Beta-testing my sabbatical plan

After banging my head against the wall to try to shake loose some ideas for a sabbatical proposal (read it here), I finally came up with an exciting plan that will require a trip to Florida to do research on the portrayal of place in the works of two early-twentieth-century Florida authors. This research could feed into a journal article and also provide the foundation for a version of the Concepts of Place course focusing on the literature of Florida, which would require me to scope out sites of literary interest for a possible trip with students.

Sounds perfect, yes? Over the past week I've shared this idea with several colleagues, both faculty and administrators, and the most common response is something like this: "Sounds great--if you can convince the committee that it's not a junket."

And there's the rub. Of course I have colleagues doing research in Fiji, Australia, China, Brazil, and other distant places with the college's support, so it's hard to see why the desire to do research in Florida would color me Slacker. It's true that I lived in Florida for years and I have many friends and family members wondering when I'm planning to visit again, and it's also true that the trip would come close enough to my 50th birthday to justify a smidgen of celebration, but the committee doesn't have to know that.

They also don't have to know that my prior research on Florida literature has been a bit slim. I've done the merest modicum of work on the two authors at the center of my proposal, but my only other experience researching Florida literature was when I did an interview with science fiction author Andre Norton for my high school newspaper. To land the interview, I had to employ sophisticated investigative techniques: I looked her name up in the phone book. (For readers born with a silver cell-phone in your hands, a "phone book" was an actual book the size of a cinder block made of paper covered with names and numbers that you had to manually dial on a rotary phone, if you have any idea what that is.)

I don't recall anything about the article I wrote, but I do remember that the author responded very graciously to the questions of a fawning 15-year-old. At the time I thought Ms. Norton was about 102 years old, so you can imagine my surprise when the news broke in 2005 that Andre Norton had just died at the age of 93.

But the committee doesn't have to know that the forerunner to this foray into Florida literature was a bit of amateur journalism perpetrated three decades ago. "A research trip to study the portrayal of place in the works of two early-twentieth-century Florida authors" sounds legitimate, while "A visit to Florida to see family and friends and celebrate my 50th birthday" most definitely does not. So let's just not mention the other stuff, okay? What the committee doesn't know won't hurt them.

Bonus: those unfamiliar with the deathless oeuvre of Andre Norton are unaware that I have planted an obvious allusion to one of her works in the previous paragraph. First person to correctly identify the work in question will receive, absolutely free and pre-read to ensure quality, a copy of the novel Continental Drift by Russell Banks.