From England to Bohemia

I just finished From England to Bohemia: Heresy and Communication in the Later Middle Ages by Michael van Dussen.

The most interesting idea, to me, permeated the book and is captured here: "communication at this time was a contingent, localized practice, mediated and conditioned by ad hoc personal contact and documentary forms that were far from stable.  In a manuscript culture, the material conditions of communication and textual dissemination afforded authorities little advantage over the propagandizing projects of competitors, particularly when it came to crossing regnal boundaries, and particularly, too, when competitors laid mutual claim to authenticating modes and forms of documentation." (p. 127)

The idea that I wished was expanded on and discussed more explicitly: "Religious controversy was indeed a practice or fluid temporal process." (p. 39)

The Rhythm of Writing

This summer I have time to work on my book manuscript.  It has to get done before fall classes start.  I've worked out a rhythm for writing (all components are necessary): 1) get up before dawn; 2) eat light breakfast and feed dogs and then take dogs to off-leash dog park for romp at sunrise; 3) come home, lift weights, and have second breakfast; 4) write till lunchtime; 5) read or translate in the afternoon; 6) avoid dogs' stares until dinnertime.  Depending on my mood, the evening consists of relaxation or more reading or translating.

I don't want to just provide links to other posts or texts on the interwebs, but this one expressed so much of how I see grading, it seemed worth sharing and I haven't been writing much here any way.  It's from 1996 evidently, so things apparently haven't changed much, but at least there are like-minded professors.  I particularly like the emphasis on the connection between action and consequence.

Link to the piece

Another semester begins...

After the first week of classes, all I have to say is, I know I had a good class when I had more energy at the end of class than at the beginning of a 2.5-hour class. I think the students had a good class, too.

Another semester ends

Another semester has ended and the perennial woes circulate among professors and instructors. "Why can't students follow (simple) directions?" "Why are they asking for extra credit on the last day of class?" "Who was that student (re: student who managed to miss all classes since the first week until the last but still showed up on the last day to turn in work or take the final)?"

I keep a few ideas in mind to keep things in perspective and to avoid unnecessary angst:

1. Students earn grades; professors do not "give" grades.

2. Students have what they need to do as well as they can from the first day because the syllabus and assignment instructions were complete and thorough.

3. Not all students can do as well as they think they can, at least, perhaps, not at this point in their lives.

4. I cannot control what administrators may do, but I am a conscientious grader. A pravda vítězí (And truth prevails).

Here's an amusing slideshow as movie that gets my World History started. Yes, I update it every year. It's "13.67 Billion Years in approximately 13.67 Minutes." (Disclaimer: the timing works better in PowerPoint; as a movie it seems to go much too long.) . . . Drat, it didn't upload the entire "movie." Sorry.

Looking ahead to the fall semester