A sequel– in yesterday’s Chronicle; set nine years in the future. A good excuse to revisit the original; and “So You Think an English Professor’s Life is a Cartoon” (Chronicle, 2011-01-16). From which I quote the following, from the end of the article:
Web Satires of Academic Careers
More than a few corners of academic life, it seems, have spawned their own spoofs on Xtranormal. Here’s a partial list, and you can search for these titles on youtube.com and xtranormal.com. Some of the videos include profanity.
“So You Want to Get a PhD in the Humanities”
“So You Want to Be an [Academic] Librarian”
“So You Want to Be a Historian?”
“So You Want to Go to Law School”
“So You Want to Be a Journalist”
“So You Want to Get a Ph.D. in Political Science”
“So You Want to Go to Business School”
“So You Want to Get a Ph.D. in Physics?”
“What English Professors Talk About”
(Profanity? This must be, ahem, by American standards. I have my own piece 0n “so you want to go to business school”; it is not only unprintable but unfilmable. Mind you, that’s only right and proper for something that’s unspeakable.)
See also on Salon.com: “If I don’t succeed in academe, I’ll…” (2011-01-23); including the particularly resplendent comments.
I shall not be commenting on that other silly business about pushy mothers, much discussed recently in academic news and further afield. Tsk. On a much happier and more uplifting note, however, there is the following–this seminar series being one of the highlights of Dublin intellectual life. Greatly missed. If you are in the vicinity, or even on the same continent, the series is well worth going to (as are related events at NUI Maynooth, TCD, and further from Dublin); see the FMRSI for updates on this sort of ‘appening.
A highlight of a finely philological and antiquarian bent. Indeed, many regulars look and sound like they stepped out of M.R. James. This event on Friday may offer one of the best opportunities in the year to spot the most magnificent specimens of the genus:
The next Mícheál Ó Cléirigh seminar in the Spring 2011 series will take place on Friday 28 January 2011 at 4pm in Room K114, Newman Building, University College Dublin.
Event: Launch of the Heritage Council INSTAR ‘Mapping Death’ database (www.mappingdeathdb.ie)
Project: ‘Mapping Death: people, boundaries and territories in Ireland, 1st to 8th centuries AD’
Speakers: Dr Edel Bhreathnach, Dr Elva Johnston, Dr Elizabeth O’Brien (UCD), Anthony Corns (Discovery Programme)
The seminar will be followed by the launch of the volume Death and burial in early medieval Ireland in the light of recent archaeological excavations eds. C. Corlett & M. Potterton (Four Courts Press). The volume will be launched by Conor Newman, Chairperson, Heritage Council and will take place in Room B107 (opposite the Common Room).
All welcome. Fáilte roimh chách.
Serious matters aside, I was mightily amused by one of the project’s links: Living with the Dead.
(NB: this is a good, serious, useful database; based on a good, serious, useful research project. That fact is entirely independent of and to be distinguished from my puerile amusement at semantic possibilities in the project’s subtitle, and possible puns extensible therefrom. I add this note not least as otherwise Our Special Foreign Correspondent Plenipotentiary and Extraordinary, who is an archaeologist by profession, might spank or even smite me.)
Unparalleled Behaviour in Britain and Ireland from the early tenth to the late fifth millennium BP
I shall leave it to the gentle reader’s discretion: how many senses can be found? at what point does enumerating them stop being funny and become serious and/or geeky? or do they get funnier? (I am actually actively interested in this issue, as a lit crit matter.)
“Nine years on?” Pshaw. Some of us—and not just Medievalists and antiquaries—think and live in the much longer-term and longer-distance. 99, or 999. And so I leave this post with the speech-act joke that is this button, on the aforementioned site (mouse-over colour-changes will never be the same for me again, haunted by this one):
Juliet O’Brien 