What am I Doing This Week?

The biggest single item in my diary this week is an assessment workshop in London. I’ve been booked on to this event by virtue of my new role as Head of Education for EDACS, and will be joining four other participants from the Colleges of Arts and Law and Social Sciences. The workshop is a good opportunity for us to find out about innovative and productive assessment methods in the humanities: e.g. non-essay-based forms of assessment. In practical terms, however, the workshop with take a day and a half (including travelling time) out of my normal working week, adding extra pressure to the days when I’m still in Birmingham. (I’m really grateful for the understanding of my Voicing Women student, who agreed to move our seminar to Monday morning in order to avoid a clash.)

I’m hoping to use the travelling time efficiently by doing at least some of the following:

· Preparing notes for my first-year lecture on early modern rationales for writing

· Writing a review of The Cambridge Companion to Early Modern Women’s Writing and the Orlando Project website for the journal Renaissance Quarterly. Renaissance Quarterly is one of the leading international journals on early modern studies, and it was an honour for me to be asked to contribute to it. Reading The Cambridge Companion to Early Modern Women’s Writing has helped me to keep up to date with recent developments in my research field, and the comparison with the online Orlando resource has given me food for thought about the future of paper- and web-based academic scholarship.

· Reading Virtue Rewarded, or The Irish Princess (1693). This little-known novel (did Richardson know if it, I wonder, when he subtitled Pamela?) is set in Ireland during the Williamite wars of the late 1680s and early 90s. It’s of interest to me as it’s relevant to a chapter I’m currently writing on the Anglo-Irish poet and translator, Mary Monck. This new paperback edition has only just been published, but will be much easier to read than EEBO pdf images, which is what I’ve had to work from up to now. (Though with the clue – ‘Virtue Rewarded’ – in the title, I won’t exactly be kept in suspense about what happens to the Irish princess!)

Reviving This Blog

I've felt rather conscience-stricken over the past few months -- actually, ever since I finished Bill's course last year -- about how little I've been doing with this blog. I haven't quite known what I could usefully be doing with it, especially since so many of our number now meet and chat on Twitter. But now I've had an idea.

I've been thinking hard over the past few weeks about what we can do in response to the student satisfaction agenda. This is clearly an issue which is going to become even more pressing over the next few years, as fees increase and humanities departments such as our own come under more and more pressure. It's also clearly not the kind of problem which is amenable to being 'solved' in any straightforward way. But there are things we can do.

One thing I plan to experiment with over the next few weeks is using my office notice board a bit more imaginatively. Colour. Pictures. Chat. Something very like blogging, in fact.

I haven't quite worked out all the details, and one thing I'm especially concerned about is how long this activity is going to take. So it may prove to be a rather shortlived experiment. But I'm planning to start this week, and will hope to merge the hard-copy blog with this online version. So you may soon start seeing more activity on this site. Well, maybe.

Plagiarism

Just a few weeks ago a colleague (whom I won't name) made the case that as university teachers we shouldn't be taking plagiarism so seriously. 'Plagiarism is a useful life skill,' went the argument. 'We aren't actually doing our students any favours by taking such a draconian attitude towards it.'

Here's an interesting articulation of a very different point of view:

Staging Post

A colleague and I went out to dinner last night to celebrate the end of one more batch of marking. This is the picture she took of our marvellous Italian puddings! The torta della nonna (at the back) was mine, and every spoonful was delicious.

This doesn't mean that the marking is over, at least for me, but the end is in sight. And with such generous-spirited and convivial colleagues, the whole process is rendered considerably easier.

I am now, however, back in my office, and am about to get busy with the next marking task. It's the hardest one of all, but in a week's time -- I tell myself! -- it really will be over.

Research and Exams

As some of you already know, I spent 10 days earlier this month at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington. The Folger is a familiar name to anyone working in early modern studies, especially literary studies, and perhaps the real surprise is that this was my first visit. But, oddly, this year is the first time I've needed to work directly on Folger manuscripts, and thus have been able to make a cogent case for research funding. A successful application to the British Academy was critical in making this visit possible.

One of the hardest things in organising this visit was choosing the right time for it. The money all had to be spent between July 2009 and June 2010, and because of other commitments the two most obvious times for the journey -- last September and the Easter vacation -- weren't possible. As a result, it was very difficult to find a 10-day period when I could reasonably be away from the department. The time I identified fell between the start of the summer term, when I had to hold a revision lecture and several seminars, and the start of the exams. I was concerned in advance about whether it was really a good idea to be away from the university during this rather tense period.

My view now -- having come and gone, survived the volcano and coped with all those anxious student questions -- is that I could hardly have been away at a better time. Being so far away, and on a funded trip, meant that time which otherwise might have been spent inefficiently on email and admin had to be stewarded for research. I also don't underestimate the beneficial effects of Washington sunshine just before the stressful exam period. I'd recommend it (or the equivalent) to anyone.

testing, testing

Having trouble posting another entry. This is a test post.

Conference catch-up

I'm so out of practice in blogging that I'd quite forgotten I hadn't posted about my recent conference experiences.


A colleague and I travelled to Venice earlier this month for the annual meeting of the Renaissance Society of America. This is one of the key events in early modern literary studies, but I'd never actually attended it before. I will admit that the venue was an extra incentive.

I never look forward to travelling before I do it, so didn't have high expectations of this trip. So I was very agreeably surprised at how things went. Most importantly, the panel session in which I took part owas a great success. The room was packed out, and we even had to bring in extra chairs. I am always very self-critical when I give papers, but I felt that this one was one of the best I've presented lately. It may have helped that I was speaking on a topic which was largely new to me: hence there were fewer stray facts to get in the way of my argument.

Lots of people I know from different stages of my academic life were at the conference, so there was lots of catching-up and sharing news and ideas, typically over pizza or ice cream. And there is even talk of three of us joining forces to offer a panel at next year's meeting in Montreal.

All in all, worth doing, though somewhat stressful beforehand. I must remember this for next time.