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One of the downsides of teaching asynchronously is that you can’t see the outrage on students’ faces when you explain how to pronounce “St. John Rivers.”

submitted 19 days ago • 0 comments

Worked off a bit of ire by printing some IKEA furniture (ironically, this took almost as much time as assembling the real deal).

submitted 25 days ago • 0 comments

ME: what is that weird buzzing noise ALSO ME: why are the cats so excited about the corner of my office ARRGH 🦇 [grabs cats, shuts off room, calls bat removal]

submitted 45 days ago • 1 comment

4) A photo I took from the Morgan-Manning House cupola several years ago, looking at the carriage house (unscathed by the fire):

submitted 45 days ago • 0 comments

1) One of the most important local historic houses in Brockport, the Morgan-Manning House, caught fire on July 14: www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/2...

submitted 45 days ago • 1 comment

"I trust you will not vanish off the internet," I say sternly to the online copy of Mary Elizabeth Braddon's "At Chrighton Abbey." (Multiple online editions have come and gone since I began teaching it.)

submitted 48 days ago • 0 comments

US: Hooray! No water incidents in our house this year. PEST INSPECTOR: Um, one of your water lines is leaking? #AdventuresOfAVictorianistWithAVictorian

submitted 52 days ago • 1 comment

This new Sherlock Holmes pastiche has an unnecessarily unintelligent Watson.

submitted 56 days ago • 1 comment

“The purpose of a software update is to improve the device’s operation, not brick it,” I observe, tiredly.

submitted 57 days ago • 0 comments

It turns out that changing the nozzle on your 3d printer can be an excellent test of one's limits. (I did manage it, but, ah, not as quickly as the tutorial suggested would be the case.). #AcademicLifeWithTech

submitted 62 days ago • 1 comment

I was idly wondering this afternoon if literary critics were still "calling" for new approaches--something I first noticed in the 90s, and was always puzzled by, because nobody ever seemed to answer the call--when, lo and behold, the monograph I'm reading also started "calling."

submitted 63 days ago • 1 comment

The year is almost over, so it’s time for the annual #AdventuresOfAVictorianistWithAVictorian thread, commemorating all the excitement that transpires as your house nears its 175th birthday. This was an unusually calm year…

submitted 67 days ago • 2 comments

"Is there some reason your historical context is on page 8?" the editor inside my mind inquires, not altogether politely. #AcademicLifeWithRevisions

submitted 67 days ago • 0 comments

"'Burrstein' is a new one," I remark. (I've misspelled other academics' names myself; however, when somebody botches my name in the bibliography, it's normally "Burnstein." Or sometimes "Bernstein.") #AcademicLifeWithTyposInCitations

submitted 67 days ago • 0 comments

The UC Irvine science course in which I had to try* to work the equation for Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, which did not exactly seem to correspond to what theorists were saying about it at the time (early 90s). *--not very successfully

submitted 73 days ago • 0 comments

My year in books: littleprofessor.typepad.com/the_little_p...

submitted 73 days ago • 0 comments

"I think, after eight months, I can gently inquire as to the whereabouts of the referees' reports," I remark, sending an email. #AcademicLifeWithoutReviewersOneOrTwo

submitted 74 days ago • 1 comment

Was going through some drawers and found a phonics workbook from when I was five.

submitted 75 days ago • 0 comments

Finished shelving the modern fiction, and now on to the biographies. This may be an excessive number of biographies of Pitt the Younger for a Victorianist…

submitted 77 days ago • 1 comment

YOUTUBE/INSTA ALGORITHMS: have a bunch of videos about "Things in my house that just make ✨sense✨" ME, WITH HOUSE BUILT IN 1850: this town didn't have running water until WWI, let me talk to you about the plumbing, none of it makes ✨sense✨, I can rant all day

submitted 79 days ago • 0 comments

Some reflections on the BLEAK HOUSE (just BLEAK HOUSE) course, now that the semester is all over but the grading: 1. We spent 12 of the 15 weeks on the book and the accompanying contextual materials (e.g., examples of "good" deathbed narratives to show how Jo's death reworks those conventions).

submitted 85 days ago • 2 comments

TV: Being department chair means having a swanky office and lots of power ME: Being department chair means grimly reconciling 3 different Excel spreadsheets and 1 Word document to do next fall’s schedule

submitted 89 days ago • 1 comment

Literary criticism shelfie (about 2/3 of the way through this section). #AcademicLifeWithPeriodicMassBookShelving

submitted 94 days ago • 0 comments

CHARLOTTE BRONTË: Yes, I gave you a lot of material for your last chapter—now, it’s back to complaining about my employers. #AcademicLifeWithInconvenientCorrespondence

submitted 95 days ago • 0 comments

Hadn’t done any 3D printing in a while (this will probably wind up in a project I have planned for my department office and not in the dollhouse in process). #AcademicCraftingLife

submitted 97 days ago • 0 comments

“If I could clone my colleagues, that would be great,” I remark, grimly trying to put together next Fall’s schedule. #DepartmentChairLife

submitted 101 days ago • 0 comments

Students very unimpressed by how Esther’s marriage plot resolved. #BleakHouse

submitted 102 days ago • 1 comment

These battery sconces aren’t enormously bright, but at least I can now see my books after dark. #FiatLux

submitted 102 days ago • 0 comments