Wednesday, October 17, 2007

On departmental web pages


Those of us who are faculty know the routine: every now and then, in response to the fact that the department website is five years out of date, we are asked to update our biography and list our recent publications. I've been working on mine. Ho hum. Especially compared to the web entry for Cornell's Cary Howie. Note the rakish Derrida just above CH's own portrait. His bio:
Cary Howie, Assistant Professor of French Literature, received his B.A. in Literature from Bard College (1997) and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Stanford University (1999, 2003). He was a Mellon Postdoctoral Associate in Romance Studies at Cornell from 2003 to 2005. His idées fixes include saints, sparkle, sex and style. He writes and teaches about the French and Italian Middle Ages in relation to literary theory, theology, and queer studies.

Why can't I be about "saints, sparkle, sex and style"? Then again, I was jealous here not that long ago about Cary's book title, Claustrophilia.

OK, I'm off to work and my sparkle. How does one do that?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

My old department at Reading has just redesigned its website for the first time that I can remember. Considering the growing scholarly interest in the non-human and definitions of humanity their new slogan ("History: the human experience") might turn out to be a bit of an own goal, especially if it's another 10 years until the next redesign.

Rachel Roberts said...

Hey, I like 'The British Archipelago'. Is that the hip (dare I say, sparkly) way of referring to it now? Puts me in mind of the Gulag Archipelago, which may or may not be the point.