texts coming at the whole thing from a Feminist “Life-Writing/Autobiography perspective. (There is a whole slew of texts out there that deal with the issue of “Foucault and Feminism”, a few of which I have looked at).

 

Still not entirely sure how I will bring these in—I might leave the Rorty out, but some mention of Foucault will be made—I do refer once to Greenblatt’s introduction.

 

An earlier incarnation of this article was going to focus more overtly on issues in von Arnim relating to “the female/gendered body” before I got caught back up in issues of subjectivity/self—of which the body seemed to be a sub-topic.

 

I also need to get cracking on Spring course prep…

New film adaptation of "Buddenbrooks"

Via new blog-fave Goethe Etc.  comes news of a brand new film adaptation of Thomas Mann's novel Buddenbrooks: Decline of a Family.

Today

Today: Up, shower, breakfast, New Years call to sister, blog, professional membership renewal, article editing (what I’m doing is reading through the article and checking to see that I really do what I say am going to do) and as I read I am also seeing where I need to add stuff, especially theory references or a reference to a secondary source, lunch, on-line shopping, procrastinating & Foucault, dinner, “Our Mutual Friend” (bbc), chores, blog and bed.

 

Tomorrow: more work on article—I should work out, write reference letters.

Here's an abstract of the article (from which I will extract a presentation for the 2009 NEMLA in Boston).  I'm probably going to change the title, since I'm not even sure I will use the snippet from Bettine that was its inspiration (she climbs up a tree and has deep thoughts)

Going out on a Limb:

       Eccentric Self- Representation in Bettine von Arnim’s Epistolary Memoirs

 

In her epistolary memoirs, 19^th Century German woman writer Bettine von Arnim created a fictional, aesthetic version of herself that allowed her to reframe her own past,  thereby allowing her greater control over her identity in the present. By creatively re-writing and re-creating the world she once inhabited, von Arnim not only constructed an alternative life but she also, to paraphrase Helene Cixous’  “put herself into the text—[…] by her own movement.”  In this sense her first three published books represent a specific form of textual emancipation. As Walter Schmitz states: “Im Freiraum der Bildung entwarf Bettine ein eigenes Wunschleben.”

In this paper I would like analyze how this projection of a female Wunschleben constructs subjectivity in general, as well as the individual subject of its main protagonist. Recent work by Ulrike Landfester has established a clear connection between von Arnim’s literary and social project and a Platonic notion of self-care. (Selbstsorge) In this presentation I would like to draw attention to motifs I see as complementary to the notion of self-concern, namely those of self-revelation and self-confession. ( Selbstenthüllung / Selbstentblößung). Throughout her first three published works we see the Bettine character both literally and metaphorically unveiling herself on numerous occasions.  Publicly “revealing” herself through her writing can be understood as both an act of self-creation and self-fashioning. By uncovering herself in public through her writing, to what extent was she actually creating a new and different type of public persona? And how can such self-revelatory moments be linked to a concept of Romantic self-fashioning.

Wednesday, October 3, 2007: The snoozer kitty: Project 365: #340

The snoozer kitty: Project 365: #340
Originally uploaded by cathie.

Tuesday, October 2, 2007: October calender picture: Project 365: #339

October calender picture: Project 365: #339
Originally uploaded by cathie.

Calender picture.

Monday, October 1, 2007: Coming and going, 1: Project 365: #338

Coming and going, 1: Project 365: #338
Originally uploaded by cathie.

A Georgie/Hansi shot.

Sunday, September 30, 2007: Class Record Book: Project 365: #337

Class Record Book: Project 365: #337
Originally uploaded by cathie.

A Sunday shot.

Saturday, September 29, 2007: German food items at the Battle Creek Meijer: Project 365: #336

German food items at the Battle Creek Meijer: Project 365: #336
Originally uploaded by cathie.

OK-I promise to take less blurry shots when I start 365-ing again this year.