Version 7.0ish. Digital Humanities. Running. Pedagogy. Linux.

• A few weeks ago, I was offered, and accepted, another one year contract at Burlington County College. Here is a picture of my office door:

I have a picture of the inside from the week I moved in, but it has changed a lot since then, so I will have to take a new one soon.

I have a new post up over at Blogging Woolf. This time, I am writing about intermodernism, a term coined by Dr. Kristin Bluemel for literature and arts in Britain during the years between the World Wars. If readers are interested, I have plenty more to say about intermodernism.

In recent weeks, I have a new post up over at Blogging Woolf. This time I am writing about Mrs. Dalloway again, specifically the role of the epic hero in the novel compared to Arnold Bennett’s novel Anna of the Five Towns. This was revised from a paper I wrote in graduate school and a few dinner conversations with Toni Magyar back then.

I really enjoy writing for Blogging Woolf. I will be posting more over there soon about Intermodernism.

(almost done clearing out the graduate school queue)

For Dr. Bluemel’s seminar on Intermodernism, I wrote my seminar paper in an attempt to define some sort of “sex/gender” system for Intermodernism, beginning with her own full length George Orwell & The Radical Eccentrics: Intermodernism In Literary London. To do this, of course, I relied heavily on Gayle Rubin from a theoretical standpoint. From a literary point of view, my focus was on Phyllis Bottome’s The Mortal Storm and Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas. (pdf)

One of the great highlights of this spring’s symposium at Monmouth was Kristin Bluemel’s keynote address. Toni and I, along with our adviser [Nothing to link to. Ahem. (Hey, it worked with Toni! Heh.)], decided to pick Dr. Bluemel for a number of reasons. I can safely say that one of the major highlights of my graduate school career has been the classes I have had with Dr. Bluemel. She has been a valued friend, mentor, and teacher.  Her course on Intermodernism was easily my favorite course at Monmouth.

That said, here are my bullet pointed notes for her keynote address Inventing Intermodernism. I know Toni also took notes, and a few others, so hopefully they will upload their own notes soon.

• Dr. Bluemel taught a class on Intermodernism in the fall of 2007
• Before coining the term, the existing categories and vocabulary were not good enough
• Modernism, postmodernism, “lost generation,” none of this was sufficient and was limiting and damaging
• Mulk Raj Anand, George Orwell, and Stevie Smith were the most interesting writers
• So if Dr. Bluemel wasn’t a modernist scholar, then what?
• Mostly interested in women writers
• Found Stevie Smith while studying for oral exams
• Stevie Smith has fictional portrayals of Anand and Orwell
• Intermodernism, the concept and category, helped to design a new map between modernism and postmodernism
• Dr. Bluemel next offers a case study of On The Side Of The Angels by Betty Miller
• Socially conformist
• Complex psychological effects of World War II
• Interdisciplinary: The practice of everyday life
• Place differs from space
• Place=Street Space=People on it
• Reading is a particular place
• Women novels can become space

Here is the reflection paper for my fall 2007 presentation on the works of Robert Graves. I did this for Dr. Bluemel’s course on Intermodernism. I did not like this presentation that much. I fumbled my way through it in front of the room and had other minor issues in both presentation and supplemental handouts. That said, I learned a lot from my failings for next time. (PDF)

For Dr. Bluemel’s Intermodernism course last semester, our second paper required students to examine the role of propaganda during the between war period in England. I chose to compare privileged, white, male writers F. R. Leavis and George Orwell to Virginia Woolf and Mulk Raj Anand. Overall, I like this paper a lot. My attempt at defining what I am calling the “Intermodernist Other” still needed work, but I had already gone over the page limit for this paper by two or three pages.  (PDF)