new adventures

Hello, loyal readers! I left England nearly a year ago, and I can't believe that's true.

My adventure this time isn't quite so prolonged, but it's probably more exotic: I'm teaching for the summer in Taiwan. I'll be a month in Taipei, a month in Hsinchu, and a month (probably) in Kaohsiung. By popular demand, I am blogging.

So, if you're interested in reading some more of my inane ramblings about places I've been, go crazy!

But not too crazy, kids.

dissertation

Here's a warning: this post is about the potential epic boringness that is a Master's dissertation from Oxford. I am not--I think--motivated by the stereotypical academic, self-inflated sense that people ought to read my writing. Rather, my last post about my work got a pretty decent response, and as it happens, I wrote about something pretty accessible, so it doesn't require a lot of icky specialised theory nonsense.

My dissertation, which is here, is about Alice in Wonderland mostly. It's a study of Darwinism in Carroll's writing, particularly how the concept of natural selection relates to Carroll's writings about size. Essentially, I argue that Alice herself undergoes a specific personal evolution: at Wonderland's outset, she sees size in this childish bigger-is-better sort of way, but through some harrowing experiences (specifically, ones in which she changes shape and questions her identity because of it), she develops into a more mature concept of Darwinian 'fitness': fitness is not necessarily being big and powerful; sometimes it is being small and delicate. It's about adaptation to surroundings, and when those surroundings are always changing, Alice must too. If you're curious (Christopher Cox, I'm talking to you), feel free to read the thing: it's around 12,000 words, though. A short, rough version (here) formed the basis for a lecture I gave on the subject, and though it's probably riddled with errors--like I said, it was just my notes--and is, I think, still colour-coded, it's far more palatable in terms of length. Also, it's sans background research and such: it sticks pretty exclusively to textual analysis, which is probably the more interesting part unless you're really into Carroll. Or Darwin.

There's more to it, of course. I talk a bit about Sylvie and Bruno and also about illustrations (that's the fun bit!) and maybe a little bit of Gulliver's Travels snuck in there. Anyway, I enjoyed writing it, as much as one can enjoy writing a dissertation, I suppose. I got my mark back on it a couple of days ago, and it received the High Pass I expected and not the Distinction that I wanted. C'est la vie (or, to preview what will possibly feature in my next post: tio estas vivo)!

blog intimidation

I don't update my blog one week. That's okay, I think. My friends understand that I'm busy with work. When the week lengthens into two or three, I shrug it off. I'll update when something happens.

The hitch is that my next update has to be really quite good to make up for my recent lax ways. I grow increasingly cowed until taking off into a full-fledged Blog Intimidation Spiral. It isn't pretty.

But then my dear and darling friend Ben encourages me via Twitter to keep writing. And I just can't say no to that face.

So, ladies and gents, consider this my disappointing but necessary reintegration, however brief, to the blogging world. I have less than a week left in Oxford, and there are updates, if you're interested, to be shared about my life and my time here and all that jazz.

may day

So, you know how I intended to write more on Budapest? I didn't do that. Suffice it to say, it was lovely and I long to go back and I have dozens of photos on facebook. Yes?

Yes.

Term officially started yesterday, though we postgrads have been in the academic swing of things all break. Nevertheless, it's nice to have everyone else back and regular sorts of things happening once more.

In addition to being the start of term (my final term here!!), it was also the first of May: May Day. Oxford engages in its own unique tradition of May Morning, wherein hundreds of people (a fairly even split, we observed, between drunk-people-still-up and tired-people-just-getting-up) make their way at five in the morning to Magdalen College on the High street and stand around the college's tower. At six, the Magdalen choir begins to sing.

I would like to report that the sound carries softly through the still morning air as if by magic--but in reality, the sound equipment was not the best and was almost irritatingly obvious. Still, the choir sang beautifully, and their performance was followed by a

bit of a bizarre Earth Mother-y kind of prayer. I was blown away by the number of people down in city centre at 5:30 on a Sunday morning, though, and the group atmosphere of dancing and coffee-drinking and singing was lovely to behold. Above are some of my college friends, tired but happy, congregating on the street.

Oxford students and visitors used to rent punts and float along the Thames for the morning's festivities, but due to drunkenness-related danger, the University forbade the renting of boats in the 1980s. For the last thirty years, then, people have jumped in the river, despite obvious and serious danger. I didn't see any splashes, so perhaps this year's police warnings paid off.

 After the singing, it was still only about 6:30, but already pubs and restaurants and things were open. We made our way to the Big Bang, but not before running into all sorts of crazy early-morning celebration-of-Spring shenanigans.

Adults and children alike sang, danced, and played  all through the City Centre. One woman, wearing a black sheep's head, hung thin filaments of golden thread on bicycles, college walls, and street signs. One ivy-covered wall (a wall on Broad street, belonging, I think, to Trinity college) had bits of coloured paper tied to its leaves, which upon closer inspection featured wishes, promises, Springtime resolutions, and other newly public messages.

People got increasingly odd as the morning wore on: lots of Oxford streetgoers had on really silly outfits and were doing even sillier things. The city exploded with colour and sound all morning, and I have to admit: I felt a lot more springy and rejuvenated all day. I didn't even have to jump off Magdalen Bridge.

boldwood

So I'm going to represent my life topsy-turvily out of order and take a break from Budapest-posting to muse about a subsequent cultural experience. Which will annoy the chronology purists (I'm looking at you, Star Wars fans).

Last night, Robby and Emily (two people from my programme) and I went down to St. Michael's church to see Boldwood. I didn't know anything about the band, but Robby told me they were some sort of folk band and that it was a cheap concert. He really couldn't have chosen better: the show was perfect for people like us in so many ways.

Boldwood plays indie dance music--except it's 17th and 18th century English and Welsh dance music. Several years ago, accordionist Becky found a whole lot of manuscript music at a London library. Most of this music has no recorded author; nearly has not been played for more than two hundred years. Well, she did what any accordionist-and-traditional-music-enthusiast would do, and she got a band together.

Now, they play as a four-piece set (though only three of them were there last night), doing what they call "brushing the dust off" of these old, never-before-heard pieces. We heard an unrecognisable version of "Greensleeves" as well as a number of fiddle-driven dance tunes. One of the tunes was collected by Thomas Hardy. Others probably had specific dances to accompany them once, though these have long been lost. Most of the manuscript tunes only existed as a couple of lines--Boldwood arranged every piece in its repertoire. Well, almost every piece: on one or two occasions, they would just start at the same time and finish at the same time, trusting themselves and their instruments to figure out the middle, which is therefore necessarily different every time.

All three members of the band were fantastic and interesting and funny, though Becky the accordionist was an absolute star. She introduced almost every piece with a depth of knowledge regarding classical and folk music that was not simple research: it was honest love for music itself and her place within it. All of them had that attitude--while playing, they smiled at each other as if they shared some secret joke, and it was clear to everyone that they were three people who would rather be where they were than anywhere else in the world. It was captivating.

And now I'm listening to their CD, which is called "Feet, Don't Fail me Now", which is, improbably, on Zune. Brilliant.

budapest: an introduction

Whew! It's been a long week and a half. Last Tuesday, Rowena (whom, if you've been paying attention, you'll recall my having mentioned in the past) and I caught the 7AM bus to the airport. EasyJet tickets in hand and a little nervous, we got on our big orange plane, Hungary-bound. An hour and a half later, we found ourselves blinking in the unexpected sun, surrounded by words we had no hope of reading and a pervasive sense of vacation.

What made us choose Budapest? That's a good question, actually. Some esoteric algorithm of EasyJet-flight, never-been-there-before, and really-cheap-hostel informed our decision, certainly. Regardless, three months ago we were sitting on Rowena's couch saying, "wouldn't it be cool if we went to Budapest?"--and a week ago, we were there. We were right. It was cool.

Cool, of course, doesn't begin to describe it. Budapest is kind of like two miniature cities: to the west of the Danube is Buda, and to the right is Pest. The photo to the left is of Buda, from Pest which is larger. Our fabulous hostel (more on that later!) was in Pest.

The city itself is an intriguing blend of old-world Central Europe, memories of Soviet involvement, and a shiny new Budapest of industry and tourism. Oh, and a lot of really incredible buildings. Rowena and I hadn't been there ten minutes before we fell in love

with the place, and we just kept getting more impressed. Budapest is known for a number of things: perhaps the most famous are its medicinal thermal spas, whose use dates from Roman colonisation. There are a few such complexes in the city. We chose Széchenyi, the largest spa in the city with something like fifteen pools--indoor and outdoor--as well as steam rooms, jacuzzis, and lots of other exciting spa-stuff. 


We filled ourselves with a week of buildings and sun and Magyar culture, and now it's proving difficult to be back. I'll write more on Budapest, of course: I have far too much to say to fit into one measly little entry. In the meantime, these and about two hundred other photos are up on my facebook. 


Szia! (that's an informal Hungarian colloquialism for both "hello" and "good-bye"--a bit like the Hawaiian "aloha")

"what are you writing about?"

I've been getting this question a lot; ostensibly, it is because I have been complaining a lot about my frequent and seemingly-interminable library days. And, as I am nearing the end of another one of those days, it occurs to me that writing about my research is better than writing my research itself. Lo! A blog post is born.

I turned in a paper yesterday that was about The Nursery "Alice", which is a Lewis Carroll work. It was published 25 years after the initial publication of Alice in Wonderland, and it does what it says on the tin: it is a nursery version of Alice, designed to be read to children aged 0 to 5. Its publication history is quite complicated--for example, Carroll condemned the entire first print run as "too gaudy" and condemned them for sale in America--and it took a long while for this adaptation to come to fruition. The text itself is absolutely adorable: it often references its own illustrations ("Don't you see how [the rabbit's] trembling? Just shake the book a little, from side to side, and you'll soon see him tremble.") and it includes some lovely random stories. Anyway, my essay--which is for my bibliography and theories of text class, and is therefore not a literary essay but a biblipgraphical one--is about this work's publication history and also about some issues related to self-adaptation: the importance of illustration, the author's willingness to toy with usual conventions regarding physical publication, narrative structures that lend the tale to being spoken aloud rather than read silently.

And now! I am working on a quite different vein. This current paper is for my "Science, Philosophy, and Popular Culture, 1880-1910" class. I'm writing about Sherlock Holmes, which is fun. When Doyle was writing, Darwinism was a big frickin' deal, and it was seen as being solely about competition. Therefore, when the concept of symbiosis (for those of you who only vaguely remember high school biology, that's when two (or more) organisms live with, in, or on each other for the benefit of one or both constituent members) was coined in 1877, it was quickly defined (read: simplified) by popular culture as being in opposition to Darwinism: one was about competition for the goal of survival, the other dealt with cooperation for mutual benefit. So I'm writing about how Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty have a relationship best characterised by pop-Darwinism--they compete constantly and they know that the end is death for one of them; in so doing, they 'evolve' in the sense that they both sharpen their skills. Meanwhile, Holmes' relationship with Watson (why yes it is difficult not to make references to the fact that they were probably totally gay, because they totally were) is one that mirrors symbiosis: they live together and work together. They provide various services for one another; they need each other. Most importantly, Homes/Watson is as opposed to Holmes/Moriarty as symbiosis was to natural selection, though each relationship is a means for the characters to evolve--rather, to grow.

So that's what's up! And now the library is closing in fifteen minutes, and a man wearing the loudest shoes on the planet is scurrying about closing all of the windows--so I ought to sign out.

Just thought I'd share. For the, you know, one person who might be interested in my boring essays.

xx