Friday Cat Blogging with Pepper the Crazy Cat



I'm feeling very zen today. Mom rescued another kitty. He's living in the bathroom and I am pretending not to care.

On Leave!

Schedule

15 June 2009
*finish proposal and table of contents

30 June 2009
*rewrite of Chapter Two (Converting Indians, Converting Europeans)

31 July 2009
*rewrite of Chapter Three (The Rise and Fall of the Anglo-Indian Christian Commonwealth)

31 August 2009
*finish research for the new Chapter One

30 September 2009
*rewrite of Chapter One incorporating new research (Title TBA)
*draft of historiographical piece buttressing more sensational claims in Chapter Eight

31 October 2009
*rewrite of Chapter Four (Faith in the Blood)

15 December 2009
*rewrite of Chapter Five (Baptism and the Birth of Race)

BREAK 15 December 2009-15 January 2010

15 February 2010
*rewrite of Chapter Six (title TBA)

15 March 2010
*complete research for new Chapter Seven

15 April 2010
*new draft of Chapter Seven (Becoming Christian, Becoming White)

1 June 2010
*rewrite of Chapter Eight (An Empire of Christian Slaves) and new draft of supporting historiographical article for separate publication

15 June 2010
*draft of Epilogue (Towards Christian Abolitionism and Scientific Racism)

15 June 2010-15 July 2010 BREAK

1 August 2010
*draft of introduction (Christians and Heathens in the Atlantic World)

=FULL DRAFT OF THE AMAZING MR BOOK (ROUND II)

Friday Cat Blogging with Pepper the Crazy Cat



I make my triumphant return to Friday cat blogging with this portrait! Mom has a new digital camera to replace the old broken one. She told me she really needed the camera so she can take pictures of documents (she is going to someplace called England to look at these document things) but so far she has just been laying on the floor taking pictures of me. Aren't I cute?

Happy 200th Birthday Mr. Charles Darwin!

And, Mr. Lincoln, too.

Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act passes Senate, 61-36

Now, who are the thirty-six miserable Senators who think it is OK to pay women less than men for the same job? And how hard are we going to work to throw the bums out?

Notes and observations from the course evaluation wars

One of the fun things about the first half of the survey is anticipating what sorts of things students will say on their evals at the end of the semester. It's always interesting to see what students understood the course was about. Case in point from Fall 2008's HIST 117:

Good, not outstanding because we talked way more about Indians than I would have expected for this class.

Clearly I must have failed to make the point that understanding why Indians did what they did is critical to understanding American history! I guess from this student's point of view, outstanding courses only focus on white Americans?

Another of my favorites:

There is no textbook and there are four to five novels to read.

Novels? Novels! At first I thought that perhaps my students are unaware of the difference between fiction and nonfiction, but one of my colleagues has suggested that many students use the words "book" and "novel" synonymously. Hilarious! This student went on to write:

Keeping up with the reading will greatly increase your chances of succeeding in this class.

At least I did manage to make that little fact clear!

In the odd comment category, I place this evaluation of my teaching:

I did not like the manner she spoke her lectures. She spoke them, rather than talked about them, and they were nonstop.

I find this one pretty puzzling. One doesn't generally "speak" lectures, one "gives" or "delivers" them. How does one "speak" a lecture, rather than "talk" about a lecture? Sigh. At least I am not at a public university in Texas, where my receipt of a bonus might be contingent on the things students write about my class.

Whatever happened to "Mission Accomplished?"

I'm reading the hilarious coverage of Bush ducking to avoid shoes an irate Iraqi journalist chucked at him. Very funny.

At one point during his news conference, Bush declared, "The war is not over, it is decisively on its way to being won."

As my post title asks...