Friday, August 27, 2010

Back to Blogging

So yeah, I've been away for quite a few months now. There have been very good reasons. Among them:
  1. I gave a talk at Calvin's Festival of Faith & Writing in the spring. It was lovely. I talked about connections between the mystery genre and faith. People seemed interested, which was encouraging.
  2. I took a creative writing class in the spring (for fun). One might think this would contribute toward blogging, but it didn't. Instead it poured the energies I would have put into this blog into new stories and critiques of others' stories. This, too, was an encouraging process.
  3. I was narrowing in on my main dissertation theory. That was a lot of work.
  4. I've been reading reading reading for the dissertation. I've done the bulk of that, thankfully--or so I hope. I'm in the midst of plowing out pages now while learning to balance that work with teaching that just started up again this week.
  5. I've been teaching a lot, and loving it. I've realized more and more that I really love this profession. I'm particularly fond of coming up with activities based on Food Network and other reality show competitions. The formula is eminently useful for pedagogy.
At any rate, I'm back. Oh, and publication update: I have a new academic publication in the delightfully titled tome Interpersonal Relations and Social Patterns in Communication Technologies: Discourse Norms, Language Structures and Cultural Variables. Since I know all of you are going to run out and buy it, just look for chapter 3 by Deborah Leiter and John Dowd: "Textual Expectations, (Dis)Embodiment, and Social Presence in CMC."

In other publication news of the less academic brand, I have an essay appearing in a new book on spirituality and food coming out next month. It doesn't look like the book's listed on the publisher's website yet, but I'll provide a link when I have one.

Oh yeah, and the latter will be the first print-based publication under Deborah Leiter Nyabuti. It's a good name, and I'm excited about the prospect of using it more and more.