Nerd Alert: Sabbatical Books

This is one of those posts that really reflects the changing nature of this blog. From a blog designed to allow family and friends to follow me as I was travelling overseas (but which few people ever did) it continues to evolve (devolve?) into a more personal journal for me (which, by definition, even fewer people would care about or read). Sometimes I think this is a glorified memory device whose sole purpose is to trigger responses from me at some future time (when my memory is even worse than it is now). I'm including an odd little picture that I snapped earlier today, mainly in response to my nephew Garrett's amazement at the growing mountain of books that I was accumulating on my kitchen counter (and which inspired him to take a picture, which inspired me to take a picture). For a teaching college (meaning one that doesn't place much emphasis on research) Champlain is fairly generous with its professional development money. In the past I've always spent all of my professional development funds (and usually then some) on travel to conferences. However, this year I've decided to use all of it to purchase books; and this decision is also a reflection of a change in my sabbatical plans for next fall semester (when I am finally taking my long-delayed sabbatical). My initial plan was to spend the semester teaching overseas, and I received interest/offers from universities in South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, Hungary and Slovakia. It was really a very tough decision, with every one of them being a fantastic choice. Logically then, in the end I decided to choose none of them. Instead I'm going to spend the semester hiding out in the stacks working on a writing project that I've been fitfully pursuing for a couple years (not because of lack of interest or passion, but rather because of the demands of teaching and getting the Global Modules project off and running). A lot of things came together at this moment in my life to make this an easy decision, and it came to me suddenly one day with an almost physically tangible clarity. I was explaining this to someone the other day and it came out like this - research and writing is just something that I've failed at over the years, and I hate failure (at least in myself). It started off with the painful end of my graduate career at Cincinnati, when I finished my degree but was ended up so embittered with the whole process and, oddly I guess, "took it out" on history (at least the researching of it). It took me three years before I even went to a history conference, as I licked my wounds and focused on teaching. For the last year eight years every spare moment has been focused on envisioning and facilitating the Global Modules project. Essentially, the vast majority of my publications are either teaching and/or Global Module related (and I've been fortunate to have had fair success in both areas). However, at this point I really want to get back into resarch and writing. I don't know if it's just a reflection of where I am in my career or my advancing age or just a desire to put my stamp on something, but I think it may just be a desire to try and have some success where I've had none in the past (and I love a challenge). The project itself is pretty monumental, and I'm sure beyond the limits of my pitifully small intellectual capacity to carry out successfully - but, again, that's never stopped me before. The idea behind the project is to write a friendly (think of Border's level popular history) guide to the epics. I've been using thin sections of them in my classes for years as a mechanism for understanding history. For example, if a student can grasp why the Romans loved Aeneas (while modern viewers fine him rather cold and strangely tedious) or why the Indians still passionately love Rama (while a non-Indian would immediately fall in love with Hanuman or even the deliciously wicked Ravanna) then you've gone a long way to understanding their societies, respectively. At the same time what I've often thought of over the years is that these stories, far more than simply tools for academic enquiry, are also really fascinating and it's a pity that they are not read more widely - and this is what inspired this project. My initial thought was to pick one epic for each society and use it as a window into that society, although that means making some tough decisions: Ramayana vs. Mahabharata for India; Iliad vs. Odyssey for Greece; or Romance of the Three Kingdoms vs. Journey to the West for China. For that matter, what constitutes an "epic" anyway? For example, it is easy to propose that Gilgamesh or Beowulf is an epic, but what does one do with something like the Arabian Nights (I'm considering putting it mainly because I think of it as an epic without a home - the stories are probably of Indian origin, but we associate it with "Arabia" even though Arabs of a more conservative religious baring are uneasy with the racier elements of the story). The whole process is made more difficult/challenging/fascinating because I'm a historian and not properly trained in literature or folklore (which is why I'm been picking the brains of my great friends Kerry Noonan, Steve Wehmeyer and Mike Lange on an increasing basis). Of course, I suppose that not being trained in those fields is an advantage because it allows me to introduce them to a general audience without feeling that I am somehow doing disservice to "my" field. And, for that matter, just finding complete versions of them are difficult - I stumbled across a new edition of the Persian Shahnama when I was in Washington, DC recently (which I must have taken as a sign that I should shift the plans for my sabbatical) but it has traditionally been very tough to find in the West, and the new volume is undoubtedly a reflection that it plays a small but important role in The Kite Runner. I was sending emails out last week to the New York University Press to try and figure out why their new Clay Sanskrit Library 15 volume collection of the Mahabharata (the tall stack in the middle of the picture) is still not the entire Mahabharata, and wondering when then final three volumes of their new publication of the Ramayana will actually be translated and published. I'm also ordering "side" versions of the epics, such as films or graphic novels or children's books, which reflect the continuing importance of the epics. So, as you can see, I'm totally in complete nerd heaven at the moment. The project is enormous, and even though I'm been working on it in my spare time for a couple years, it is staggering to think of actually producing it, which, of course, only makes me want to tackle it all the more.