Spring Arrives

And a man's thoughts turn to… another term of teaching that is beginning today, and with it a return to something like the franticness that overtook me in the last weeks of the last term as I scramble now to get my readers and syllabi together, overcome the insomnia and stagefright that always afflict me when new courses get underway, get comfortable with over a hundred brand new students, and so on. Fortunately, beginning of term demands are rarely as intense for me as end of term demands tend to be with all the grading deadlines and panicky students begging for passing grades for classes they rarely attended and so on, and I get back into the swing of things pretty quickly. This term I'm teaching slightly refurbished versions of courses I've taught before, a lecture at Berkeley on postmarxist aesthetics and politics and a quick survey of contemporary critical theory at the San Francisco Art Institute. I'm also shepherding a cohort of grad students through the final months of their master's theses, as well as a handful of undergrads through their honor's theses, which will probably be the most labor intensive work I end up doing this term. If posting frequency is down a bit for a little while you'll know the reason why.