Back to Zanzibar?

Well, I think it's way too early to say that with any certainty, but at least it's a possibility.  First off, however, I need to get nine students and my great friend Cyndi Brandenburg to Jordan and back.  I've never led a student group to a foreign country before, so the next three weeks will determine whether I have the desire/courage to do it again.  That said, I've been thinking a lot about potentially leading a student group to Zanzibar in the spring of 2016.  In addition I've drafted my friend Steve Wehmeyer and he's now an enthusiastic supporter or the trip.  First off, I loved my time in Zanzibar and have always wanted to go back.  Moreover, I'm teaching a class called The Periphery of Islam, which is focused on the travels of Ibn Battuta.  So, we've been reading his account of, among other places, the east coast of Africa (he blew by Zanzibar on his journey in the 14th century because it wasn't anything then - and devoted his time on Kilwa, which has since faded into obscurity).  We've also been reading the fascinating Tim Mackintosh-Smith three-part travelogue where he follows the path of Ibn Battuta.  What really drew me in were the accounts which almost read like an Islamic form of voodoo (obviously very haram, at least to the Wahabbis).  To me the chance to study this very syncretic corner of the world seemed like such an extraordinary fit with Steve's expertise (see my posts about traveling to New Orleans with the excellent Wehmeyer).  It would be a wonderful, but also an emotional, trip.  Whenever you revisit someplace where you were really happy - and also living in a different universe - there is always the potential for bittersweet moments.  However, who could ever turn down a chance to return to Zanzibar?  More on this later . . .

It's an odd picture to post, but it just reminds me of one of my happiest moments - just sitting at the end of the dock, talking, staring into the water, enjoying the blissful breeze, and waiting for the sun to go down.

Let's Rock

Last Friday I enjoyed one of the oddest and happiest classes of my generally odd and mostly happy career.  In my Heroines & Heroes class we were discussing psychoanalytical literary criticism, preparing them for the paper they're writing this weekend on "Death" from Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio (which, as all right-thinking individuals know, is the greatest American novel).  Whenever we're talking about conceptual tools I liked to give the students a text to examine (I'm a huge believer in having students learn a theory and then use a theory - which I must have picked up from my father's discussion of medical school).  In this case I showed them the iconic Cooper's dream sequence from Twin Peaks.  I am a firm believer in the notion that David Lynch, with all of his peculiarities and failings, is the most influential director of his generation.  There are movies before and after Blue Velvet, and TV before and after Twin Peaks.  Not surprisingly, very few of the students were familiar with the scene, although a few more had heard of the series, which is not particularly strange since we're almost a quarter-century removed from its inception.  What I loved was when it came time for the midget to dance about half the students began to snap their fingers along with the music; and so we sat there in the darkened room on a snowy day, watching a dancing midget speaking in subtitles, and the students gave themselves to the moment.  All we needed was Lynch himself filming away.  As Nietzsche reminded us, when you stare into the abyss the abyss stares into you.  I guess my students just stare into me, and the weirdness flows.

Journeys - to the West and Elsewhere

I was sitting at my desk at home contentedly writing away when I glanced at the precariously structured pyramid of books to my left (the view to the right wouldn't have much more organized) and thought I would pause for a moment and reflect.  Several years ago when I was living in Quarry Hill for a year and living the life of a faculty resident for first-year students I posted a picture of a large pile of books, composed mainly of different versions of epics such as the Ramayana and the Iliad and Beowulf and the Sundiata and Journey to the West and the Popol Vuh - as well as a few select copies from the related small libraries that each of them has inspired.  At the time I was preparing to embark on a semester-long sabbatical to work on my long-delayed book on the epics, which would have mainly consisted of me tramping around the UVM library stacks or me monastically hiding myself away so that I could write.  And then out of the blue Zayed University asked me to spend a year with them in Abu Dhabi and Dubai running professional development programs and redesigning some classes.  Obviously, my life changed dramatically both professionally and personally, and I would not trade that time for anything, even if it led to some heartbreak along the way.  So, here I am a couple years later older and wiser - or at least older - and I'm back buried in the project.  I'm really happy with the progress, although it is an exhausting one.  I made the decision to tackle the longest and most complex works - and the ones that included the largest collections of related scholarly commentary and media (films and graphic novels and video games) - first, mainly because I like to take that approach with any large project.  In one form or another I suppose I'm a believer in the concept of a tipping point or a moment of critical mass when the project is so far advanced/evolved that it will write and complete itself.  With that in mind I immersed myself in the Ramayana and then the Journey to the West, and now I'm working on the Shahnama.  Theoretically, I will finish the Shahnama this semester (as much as these projects are ever finished before they're finished) and then delve into the Sundiata and the Popol Vuh over the summer (they're shorter, both in length and also in related scholarly research, although still fascinating) and then jump into the Iliad and Beowulf next fall.  I'm getting tired just thinking about it.  There's still much more to do after that, but I think that's a workable schedule for the next year.  As with all projects it takes a while to find your "voice," and especially so in this case because I'm treading a narrow path between scholarly and more generally accessible, but I'm really happy with how things are flowing now.  That said, check in with me in a year when I'm a shell of a man - or, more appropriately, even more of a shell of a man.  Still, this project is making me very happy, and providing me with a raison d'etre that I really need at this point in my life and career.

I would raise the issue of whether this pile of books is so high that neither Hanuman (from the Ramayana) nor Sun Wukong (from Journey to the West) could fly over it, but then I'd have to get into the debate over whether or not they're actually the same character and that's where it get complicated . . . as it always does with research.

Pajamas and/or Leisure Pants

Students are amazing little creatures, and despite my fierce reputation I find them fascinating and actually like them very much - and not simply because I believe so wholeheartedly in what we try to do in the classroom every day (although that helps).  On Tuesday one of my students wore pajamas to class, which is not totally unusual - although fairly rare for a 12:30 class, especially one taught in the depths of a particularly bitter Vermont winter.  Two days later he comes into the next meeting of the 12:30 wearing pajamas once more.  I, of course, take the opportunity to berate him comically for his choice of wardrobe: "Bloody hell, do you still have on the same pajamas?"  His response, delivered in a brilliantly understated fashion, was, "No, these are different pajamas," which is all you need to know of student logic (which isn't a totally oxymoronic concept).  I've since been informed that students like to refer to pajamas as leisure pants, which shows that are kids are not entirely bereft of imagination or humor.

I tend to now write down amazing/amusing/goofy student comments on the board and cite them, maybe hoping against hope that it will inspire them to include citations in their own papers.

My Boy

Just wanted to post a picture of my son Gary that my sister Lisa was kind enough to send along.  Gary, in his normal peripatetic fashion, apparently passed through Savannah, Georgia, and Lisa showed him around.  Here he is at the Crab Shack, a restaurant that the two of us, along with my Mom, went to years and years ago when we lived in Atlanta in happier and simpler times.

He looks really good, and I'm sure there's some lovely Peter Pan metaphor evolving.