Sabbatical update: procedures, puzzles, and (peculiar) people

This morning a colleague told me, "You look like you're enjoying your sabbatical," and I replied, "Oh I am! This morning I spent three whole hours updating a spreadsheet!"

Okay, so not every moment of a sabbatical can be suffused with pure joy, but on the other hand, it's a pretty awesome spreadsheet--tracking information about submissions to the collection I'm editing on teaching comedy. In fact this is a pretty awesome project, appealing to my love of procedures, puzzles, and people, some of them delightfully peculiar.

Any endeavor that involves gathering submissions from scholars all over the world is going to require clear procedures for collecting and organizing submissions and communicating with authors. Fortunately, MLA provides helpful guidelines for bringing together edited collections, but I've had to impose some discipline on my inbox (to make sure submissions don't get buried) and my filing system (to make sure I don't lose track of essential information). As boring as it might sound, constructing a simple spreadsheet to track submissions was an important part of the process. And what a great spreadsheet! Seeing all those names and titles sorted on my spreadsheet keeps the chaos under control and gives me a delicious foretaste of the final product.

But before I get there, I'll have to try fitting all those puzzle pieces together in different ways to find what works best, creating a coherent and orderly progression through concepts while juxtaposing essays in productive ways. Some submissions want to cozy up side-by-side to reinforce similar concepts or methods, while others create friction that will spark further discussion across a wide spectrum of readers and scholars.

And what a fine group they are! Already I've (virtually) met scholars from many disciplines, hailing from all over the country and other parts of the world, proposing clever ideas that I want to adopt in my own teaching. I wish I could tell you about all the cool people with whom I'm corresponding, but I don't want to violate anybody's privacy. But let me tell you this: comedy people can be a lot of fun, even when they're discussing serious issues. Right now they're all just data points on a spreadsheet, but after I get all the puzzle pieces put together, this collection is going to rock.

Climb every mountain (except, maybe, this one)

When is research ever wasted?

That's what I've been wondering today as I've spent half of a morning trying to sort through massive mountains of notes related to one small part of my sabbatical project. I gave a conference paper two years ago that I've wanted to transform into a full-fledged journal article dealing with certain elements of 9/11 literature, but as I look over the paper and then track down notes contained in a host of different computer files, I'm wondering whether the universe might be better off if I just drop this task. I mean, it's not as if there's any great demand for one more theory-laden academic journal article belaboring a point that seems, at this juncture, fairly obvious.

But if I let the article slide, what will I have to show for all that research? Won't it be wasted? And what does that even mean?

Surely the results of that research have deepened my understanding of the topic and informed my teaching, preparing me to teach a capstone class this fall on literature responding to the 9/11 attacks. And abandoning the journal article would not mean abandoning the topic entirely: I'd like to use the material in an essay aimed at a wider audience, something a little more casual and less footnote-laden. I revised and resubmitted another journal article last week and I'll soon be working on the comedy pedagogy project (here's the CFP!), so it's not as if I'm spending my sabbatical slacking off; I just dread the drudgery involved in this particular revision. 

But maybe that's a normal response to my note-sorting foray this morning. I found full texts of articles and notes on many other articles and books in files all over my computer, some of them dating back close to 20 years; the prospect of beating all those ideas into some semblance of order hurts my head. When the mountain of notes stretches so high that I fear I'll need oxygen to climb to the top, it's time to step back and reconsider.

I'm tempted to toss a bomb at the mountain and level the whole thing, but that would be a bit extreme. Instead, I think I'll walk around and look at other things for a while. Maybe the mountain of research notes will look more manageable from a different perspective--or maybe it's time to find a different mountain to climb.

Comedy, tragedy, and the start of my sabbatical

It's the first day of classes and my colleagues are busy teaching, but I'm in the library doing a little research. Yes: this is the official start of my spring semester sabbatical! Which is a good thing, because I would be totally unprepared to teach classes today since I only got back in the state yesterday.

Snow and gray skies met us as we crossed the mighty Ohio River, and I mourned the sunshine we left behind. It's not so much that I want to live in Florida full-time--I don't--but Ohio is not at its best in the bleak midwinter, when the dominant color is gray and the woods look cold and lifeless.

So I'm enjoying sitting in my favorite library under the sunny yellow light and pursuing the light of learning. I'm excited about my sabbatical projects, including one great opportunity that arose out of the blue. Here's what I'll be working on for the next six months:

• Revise and resubmit the big garbage essay.
• Research post-9/11 literature for two purposes: to expand a conference paper into a publishable article, and to prepare for the capstone class I'll teach on the topic next fall.
• Take a research trip to New York!
• Edit a collection of essays on Teaching Comic Texts, part of the MLA Options for Teaching series. 

That's a lot of work but I'm always happier when I'm busy, and the variety of projects will prevent me from becoming bored. I hadn't planned on doing the MLA collection but it arose at a good time and it fits in well with what I've done before and how could I say no to an opportunity to write and edit essays about comedy? (I'll be posting a link to the Call for Papers very soon--stay tuned!)

So I get to spend a semester pursuing some of my deepest interests--how literature helps us make sense of garbage, trauma, violence, and disaster--and when that starts feeling too heavy, I can switch over to reading and writing about teaching comedy. (Tragedy and comedy have a lot more in common than you might think, but if I switch too quickly between the two, I'm likely to get whiplash.)

Artificial sunshine in the library