John Donatich, director of Yale University Press, admits that funding for scholarly monographs is getting scarce. And with the advent of the internet, who reads them anyway? Thus, he shares what makes the occasional monograph into a gem worth reading.
John Donatich (2009). Why books still matter. Journal of Scholarly Publishing, 40.4 (July 2009), pp. 329-342, 338-339.
The marketplace demands we ask ourselves the question, What needs to be a book? In particular, what needs to be a scholarly monograph? Aside from tenure and career advancement issues, what does a university press have to publish? And what is a monograph, anyway? Webster’s has an inelegant definition: ‘a written account of a single thing.’ The chair of our Publications Committee, David Bromwich, once defined it as ‘a work of scholarship that will not sell many copies until it does, at which point it becomes a gem of scholarship.’ While there was certainly a twinkle in his eye, his distinction has actually become a useful one, and even prompted a spirited conversation at a recent agenda-less Publications Committee meeting.
We started by thinking about what qualities the scholarly monograph and the gem of scholarship might share:
original primary research
blindness to fashion; a love of the ignored and the arcane; providing the culture a way of keeping its neglected history ‘warm’
rigorous methodology
compound argument, capable of advancing a dozen or more layers of argument
scholarly apparatus that not only amplifies the text but enables the reader to reconstruct and replicate the original research, to test the author’s conclusions, or to use the same material to different ends
Where, then, might the two part company? How could a monograph be cut to reveal its lapidary and gemlike qualities?
The research demonstrates a passionate commitment, an almost athletic joy in uncovering and managing masses of material.
The structure invents a new model of managing complexity.
The prose contributes terminology to the lingua franca of the discipline. It challenges yet can be understood by educated nonspecialists. As Einstein is supposed to have said, ‘Everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler.’
The book crosses disciplines with ease; it listens to its own internal echoes.
While perhaps narrow in scope, the book feels close. You can feel the breath of the intellect on the page.
You all know what I’m talking about. I’m sure of it. You have all been entranced by the seamlessness of a narrative and dazzled by the marshalling of dozens of arguments in service of a grand theory. You have been transformed within the alchemy of literature. You have been moved by a book.
"[T]hrough the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him. So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory." Paul, Ephesians 3:10b-13
The following paragraph is from Tony Perkins's newsletter Washington Update.The article is about a bill introduced into Congress to permanently ban the federal funding of abortion procedures. Read down to the yellow-highlighted sentence, and tell me which of the blue-highlighted phrases is the referent of "they".
This push is especially timely given that a group of pro-abortion Senators are trying to open the doors to abortion on military bases. Meanwhile, HHS officials and other abortion proponents still insist that the new health care law won't fund abortions--despite an independent analysis from Congressional Research Service, which reported that there's nothing stopping the agency from covering the procedure in its high risk pools. Regardless of what Americans think about the legality of abortion, they object to paying for it by overwhelming majorities--which could explain why the Smith-Lipinski bill has such broad bipartisan support. Any member who claims to be moderate on abortion knows that they have to vote for this legislation to prove it. Passing the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act is the only way to make pro-life policies permanent and apply them across the federal government. Even the Left should have no trouble supporting a bill that they insist is the status quo. Encourage your member to co-sponsor the Smith-Lipinski bill. Click here to contact them today!
What helped you decide who/what "they" were?
(Writing the title reminded me of the Cheshire Cat's query to Alice, in the old Disney animated feature: "Whhoooo aaaaare you?")
I was reading the list of students enrolled in the Second Language Studies PhD program at Michigan State, when I was struck by two things: first, most of them are Asians. Second, most of them are women. Try 22 females to 10 males. Are all the men camping out in the grammar department?
Anyway, that reminded me that I have spent a lot more time over lunch with girls here at my summer linguistics program than with guys. So, I went over the phone list. Turns out, there are roughly 26 single young men, and 49 single young women... although there technically are more if you count the girls who are currently engaged or the ones in their thirties and forties. No wonder.
Which brings me to the Mormon church. How do they deal with this reality of more mission-minded females than males?
Fn 3 As recently as January 1994, LDS bishops and stake presidents were instructed in a statement from church headquarters that "a young woman should not be recommended for a mission if it would interfere with a specific marriage proposal... Though capable and effective, young women do not have the same responsibility to serve full-time missions as do young men who hold the priesthood"...
Embry quotes Apostle Thomas S. Monson as saying that missionary work for young women is "optional"; if they wish to serve, "we are happy to have them," but "we do not wish to create a program that would prevent them from finding -- or place hardships in their way toward finding -- a proper companion in marriage, because that is their foremost responsibility" (1997, 4)
Fn 6 Unlike Mormon males, young women must wait until they are twenty-one before they can receive a call to serve a full-time mission, a rule that suppresses rather than stimulates female missionary enlistments. To our knowledge the official rationale for this gender discrepancy in age eligibility has not been stated publicly. We have been told informally in interviews with church officials that young women are called at a later age than young men in order to maximize their opportunities for marriage.
One latent consequence of these gender-based age rules is the creation of a larger pool of marriage-eligible young LDS women available for Mormon males when the latter return home from their missions while simultaneously encouraging a traditional Mormon courtship pattern in which returned male missionaries marry somewhat younger females.
In addition, waiting until they reach the age of twenty-one before calling single women to missionary service maintains an imbalanced sex ratio of younger males to older females in the field. These age discrepancies are believed by LDS officials to reduce the likelihood of distracting mission field romances between sister missionaries and their male counterparts.
If marriage is, theologically, the foremost responsibility of the female, then policy can find a way to make it happen. What an economic twist! The Botkin sisters would be proud.
This poem was written by Dietrich Bonhoeffer from his prison-cell in either 1943 or 1944. It was probably smuggled out of prison by a guard he befriended.Today I am getting caught up with my TA work, and feel chained to my desk, and overwhelmed like him at the difference between what others know of me and what I know of myself. The words I can imagine from someone reenacting his ordeal, but that he actually wrote them himself, and they survived, is a gift.
Who Am I?
Who am I? They often tell me
I stepped from my cell's confinement
calmly, cheerfully, firmly,
like a Squire from his country house.
Who am I? They often tell me
I used to speak to my warders
freely and friendly and clearly,
as though it were mine to command.
Who am I? They also tell me
I bore the days of misfortune
equably, smilingly, proudly,
like one accustomed to win.
Am I then really that which other men tell of?
Or am I only what I myself know of myself?
Restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
struggling for breath, as though hands were compressing my throat,
yearning for colours, for flowers, for the voices of birds,
thirsting for words of kindness, for neighbourliness,
tossing in expectation of great events,
powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,
weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,
faint, and ready to say farewell to it all.
Who am I? This or the Other?
Am I one person to-day and to-morrow another?
Am I both at once? A hypocrite before others,
and before myself a contemptible woebegone weakling?
Or is something within me still like a beaten army
fleeing in disorder from victory already achieved?
Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am thine!
(Translated by J.B. Leishman. From Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship. Rev. ed. London: SCM Press, 1962. p. 15)
So, I've been here in Grand Forks, ND for three weeks now. Had a lot of victory in my actions this week... and working on my thought life. There was a prayer group started among some of the guys living on my floor of the dorm, on Tuesday. Skit night was on Friday night, and it was a blast. There was a "linguist's confession" video during the show, and part of it showed me leaping onto a table and yelling, "I'm really an extrovert!" I will not live it down.
I'm a TA in a class called LING 480 Learner-Directed Second Language Acquisition. There are eight of us TAs: Me, Amy, Amber, Sallie, Lydia, Lesa, Bob, and Becky. Greg is the professor, and his wife Angela is manager of the lab sessions and TAs (us).
Up to now, we've been using Angela's lesson plans for the first two weeks (I got here a week before classes started). Now, we have to plan one lesson a week, and let the students each plan and lead one lesson a week. I have eight students, four in each group. The lab groups meet from 2-3 and from 3-4 every weekday. We're learning Kirundi, a Bantu language from Burundi, Africa. And our nurturer is named Pascal.
Beyond that, I'm taking a class called Ethnographic Methods in Field Linguistics (LING 535). It's a challenging amount of reading and writing. The current prof, Doug Fraiser, has inherited the teaching materials from Tom Headland, who made it very rigorous. I've been reading about ethnocentrism, the reputation of missionaries, the reputation of SIL, structures of family units around the world, kinship terms... and writing a summary of just about every article I read. It will be good to look back on, and it makes me reflect quickly on what I've been reading. It just takes a lot of time.
Been making lots of acquaintances. First of all my students. It's always beneficial for an introvert to expand his circle.
I felt the desire to flip open Jeremiah 3 this morning. It says,
"By the waysides you have sat waiting for lovers,
like a nomad in the wilderness.
You have polluted the land with your whoring and wickedness.
Therefore the showers have been withheld,
and the spring rain has not come;
yet you have the forehead of a whore,
you refuse to be ashamed." (Jeremiah 3:2b-3)
I have done this too often... at least twice a week... where I would imagine my way into a sinful situation, often while listening to a Christian book on my ipod. Then once the idea is realized, I would mb. Later in retrospect, I would rationalize it as not sinful. Refusing to be ashamed forestalls repentance. Be ashamed and repent. Then you won't be ashamed.
This week I've been practicing a version -- make that three versions -- of Pachelbel's Canon in D to play at my cousin's wedding. We're combining two violins, a flute, and a guitar. The flute can't play the high notes, so now we've transposed it to Canon in C. And because Canon in C doesn't have the fancy, complicated violin melodies, we decided to cut it in the middle and I'd improvise some of them for a minute, and then come back so we could play the last few bars and end together on the same chord. Almost every time we play it, though, Mom tells me I should study the part by myself and figure out what I'm going to play, so I don't lose everyone.
I took her advice, and found this hilarious rant. (Watch out for foul language at the end.)
Then I found this, and it made me happy to know that someone successfully modified the Canon for the poor cellists.
It's a weird title, I know. I wanted to highlight Salvo Magazine's feature article this month, "Seam Redeemed," a theological interpretation of The Learning Channel's fashion reality show "What Not to Wear".
Read on to find out why the clothes matter, and how a wardrobe transformation mirrors salvation. Here.
Bonhoeffer's book The Cost of Discipleship is now on my summer ordering list. I need grace, and I also need to understand it in a way that will make me stop sinning and change the way I work. Bonhoeffer goes through me like the north wind in that regard.
For Luther, on the contrary, a Christian's secular vocation is justified only in that one's protest against the world is thereby most sharply expressed. A Christian' secular vocation receives new recognition only to the extent that it is carried on while following Jesus.
George Steiner, After Babel: aspects of language and translation, Oxford Univ. Press 1975, p. 398. Quoted in Paul W. Kroll, "Recent Anthologies of Chinese Literature in Translation," Journal of Asian Studies 62.3 (2002), p. 99. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3096353
We must not trust the translator whose words are entirely 'unbroken.' As with a seashell, the translator can listen strenuously but mistake the rumour of his own pulse for the beat of the alien sea.
I never before realized the intimate relation between the words 'couple,' 'copulate,' and 'copula'.
Couple (noun): two persons paired together. (From Middle English, pair, bond, from Anglo-French cuple, from Latin copula bond, from co- + apere to fasten. It entered English in the 13th century.)
Copulate (verb): to engage in intercourse. (From Latin copulatus, past participle of copulare to join, from copula. It entered English in 1630.)
Copula (noun): something that connects: as a: the connecting link between subject and predicate of a proposition b: a linking verb such as "to be". (From Latin, bond. It entered English in 1619.)
And I thought 'copula' was a dry, technical word from syntax.
With English getting such interesting words from Latin at this time, it's no wonder John Donne, who lived from 1572 to 1631, had so much fun writing poems. Even if the copula between him and his subject was a small insect. It's a good thing Donne didn't write Shakespeare's The Tempest or else he might have made the sprite Ariel say, "Where the flea sucks..."
(Definitions and etymologies are from Merriam-Webster's dictionary.)
After working on my capstone project since writing the proposal in February, it's finally turned in. You now, if you so choose, can have the pleasure of reading it.
And now some thoughts about the challenges, successes, and advice for newbies embarking on a capstone project. Can you tell that writing carries me away when I'm excited?
A. What successes and challenges did you encounter in completing the project and other work for this course?
At the outset, we were given a lot of flexibility on the format of our project and the scope of our research. I
"cheated" in my proposal by choosing a huge project which I started to realize I would never be able to fully accomplish, but then wording the proposal so vaguely that I could later narrow down the focus to the parts I found easiest or most interesting.
I was excited to do some original research with wordlists. On the other hand, it was easy to get bogged down when the wordlists printed out totaled six lists at 23 pages each! Another place where I got bogged down was in researching the etymology of 'to be' in the OED online... it was so complicated that I left off researching the etymology of the rest of the verbs for a few days. John and Prof. Wall continually pulled me back to earth with their comments about keeping human interest at the center.
At first it was a challenge to find prior research on my topic, and it was an even bigger challenge to find a usable digital text of Queen Elizabeth's translation of Boethius for my quantitative analysis.
B. How would you address these challenges?
With the proposal, I asked for Prof. Wall's advice and then made some quality guidelines for myself. I also looked online got some ideas from the honors thesis guidelines at Harvard.
To make the work manageable, I had to narrow the scope more than once. When writing the proposal, I initially thought of comparing the syntax and the vocabulary of the two translations of Boethius, and I also thought of comparing them with King Alfred's translation. I dumped King Alfred because I can't read Old English. Then I reluctantly jettisoned syntax because it has been done before, and because it would take a lot more analysis and diagrams. I was honestly surprised that a proposal dealing only with vocabulary was accepted, especially because I hadn't taken classes on lexicography or semantics, and I had only taken one class on the history of English, in addition to whatever studying I did for the GRE English Literature test. But it was accepted, with the proviso that I include a focus on rhetorical analysis. I think this rhetorical aspect was helpful in maintaining human interest and demonstrating the literary aspect of my degree.
I had to narrow down the scope a second time once I printed out the wordlists. Out of 5000 words per translation, I chose to work with a macrocosm of around 200 words, using the words occurring in the text 20 times or more. This meant that I was dealing with similarities between the two translations rather than their differences, but it also meant that a table could fit on a single page while still being very representative of the text as a whole.
When I got bogged down in the dictionary, I took a break, and a couple days later, picked back up with the etymology of another word. All the words on my list were easy except for 'to be' at the top, so I left that one for last, and finally gave it a quick summary in line with what I'd done for the rest, with a note to the reader for further research. This "capping the dead-end pipe" technique was very valuable in several other places.
To find prior research on my topic, I looked through the bibliography in my copy of Chaucer's works, did a lot of searching on JSTOR, went to local community college library and thumbed through old literature indexes, and used the ProQuest Dissertations database. Then, armed with a list of possible sources, I took out interlibrary loans. My time with these interlibrary loan books expired before I was through with the project, so I made copies at home of the title pages, introductions, and any other chapters that I would need later on. These copies went into a folder along with my JSTOR articles. Over the course of the project I would read an article, underline the important parts, and eventually incorporate a quote or a citation into my essay.
There were a couple really fun research finds: one was Tim William Machan, who wrote an entire dissertation on the grammar, vocabulary, and translation style of Chaucer's Boece. Throughout his life he has added to the project, producing books on Chaucer's translation technique, the sources of the Boece, and a new critical text of the Boece. Needless to say, I couldn't read everything by Machan, but his research was helpful on specific topics.
Another fun research find was Jacob Zeitlin's review of John Samuel Kenyon's book on the syntax of Chaucer's infinitives. I was peering over the edge of the abyss -- that is, of analyzing why Chaucer used two different forms of the infinitive -- and then I found out Kenyon had done a dissertation on this very thing and published it in 1909! Add this to the fact that I have a book on types of poetry from my grandmother that was edited by Zeitlin, and that he wrote that ridiculous comment about "every serious student of Chaucer" having to give Kenyon a careful reading, and it was enough to make my day.
It took me a long time to get a usable digital copy of Queen Elizabeth's translation. This is partly because it hasn't been published much. There is an edition on Google Books from 1899, but I would have had to edit it myself to get rid of the OCR typos. Fortunately, two different publishers (U. Chicago and ACMRS) came out with new editions of Elizabeth's translation last year. I got the printed books through interlibrary loan, but didn't want to type it up myself. So I emailed the editors for each of these editions, begging for a digital copy. They were sympathetic, but said I'd have to talk to the publishers. A staff member at one of the publishers was happy to help, but it turned out that according to company policy I would have to buy the book ($64!). I didn't have much of a choice, but I bought it and they emailed me the pdf. Another two weeks of editing the plain-text file I extracted from the pdf because of run-on line errors, and I was off and running.
C. What recommendations would I make for students who are about to embark on their capstone experiences?
1. Choose a topic you're interested in, that you won't mind researching to death. Try to find something no one has ever done before.
2. Skip or gloss over tough parts rather than procrastinate.
3. Use your online resources and a physical college library to the fullest extent. Use your people to the fullest extent, too.
4. When you have your sources together and need an extra push to get over the data-crunching, go to a quiet spot for a few days. I spent a week at my grandparents' house for this: three days to complete the second draft, and the rest of the week visiting with them.
5. Start out with a good outline before you drop data into the essay. I wrote my proposal, gathered my sources, and then constructed a mindmap using a computer program called Freemind, to figure out all the topics I needed to cover and how to organize them.
6. Ask people to read your drafts, and listen religiously to their advice. Most likely, you already know the answers to their questions, and most likely, you think what you chose to write down was more important than those answers, but the essay can't exist as an organic whole in your mind alone. It has to be communicated.
7. When the research and the bulk of the writing is finished, print out your last draft and mark it up in pencil, and then give it to someone else, and have them mark it up again. Give it a once-over for spelling, a twice-over for formatting, use the find-and-replace function for consistency errors. Then re-read your original proposal, and where your current essay lacks the fire of youthful curiosity burning in your proposal, put it back in.
8. In this final re-write, spin new webs of "thesis, summary, transition" to guide the reader through every step of the way. Break up every long paragraph that would be a stumbling block. If your readers can tread lightly, they will breath in deeply.
9. Use technology as creatively as you can to cut down on work and make your project shine. I confess that I never actually read the whole book of The Consolation of Philosophy which I was supposed to be analyzing. (The project was a linguistic and rhetorical analysis of the translation based on select samples, not analysis of the whole text as a literary work.) Instead, I listened to it on my iPod from Librivox.org, read summaries, and dipped into the texts here and there as I needed. I used a computer program called KWIC (key word in context) to generate my wordlists from plain-text files, and to do quick concordance searches for word usage. And at the end of my project, I used Wordle.net to create word-cloud graphics to show off in the appendix.
Thanks to my classmate John Crews and professor Beverly Wall for their constructive criticism, and my parents and grandparents for space and motivation. Thank God that I'm done!
At Melissa May's blog, RShapiro left a comment with this description of "fastidiousness".
I've decided to concentrate on fastidiousness, which is a virtue related to modesty, but not the same as modesty. Fastidiousness is where cleanliness and neatness meet politeness and good manners. It's a quieter version of "classy." I think "Cleanliness is next to godliness" has been overplayed, but insofar as clean, neat dress, homes, and offices put others at greater ease, fastidiousness is something of a virtue too. So, like all professionals should, I'm trying to make sure my clothes fit properly and are appropriate to the occasion.
Keli Carender, aka Liberty Belle, a young conservative-libertarian activist in Seattle, makes an insightful comment in her post of April 27:
I will say this though: the time for protesting is winding down as campaign season picks up. I will be choosing my candidates in the next couple of weeks and I will be spending much more time on their campaigns than I will on organizing protests. We must be victorious at the ballot box or we will be up a raging creek without a paddle. We will only win in November if each of you finds one or two candidates to support and you give it your all. We all must sacrifice to get good people elected. Please, please make your decisions as soon as possible and COMMIT!
The last three years, I have waited until I got the ballot to choose my candidates. Keli is choosing her candidates now, in order to help them win other people's votes, not just her own. I admire that.
Twa beautiful things I found this morning. First is Cori's blog Reaching Through the Dark, a string of song, prayer, drawings, and encouragings to win over those of us struggling with self-destructive thoughts. From there, I found a link to an organization for the same purpose called To Write Love on Her Arms. Read their opening story here.
Negative
Reminiscent of mid-nineties pop tunes
Sappy-sparkly singing and lyrics
"Nowhere in the world I'd rather be / than here in my room dreaming about you and me" makes halfway sense if her lover is literally with her, but since he's not, it's either dishonest or she idealizes dreams over the reality of being together.
Positive
Spanish background utterances
Tune has unexpected range
Tune is reminiscent of Mandarin pop
Regular and extended quatrimeter that depends on stress but is eminently punctuated
"Here in my room" and "tonight" paints a setting
Rhythm switches between 3/4 and 4/4, and between syncopated and regular
I looked up her bio, and it turns out it was written in the mid-nineties! Selena was a tejana (Mexican-American) music star, which explains the Spanish in the background. "Dreaming of You" was released in 1995, a few months after she was murdered by the president of her fan club at age 24. It turned out to be her biggest single, and it made #21 on the Billboard Hot 100 list for 1995/1996.
For some reason, people must still like her, because it was playing today on K103, Portland's soft rock station.
Sometimes writers had better stop when they're ahead. The last clause in the sentence below unpeels everything that came before it.
And creationism? Anytime someone tells me they are a creationist, I find a way to get the hell away from them ASAP because they are either incredibly stupid, incredibly ignorant or blind to reality, in any case, they have virtually no "information" I have any interest in hearing.
