Phew
I had my performance appraisal today. Everything went fine I think. The official comments from my boss were massively encouraging, and made me feel very welcome to stay and pursue the projects I’ve set for the next little while. I get pretty nervous about all the official assessment stuff surrounding my job. It’s not that [...]
Epigraphs
Out of the marriage of reason with affect there issues clarity with passion. Reason without affect would be impotent, affect without reason would be blind. The combination of affect and reason guarantees man’s high degree of freedom.
Silvan Tomkins, ‘What Are Affects?’
Affect, Imagery, Consciousness Vol 1 (1962)
With friends like these
The feature story on QUT’s Creative Industries program in today’s Higher Education section of The Australian is perplexing. It’s an insider’s viewpoint positioned as a reality check, but it seems particularly harsh and especially vicious against one individual whose work is incredibly misrepresented yet again. The article doesn’t correspond with the image of QUT I’ve [...]
Freedom to roam and wonder
On Friday night MACS met at the Normanby Hotel for the first time. It’s a pub close by QUT and it seemed only fair that we head over there to thank all the loyal folk who’ve trekked out to St Lucia for these events in the past. (St Lucia, the suburban home of my uni [...]
The Rock. It Comes Bedless.
So who would have thought, Splendour In The Grass camping tickets sold out in an hour. Or in the precise amount of time I had to be in a meeting this morning. So I guess it’s alternative (in every sense of the word) accommodation options for me in Byron Bay this July.
Blogtalk
I’ve just asked the Blogtalk people if they could possibly do one-day registrations, because I can only go for Saturday. It seems odd that they acknowledge many people won’t be able to come along if they have work or family commitments, but that there is no flexibility on the registration fee. It also seems odd [...]
Graeme Samuel Lecture
I’m going to be away for this, but I wish I wasn’t:
Mr Graeme Samuel, Chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, will give a lecture on “Media Convergence and the Changing Face of Media Regulation”, Thursday 19 May, Abel Smith Lecture Theatre (Bldg 23), St Lucia Campus, The University of Queensland, 5.30pm - 6.30pm.
Press [...]
On tele tonight
Readers in Oz: That documentary I wrote about a while ago, Fahimeh’s Story, is on SBS tonight at 8.30pm. (Hey, late notice? Yeah, I just got home and read the TV Guide. The glamorous life of the young quasi-academic). I really recommend it.
Tricks of the trade
Today I get to do something I’ve always wanted, and I’m sure will always want to do: give a seminar on writing. Oooh and I get to teach a night class for the first time, so I’m feeling all Workers’ Education vibe-y (alas yes, I know it’s really just another way for universities to make [...]
May Day Musings
Bruce Robbins’ Secular Vocations: Intellectuals, Professionalism, Culture has an interesting take on the idea of ‘anti-professionalism’ that has been preoccupying me lately. With reference to Stanley Fish, Robbins claims that ‘professions work by denying that they are professions’:
The professional wants to believe in his or her own merit, which requires freedom. But since self and [...]