Good colleagues

This weekend, I worked hard for the college, making good impressions, as did my wonderful faculty colleague Sue Powell from Nursing and my extraordinary student colleague Courtney Kokkler.

Both women hung in there when the other two volunteers didn't show up.  Both women spoke eloquently and informatively about the college's programs.  

Our booth's visitors picked up all of the admissions information and fun stuff I brought -- as well as almost 350 pens printed with the Q&S at Century student club logo.  "The best pens at the Park," I shilled, telling the truth.

I spent over $10.00 just on Smarties candy this year, over 500 pieces. "We're a college; have a smartie" I said on Saturday.  "We're a college; have a smartie, be a smarty" I said on Sunday, thanks to the talented Jeanne Cornish from Metro State.

Getting ready to get back

The first task of my return after sabbatical happens before my official return.  This weekend I will again, for the fourth year, staff the Century table at Twin Cities Pride, one of the largest GLBTQ festivals in the nation.  Check out this documentary video!  

I do so in my capacity as faculty advisor to the student club, Q & S at Century.  The advisor who has been taking my place this last year is not interested.  I've managed to find three wonderful faculty volunteers and two student volunteers.  I'll be working most of the weekend myself, I think.

For the last four years, the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities Diversity and Multicultural Division has reserved six or eight tables for MnSCU institutions.  Century's been a regular, along with Metro State, MCTC, Bemidji, and Moorhead.  I've also seen Anoka-Ramsey, Inver Hills, and Dakota County send folks.  

All of these institutions send their Admissions staff people, the folks whose job it is to attend community festivals and events in order to promote the college and encourage new students to attend.  Our Admissions office does not.  The director believes, rightly, that the staff cannot be everywhere at once and must select which events to attend.  But the rationale is odd:  "Admissions [staff members] attend events which will have the best yield potential for Century College in terms of application and enrollment numbers."  

My question: how can an event that attracts almost 425,000 people, most of them under 40, not be the "best yield potential"?  

Berks Conference

I attended the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians yesterday at the U of Minnesota. Huge attendance! The session I attended, "Before and After Sexuality: Rethinking Continuity and Change in Lesbian History," helped me think more fully about a course I'll be teaching this fall, WGST 1071: Introduction to GLBT Studies. The course is interdisciplinary, but I'm not a historian or a social scientist, so I've come at the course as a literature person who's learning on her own about the issues/approaches/questions in the other disciplines.

I've taught the course three times already, and I do try to establish with students that GLBT Studies looks at history, but it also examines definitions: what GLBT means and to whom and who gets to decide what the categories entail. This session helped me think through the entire problem of categories, the problem of asserting a historical identity, such as "lesbian," when those identities didn't exist (although behaviors may have existed that are the same as current behaviors that determine identities).

The session helps me with something I've been trying to emphasize with students: that GLBT people -- or people who now fit under the current handy rubric of GLBT -- have always existed all over the world: GLBT Studies is the study of such people in order to learn more about human beings as a whole.

Not-so-Good book, Good book

Narrative voice always charms me: in the beginning of The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, the narrator beguiles with simple exposition, seemingly profound in his observations because of their easy clarity. But the novel doesn't ascend from that point; instead, the story slows to a watery ending, thin as broth. Disappointing, but it's just a first novel by Dinaw Mengestu.

On the other hand, The Yiddish Policemen's Union charms AND sustains that charm with its thick stew of dialect-smeared complexity. An entire layered world created out of whole cloth, it's a testament to the mature imagination of its author, Michael Chabon.