Books I need to (re-)read:
-Edward Said, Orientalism
-Jacques Derrida, Margins of Philosophy
-Jacques Derrida and Marie-Françoise Plissart, Droits de regards
-Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature
-Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity
-Emmanuel Levinas, Altérité et transcendance
-Krzysztof Ziarek, Inflected Language: Toward a Hermeneutic of Nearness - Heidegger, Levinas, Stevens, Celan
And others I can't really think of right now. More details as I receive them. I just received an email that got my nervous system fired up, the way Lara Glenum's The Hounds of No did when I started reviewing it. It has to do with things that were discussed recently on various blogs.
-Edward Said, Orientalism
-Jacques Derrida, Margins of Philosophy
-Jacques Derrida and Marie-Françoise Plissart, Droits de regards
-Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature
-Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity
-Emmanuel Levinas, Altérité et transcendance
-Krzysztof Ziarek, Inflected Language: Toward a Hermeneutic of Nearness - Heidegger, Levinas, Stevens, Celan
And others I can't really think of right now. More details as I receive them. I just received an email that got my nervous system fired up, the way Lara Glenum's The Hounds of No did when I started reviewing it. It has to do with things that were discussed recently on various blogs.
Comments
And classics with Patrick Dugan!
And history with Albert Michaels!
And anthropology with Robert Dentan!
And whatever she's teaching with Diane Christian!
And you can hang out at the Pink and make out with the entire city.
upenn is just a teeeeeensy bit competitive. be prepared. if you need drugs, i gotcha covered.
tell me if you apply to buffalo... it's a small department.
don't study with any of the people eric just mentioned. and the pink is fine but there are better bars unless you think "seedy and covered in vomit" is cool. watch Buffalo '66 to prepare yourself for the culture shock.
it seems somewhat true that girls in buffalo are easy. or that girls are easier when they're in buffalo. perhaps because it's so damn cold and depressing.
if you do go to buffalo, the summers and autumns are the best. if you can get through the winter it's well worth it.
winters are fine by me, although i may have forgotten what they feel like. i'll just have to be reacclimated.
ca conrad lives in philly, doesn't he? and i didn't know blau du plessis taught at temple. strangely enough, i've had people from upenn and temple visit this blog. and competition is fine by me. i'm made of teflon :p
and find victory in the was
ef-fer-ve-scent, e-v-e-r-
presn't
i didn't enjoy the ballgame as much as the ballgame enjoyed me
like a radio station of static
so stealthy that transmitting nothing is a kind of code where the decoder isn't making things up
in-between: field where her red shoe glistens in the dew
cloud = friend = just like
sun rays = lava = rope
deal is...restart the data
deal is...let it hiss this time
I'm going to make a secret
-k-dawg
Francois, I am excited for you! You will love Buffalo! (the girls are not easy though, they're just awesome)!
On Septmeber 1st, just show up.
"I'm François," you will say.
(quick, and while Jessica's not listening - totally study with all those poeple I mentioned -- she doesn't even know who they are, shh)
I think if you're applying for funding the deadlines are in December. In this case you should be able to get one of the lucrative fellowships that provides enough money to actually live on, as opposed to the TA'ship I got when I applied in April, which is enough to go into debt on. Unless you're Romanian.
Yes, CA Conrad lives in Philly. Lots of people live in Philly. Even more people live in NYC which is like 2hrs away.
i can pretend to be rumanian. of course, this would be something ziarek would probably notice.
Howe's done, that's true. I'm curious about McCaffery; with the exception of Mr. Chambers, I've heard things about him I wouldn't want repeated in my nightmares. One also has to look at how Poetics has done under his stewardship.
The others are definitely cool.
But Roger Woodard! I go into a swoon ever time I write the name! *(re)Discovered the origins of the Greek alphabet.
*One of the foremost proto-indo european scholars in the land! *Editor of the Cambridge Encyclopedia of ancient languages!
*Reader of Hittite, Sanskrit, German, Latin, and not just Greek, but all these crazy dialects!
*And a gentleman! First day of class he walks around, shakes everyone's hand, introduces himself personally, takes your name, and then, in lecture classes of 150, amazes the class as he remembers the names the next session.
*When I asked to sit in on his Sanskrit class, even though I was not a student at UB, his response was simply, "It would be my pleasure."
Omg I am swoooooooooonnnnnnnning
omfg
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there's also interesting stuff to be found in the Media Studies department, where there are occassionally famous people teaching, and whre they think that watching movies counts as legitimate academic study. Oh! I also forgot there's Joan Copjec! She's actually a good teacher. Though a Lacanian. But maybe you like Lacan. But there's essentialy a Deleuze-Lacan split at Buffalo and JC will look down her nose at you and make fun of "Deleuzeans" but she gives very good feedback on papers.
ok ok, RW, but NOT DC. No.
(fr, ge, jp, english ... rec writers: jg, th, d. mazella, l. zamora, d.baker, d. price, az if he ever comes back from poland, mostly houston people)
you only need 3-4 rec writers. don't send more. just choose the absolute best ones. and f you have the choice of whether to keep them confidential or whether you can see them afterwards, choose to be able to see them afterwards so you know who your best writers are. if you can, try to see them beforehand so you know who your best writers are. they should talk specifically about your interests/projects, not just about how smart you are.
just in case you don't know all this already...
sadly, you are making me feel like i have a better chance at berkeley.
oh, wait! dan knows ziarek!
as for my project, most of my rec writers know it in some aspect and probably consider me crazy for it.
no way, man. it's like, impossible to get in at berkeley and penn. i applied to both schools 3x w/o getting in. it's a total crapshoot. so much has to do with who's on the committee, personal connections with rec writers, quotas and such. if you meet a quota, you have a good shot. you don't do medieval lit, do you?
at buffalo it's not a crapshoot because you have some insight into how the game is played. first, admission is not as competitive. 2-8 students are accepted per year from roughly 80 applicants-- not 400 applicants. second, talk about which profs you want to work with and if possible email or meet those profs so they recognize your name.
what happens at buffalo is that all the files come in and are sorted and then gasche, shaun (irlam) and david (johnson) (or some other combination, but usually it involves the three of them at least) split up the apps, take them home and read them, and come back with options. then they look for people who have interesting projects. there's a lot of crossing over with poetics. but profs also look out for students who share _their_ interests or have critical theory or substantial foreign language backgrounds. like if gasche gets your file and someone's from Washington, and you say you're french and like French philosophy and Wash U says he likes graphic novels and portuguese, then he'll pick you. It's a very "closed" department in the sense that they choose students who they thnk will most benefit from the way the department is structured, and it's basically a program in Continental philosophy with a side-interest in poetics/20thC lit.
Media Study department currently has Elliot Caplan here, who is the only reason I decided to stay here for M.F.A. He worked a long time with Cage and Merce Cunningham. He's super cool. And, though I've never taken a class with him, the "rum-wielding Tony Conrad" as the Village Voice referred to him once.
I heard from the grapevine that they're trying to invest more money into Poetics. I don't think Howe teaches anything at all anymore.