Here are the other posters (and the original poster) for the Memory Studies in Literature and the Humanities II: Memory, Space, and Mobilities webinar.
The webinar will feature a keynote from Professor Emma Bond who will be talking points from her second monograph "Writing Migration Through The Body" which was really helpful for me in working through the knotty subject of mobility in relation to memory. Apart from that, this webinar is very much postgraduate oriented and will feature 7 supervisees of mine, and papers from me and an academic collaborator/friend (Dr. Sanghamitra Dalal). We'll likely be closing registrations by Monday as we already have 129 registrations so if you were interested and thinking about it, do sign up as soon as possible.
Today's music: some classical (Debussy) but mostly I woke up with St. Vincent in my head so I listened to her 2015 album on the commute and later while working. Then segued into Father John Misty. Good times.
Visited new-to-me pokestops and a good gym battle after my afternoon trip to the pharmacy!
Started prep on the #hauntology paper I swore I wasn't going to present on Tuesday and am now quite academically pleased with myself.
Whirlwind November. Don't know if I am coming or going. Got an article publication, an article acceptance (with minor revisions), and another article revisions required but prior to peer review. This on top of everything else + two medical appointments due. I'll clock in more regularly in December when I expect I will want to be more sloth-like. Wish me luck! 😬
ps: #Watermyth is also in do-or-die mode. Publication by December or bust!
Embodying Space in Hypertext Through Psychogeography: A Creative Writing Workshop
15 November 2023 – 25 February 2024
This creative writing workshop explores the ways in which spatiality and narrative intertwine in the production of hypertext writing projects. In the webinar that kickstarts this workshop, participants will be briefed on general ideas and theories revolving around games-writing, narratives, spatial theory, psychogeography and hypertext fiction.
Yikes; at my uni we have "meeting-free weeks" a few times year, in an effort to let people have more time to spend on research and teaching rather than in meetings. In previous years I did pretty well blocking off that time.
This time, my meeting-free week is one big meeting.
Waiting for the rain of meetings to stop here.... time to put up an umbrella and block of time in my calendar.
TW/CW: there is sexual assault in this very old Malay movie. I'm drawing comparisons between the descent into abjection in the protagonist here and Lewis's The Monk.
ps: I will likely surface to post deets on two more events: one a creative writing workshop exploring spatiality and the hypertext with Dr. Darin Bradley, Dr Ewan Awang and Dr Fadhli Kaidhzir as guest speakers (I'll be doing the hypertext fiction workshop part), and the second one my second Memory Studies in Literature and the Humanities webinar.
It didn't take me too long to get home from work today.
A clean home is always nice.
It's a rather desperate week in terms of getting stuff done + academic deadlines as always, but getting stuff done always give me an inner glow of satisfaction. That whole eudaimonia + arete cocktail thingo.
Academic Updates: I've got at least one article in the bag re article acceptance, final copyedits all done. Waiting to hear from the others...
There are other urgent things to settle, however: The two events I am running in November, and I'm going to be giving a talk at the Romancing the Gothic series of events, also in November. Which means I'm prepping for two talks -- I'll be presenting a paper at the Memory in Literature and the Humanities webinar I am running on the 28th of November.
Keynote: Professor Emma Bond.
I'm also writing two grant proposals (which will make four grant applications sent in this year) and preparing a handful of PhD supervisees for proposal defense, and another handful for paper presentations.
Managed to clear a handful of anxiety-inducing things off my academic to-do list, which is another win for today. Got my groceries in (I have them delivered to my office) because by Friday and the end of the last class of the week I'm going to be too beat to even think of weekend groceries (it's going to be Korean food this weekend. Well, that and more pizza), and ordered dinner because I was craving portuguese egg tarts and then found a place that does halal Kristang food, and got excited. Sadly, the egg tarts didn't arrive, I whined at the delivery service for a refund, but then I got egg tarts from another place. THE END.
Dinner, then laundry, then checking my PhD supervisee's dissertation (Malaysian Literature) because final submission is ...SOON.
Finally managed to make my Salmon Kedgeree -- and had it both for breakfast and for dinner. Delish!
Hearing back from two of the speakers I invited for two separate events, which brings me much closer to finalising the programme nitty-gritty for both webinars.
Clearing some more things off the to-do list. Although the list seems to go on for miles. And miles.
We're three weeks into the semester here and it's been go go go and trying to manage all the deadlines while also grappling with chronic pain and fatigue. My to-do list has me sometimes in tears. I've already told my music teachers that class is impossible for the time being. I love my job, but I often wish doing it wasn't such a pain in the you know what.
How's my night going? It's late and I'm sending out invites and responding to invite responses and other fully networking academic issues. Stuff I couldn't do during the day because of other duties.
Goodnight now. Here's Patrick Watson. I saw him live in 2010 and that was such a treat! Some of the best gig photos I ever took also.
Hello Masto! Home late and very sleepy/hoping for an early night. Still working on CE for the article I submitted yesterday (editor bounced it back to me with some corrections based on the latest APA format -- is it just me who finds the new APA's requirement re sentence case when journal/book titles are NOT in sentence case, very illogical? It upsets my eyes, but I do what I must!)
Geese continue to delight me with every single released this year, so enjoy "Space Race"!
Wednesday is my only day with no classes this sem, but it did mean that I was up to my eyebrows in course admin and supervision matters. Also battling a lot of exhaustion from having submitted four articles during semester break (also the mountain of grading I had to do and other stuff). Break? What break?
(It's a good thing I love my job and that there are perks that make it worthwhile)
When you're beyond dead tired but then are gently reminded by the very patient convener that your Folk Horror x Material Culture talk for a British uni* is going to go up on eventbrite soon, so you hammer out an abstract and are suddenly taken aback at your own cleverness.
gently pats self on the back
I'm actually utterly excited for this talk (eventbrite?! omg) but also really tired. Haha.
*edited because I've been such an over-extended/overworked airhead that I somehow had the misapprehension that it was an American uni!
Monday was okay-ish with some really super okay bits.
The super okay bits:
(1) One article accepted subject to some revisions (phew!).
(2) !! So I shot my shot a couple of weeks back and asked a memory scholar I admire if she'd be keynote for my Memory studies seminar. She said yes this morning! This will be great not just for me but my PhD supervisees who are working on #memorystudies with me.
(3) Got my meds from the hospital (tiring long drive though) and this marks the first time I've been there since injury without using a cane. Another milestone.
(4) First class of the semester went okay, despite a couple of technical hitches. Lovely students! And I had sufficient brainspace later to do event organising for the creative writing workshop (secured a #psychogeographer as guest speaker) plus work on another article.
Complex feelings. Students are fundraising to attend SSHA conference in DC & did a 5K this a.m. I wore a sandwich board asking for donations to our Venmo account. Proud of the students & ashamed of the state of US higher ed that we actually ask for money on the street to pay for an opportunity like this. The students are all first gen & all but one is from an underrepresented group.
Finalizing this article for submission by this evening -- telling myself not to do too much because I'm not first author but corresponding author so I'm uh, not going to be getting the credit for writing most of this article!
Also, uh, working on a new grant proposal because my mentor was very upset when I said I was never applying for another grant again. 😛
She urged me to apply for this one so I will. And the huge stake-holder agreed to be put on it again. They're really wonderful.
Apart from that, in talks with a potential keynote for my Memory in Literature and the Humanities webinar (the second one in the series). May open a very limited CFP for a panel of presenters (most of the presenters are my posgrads but I would like a panel of memory scholars if possible).
In case you're wondering when #Watermyth is coming out, I'm wondering too. 😕
I'm barely keeping my head above water here. I'm doing all I can to ensure I avoid the exit policy owing to no grants and no publications. But I'm informed it's if it's three years in a row. So hopefully next year will be okay given how much submitting I'm doing right now. At least admin (both my centre and Faculty) are really sympathetic and supportive of me and my health condition/disability situation.
It's the hardcoded rules that are 🙃 -- they've completely mechanised and gamefied work evals. Which makes it hard to concentrate on bringing out my debut novel -- but I tell myself it also counts as a publication for the system. At 0.05 marks. 🙃
Fairy-tale scholarship always has me listening to Eddi Reader because her discography was my mainstay back during my M.A. days (my Angela Carter M.A. dissertation), so I've been listening to her album of Robbie Burns songs all week.