The really bad thing about this conference is that something is very wrong with the room where most of the Spanish literature sessions were held. Whenever I was there, my ears would become completely clogged, like when you are in an airplane that takes forever to descend. And it wasn’t just me. Everybody else said they suffered in that room. 

I have no idea what it was but I completely lost hearing in one of my ears. And I have to get on a plane tomorrow, which won’t help. 

On a positive side, I’ve been hanging out with a dear friend from grad school and he showed me a Salvadoran restaurant and introduced me to something wonderful called “pupusas.” For those of you with dirty minds, it’s a dish. It’s great to have a friend who is not a million miles away. 

Everybody is talking about this article by Frank Rich but I think it’s dumb:

But for those of us who want to bring down the curtain on the Trump era as quickly as possible, this pandering to his voters raises a more immediate and practical concern: Is it a worthwhile political tactic that will actually help reverse Republican rule? Or is it another counterproductive detour into liberal guilt, self-flagellation, and political correctness of the sort that helped blind Democrats to the gravity of the Trump threat in the first place?

What is the alternative here, seriously? To keep repeating, like dumb donkeys, that “we only lost by a few thousand votes” when both houses of Congress and most of the states have been going steadily Republican for years? 

Yeah, totally, let’s not pander or self-flagellate. Let’s hope that everybody who doesn’t see the beauty of Democratic worship of consumerism at any cost just dies out and we’ll all joyfully embrace the wonders of consumerism together. Sounds like a great plan.

I don’t want self-flagellation. I want change. I want the party of Democrats to stop, think, and change course. Last week, I finally applied for US citizenship. I have decided that the only way I will vote for Democrats is if they recognize that the opioid epidemic and the creation of an enormous army of “surplus people” are two great tragedies of this country at this time in history rather than a matter of consumerist personal choice. 

I helped two graduate students at the CV clinic: a woman from India and a young man in Early Modern English. 

It’s sad that so many grad programs do nothing to help students work on their CVs and cover letters. I’d gone on the job market with a 7-page cover letter and I’m shocked that anybody actually wanted to interview me after that. 

In the case of the Indian woman, it’s to be expected that she wouldn’t have anybody at her school who’d know the conventions of North American CVing. But American students who don’t have their CVs in order can only be blamed on careless and uncaring program directors.

I hate posts like this one. First of all, I resent having the word “teacher” qualified in any way when describing my profession. I’m not a white teacher, female teacher, heterosexual teacher, mother teacher, etc. And if anybody referred to me as any of these in person, I’d end the conversation right away. 

Also, I find the idea that teachers need to be exhorted en masse not to refer to students using the N-word to be quite insane. I’m sure there is a couple of freaks running around who’d want to do that. But this problem is not endemic to the teaching profession. There is zero need to tell teachers not to “frustrate yourself by trying to figure out why black people can say the N word and white people can’t.” Teachers are frustrated by low pay and erosion of union power. But to imagine crowds of teachers fuming over their incapacity freely to use racial slurs is insane. 

The whole post feels like something aimed at a bunch of Russian tourists from Irkutsk and not American teachers who hardly need this type of platitude recited at them.

This conference is surprisingly well-organized. For one, in the exhibit hall (a place where everybody ends up) there are tables dedicated to different research interests (Spanish Literature, 21st-century Literature, Caribbean Studies, etc). People can sit down at “their” table in an unobtrusive, non-embarrassing way of meeting colleagues. 

There is also a CV clinic where tenured professors help graduate students and adjuncts to improve their CVs before going on the job market. I’m mentoring at the CV clinic this morning because job seekers deserve as much help as they can get. 

And unlike the big MLA, this smaller chapter does give out paper programs at the conference instead of mailing them to people months in advance. (It’s a ploy to make money, and what a shitty one!)

Wow, the Trumpcare bill failed. Really, wow. I was putting a brave face on it but now I have discovered that it failed, I’m almost crying. I will probably even have an uncharacteristic alcoholic beverage to celebrate. 

There is a bunch of people here speaking about literature of the crisis.

“I’m just getting into this subject,” they tell me.

“I have a book on it coming out this year,” I reply.

I’m very happy that I did what I wanted and got the book out before everybody else. I want to define this conversation because otherwise it will go in a wrong direction and will fail to engage with the nation-state. 

It’s also very pleasing that a few people came up to me and mentioned my first book. 

A McGill professor was kicked out from his job for publishing an opinion article that stated something painfully obvious:

Quebec is an almost pathologically alienated and low-trust society, deficient in many of the most basic forms of social capital that other Canadians take for granted.

I love Quebec a lot more than any other part of the country that I’ve been to, but the fellow is 100% right. And even if he weren’t, what does an opinion piece in MacLean’s have to do with his capacity to do his job? If you are fortunate enough to have a professor who is capable of speaking to a larger audience than a dozen of narrowly specialized colleagues, then you have got to cherish such a person.

The culture of Quebec is a great, beautiful culture that needs to be preserved. As all cultures, it has its dark side, so what? Since when is it a crime to point that out? 

The fired prof is absolutely right when he says that Quebecois society is atomized and many people are extremely lonely. This is a culture that is open to accepting immigrants but stinks at connecting to us on a human level. These are all consequences of a beleaguered mentality of a culture that is afraid of being ingested by the enormously powerful Anglophone world that surrounds it. The result, however, is self-defeating. Immigrants who arrive with a great interest in the Francophone culture of Quebec realize that if they are to have any friends, they have to speak English.

Instead of silencing these discussions in such a nasty way, the administration of McGill should encourage them and stay strong against fake outrage of the perennially offended.

There is a Hispanist who is my academic shadow. Whenever I go to a conference, I find her at the same panel. If I publish a chapter in an edited volume, she’s going to be one of the contributors. 

My research interests change dramatically every once in a while. And hers do, too, at the same moment in time. It’s eerie. We both did Spanish Civil War, then masculinity, then spaces, and now crisis literature. 

And from the very first session, female academics start with the same exhausted spectacle of self-deprecation.

“I apologize in advance for making a comment that has probably no value.”

“I don’t even know why I’m saying this.”

“I’m probably making no sense.”

The panel, by the way, is on feminism. FEMINISM. We ask our students to moderate their speech patterns every day in foreign language classrooms. How hard can it be to pay some attention to how we speak and end the self-defeating talk? 

Nobody is going to do this for us. No prince is coming to rescue distressed damsels with kindly reassurances. Tell yourself every day in front of a mirror, “I’m an intellectual, my work matters, I won’t apologize for existing. And fuck the loser parents who didn’t teach me this decades ago.”